Paul Lynde remembered on his birthday

For gay kids growing up in the 70s, there were very few gay role models on television.

Thank God for Paul Lynde who was born 84 years ago today.

Paul, of course, was not openly gay, but anyone with a bit of gaydar knew. He was so funny and wonderfully bitchy on Hollywood Squares for all those years and just a hoot as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched. But before those gigs, he made a splash on Broadway as the father in the original production of Bye Bye Birdie and reprised the role in the movie version.

On Hollywood Squares, he made all kinds of thinly-veiled references to his sexuality in his answers to questions such as:  “You’re the world’s most popular fruit. What are you?”, Lynde replied, “Humble.” In response to the question “How many men on a hockey team?” Lynde quipped, “About half.”

I did not realize until reading Cloris Leachman’s memoir recently that she and Paul had been close friends dating back to their college days. Here is an excerpt from her book:

From the start at Northwestern, there was a pulse. I met Charlotte Rae and Paul Lynde, both of whom later had glorious careers, and very soon they and I virtually ran the drama department. … The three of us were just so animated together, so full of imaginative ideas, that the rest of the drama students wanted to hang out with us, be part of what we were cooking up..
Paul Lynde as naturally funny. He was as funny at Northwestern as he was later in his career. He didn’t have to learn about comedy, it was native to him.  … I knew Paul was gay, but he did nothing to call attention to that fact. He didn’t have a companion, I never saw him in an intimate situation with another man. I don’t know if I should use the word gay, because we were at Northwestern  long before the word gay supplanted the word homosexual. Paul was gay in every sense of what the word meant then, in those days. He was humorous, he was generous, he was imaginative. He brought lightness and laughter to any gathering; he brought happiness to his friends. We never talked about his homosexuality. I don’t know if it was discussed by others on campus, but it had no importance to us.”

Paul died in 1982 at the age of 55 of a heart attack.

Cloris writes: “I grieved for him. I was stunned and heartbroken. We shared so many lively, life-giving hours together, some of the most important times of our lives. It seemed so incomprehensively wrong that his life should end so soon.”