Tuesday, January 10, 2012

TV Quote of the Day (Paul Lynde, on Hell’s Angels)

Host Peter Marshall: “Paul, why do Hell's Angels wear leather?”

Paul Lynde: “Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.”Hollywood Squares

As a youngster in the late Sixties and early Seventies, I was addicted to quiz shows, including It’s Academic and the Art Fleming-hosted, Merv Griffin-created Jeopardy. But the quiz show with a difference—about as serious as a banana peel on the floor of a vaudeville show—was Hollywood Squares.

Moving across metaphorical tic-tac-toe boards, contestants had to decide whether or not to believe the celebrities in the boxes. More often than not, that meant listening to wisecracks by the likes of comics Rose-Marie, Marty Allen, Jan  Murray, Wally Cox, and Charley Weaver (real name: Cliff Arquette—yes, Rosanna’s granddad). Center square came to be occupied by Paul Lynde, a stage, film and TV supporting actor who found his own measure of stardom on Hollywood Squares.

“Eccentric,” “fey,” “campy,” “flamboyant,” “bitchy”—it seemed as if, in an effort to capture his essence, critics trotted out every word but “homosexual,” which is what the actor—who died on this day in 1982 of a heart attack at age 55—was.

Technically, Lynde never admitted his sexual orientation. But if he never formally came out of the closet, he left less than a millimeter of doubt about it.

Theater historian Ethan Mordden, in his discussion of the golden age of Broadway drama, All That Glittered, sees the 1950 John van Druten comedy Bell, Book and Candle as full of encoded language about gays, in the guise of a lighthearted comedy about witches and warlocks. One of the latter, Nicky, is described as “impish, and somewhat impertinent.”

That could describe Lynde as well, particularly when he appeared as witch-housewife Samantha Stevens’s Uncle Arthur, “The Clown Prince of the Cosmos,” on the Sixties sitcom, Bewitched.

One of the actor’s big breaks occurred in the musical Bye Bye Birdie, when, as father
Harry MacAfee, he asked grouchily, “What’s the Matter With Kids Today?” TV producers may have had that in mind when they finally promoted him, from supporting player to lead actor, in the short-lived, eponymous The Paul Lynde Show (1972).

its Audiences never really took to the show, and critics pointed out, rightly, how much its premise—a conservative father barely tolerates his daughter and no-account, lusty son-in-law—resembled All in the Family. (I may be one of the few people alive who remembers this sitcom, and, for all its slavish imitation of the huge CBS hit, I doubt if Carroll O’Connor could have packed quite the same kind of inflections into his voice that Lynde’s Paul Simms did in upbraiding the friends of his daughter and son-in-law as “NUUUU-die LOOO-neys!”

In the current TV environment, when people can say practically anything at any hour, Lynde and Hollywood Squares should be seen in the context of their time. Some of his responses would have been considered pretty risqué for that period. (Marshall: “Paul, can anything bring tears to a chimp's eyes?” Lynde: “Finding out that Tarzan swings both ways!”) Other responses would, if delivered today, be considered so politically correct that they would provoke boycott threats, and such vituperation as to short-circuit a career. (Marshall: “What is the official currency of Puerto Rico?” Lynde: “Food stamps.”)

Though many of the show’s viewers could have guessed that Lynde was gay, they might have had a tougher time figuring out that offscreen, he was a heavy drinker who often struggled with his weight and depression. How much of that was due to the particular context of his time, when his sexual orientation was a matter of shame, and how much the product of the insecurity that so often plagues figures in the entertainment industry?

No comments: