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Lynde's career almost hit the skids at that point. He was a big drinker and one evening in 1965, a young actor he was partying with in San Francisco fell from the comedian’s hotel room to his death eight floors below. The story would have been live on CNN today, but at that time you could still hush things up in the press.
Like Bewitched, the Lynde show had an unbelievable fantasy concept: Paul playing a straight guy living in the suburbs with a wife and two kids dealing with the everyday frustrations of life.
The Paul Lynde Show was axed after only one season. ABC still had faith in Paul Lynde's drawing power so the next fall he was wedged into the cast of The New Temperature’s Rising. That sitcom went belly-up as well.
Peter Marshall:
In television, who lived in Doodyville? Peter Marshall:
According to the old song, "At night, when you're asleep, into
your tent I'll creep." Who am I?
But Lynde was starting to unravel. In 1978, he was arrested in Salt Lake City outside a gay bar resulting in his being dropped as a regular guest on the Donny & Marie show; it was his second arrest.
"I didn't go, but the next day the college paper had his picture on the front page, sitting up in a convertible, wearing a huge fur coat, jewelry dangling round his neck and clustered on his fingers, his hand clasping a drink, beaming at the crowd. That night, one of my roommates came back from Burger King and said they'd just seen Paul Lynde in the queue there, and that he seemed really out of it.
It was also around this time that the comic was ejected from an airliner, drunk and wearing nothing but a blanket. These antics carried over to his work life - in 1979, Lynde was fired from Hollywood Squares for being intoxicated and belligerent on the set once to often. On several occasions he had to be forcibly removed from the studio because of his outrageous tirades, lashing out angrily at his fellow celebs, audience members and even the contestants.
He was replaced on Squares by Henny Youngman. Paul Lynde hit the National Enquirer with a $10 million lawsuit because 'an insider' claimed he was forced to leave the Hollywood Squares because his costars objected "to his drinking and nastiness." The suit ultimately went nowhere, but Lynde claimed, "It's worth a lawsuit just to find out who the insider is." Lynde returned to the Hollywood Squares in 1980 after the show suffered a ratings collapse following his departure; Squares was cancelled soon after. With game shows falling out of favor and variety shows practically nonexistent by 1981, no one needed Paul Lynde for television roles anymore and the spotlight faded.
Anyway, this guy comes in to look at the ad I’d done for him and he shows me a check he received the previous night made out for a thousand dollars - signed by Paul Lynde.
A week later, on Monday, January 11, 1982, Paul Lynde was found dead in his West Hollywood home, in bed with a bottle of "Poppers" (Amyl Nitrate, an inhalant used to enhance sex - I looked it up!) nearby. I was told by an insider that Lynde likely had a heart attack on Saturday night while having sex with someone who just walked out of the Beverly Hills home when the seizure happened, without even bothering to call for help.
"I read Adam Kimmel's account of Paul Lynde at Burger King at Northwestern.
- Anne Schendel, Northwestern '82 |
Peter Marshall:
NEW BOOK! Access
our
Everything you're |
Paul
Lynde had a solid career in television all throughout the 1960s and
1970s, appearing in a handful of memorable Bewitched episodes
as a semi-regular character (kooky Uncle Arthur). He was the center
square and comedy star of the long-running daytime game show Hollywood
Squares, made multiple guest appearances on the Dean Martin
Show, Donny & Marie and other variety programs, and had a one-year
stint as the lead in his own sitcom, 
He
first came to prominence on Broadway and in motion pictures, his big
successes were Bye, Bye Birdie (both play and film) and Under
the Yum Yum Tree. He became a popular guest star on dozens of sitcoms
in the early-'60s, landing his recurring role on the hit show Bewitched
in 1965.
When
Bewitched was cancelled in 1972, most of the writers and crew
moved over to producer William Asher’s next project for ABC, 
This
preposterous premise proved to be too much of a stretch even for people
who watched TV on a regular basis. Besides, the premise was a rip-off
of All in the Family, with Paul (and his wife) cohabitating
with their daughter and her lazy, long-haired hippy husband that he
can't stand.
Occupying
the center square on 
By
the mid-'70s Paul Lynde was feeling boxed in, so to speak, and frustrated.
He was still a hot property, voted America’s favorite comedian
in a 1974 poll and highly sought out for every manner of TV game and
variety show.
He
even hosted his own hour on ABC in 1977, the 
And
then there was the Northwestern University incident. Adam Kimmel
tells
us, "A sad story about Paul that you don't hear much anymore occurred
at Northwestern, sometime around '77 or '78. I was attending Northwestern
at that point, and staying in dorms on Orrington, right across from
the Burger King (useful, that). Anyway, Paul Lynde, being a treasured
alumni, was asked to be the marshall of the homecoming parade.
"Well,
according to the newspaper reports, what later happened was this: Paul
Lynde was in the queue in front of a black guy; and Lynde started telling
the guy he should apply for a job there, and started mouthing off on
how lazy blacks were, etc. Unfortunately for Paul, this particular black
person was a professor of sociology at Northwestern, who went straight
home and wrote a strong letter to the press. Paul Lynde went apoplectic
with apologies, citing stress, medication and exhaustion (in fact, I
seem to remember he blamed anything except for being an alcoholic loudmouth)."
Can
you imagine being so messed up you couldn't answer three questions in
a half-hour show? They gave him all the questions and jokes ahead of
time, all he had to do was show up for work one day a week.
In
1982, I was doing trade ads for minor celebrities and one of our clients
was an up-and-coming male model. This was a time when (let’s face
it) male model meant male prostitute.
It
was pretty clear to me what the money was for, in fact he came right
out and told me it was for having sex with the comedian! He was really
proud of himself.
Was
Lynde's 'guest' that night (if there was one) the male prostitute I
talked with earlier in the week? I suspected it was. That guy eventually
went on to become a very well-known GQ fashion model of the late-eighties
and early-nineties.
"I
started in the theatre department there in 1979, and the incident had
happened the prior academic year. Alums Carole Lawrence and Paul Lynde
-- who was quite drunk -- ordered at the Burger King. Take-out food
was illegal in Evanston -- where Northwestern is -- at the time. So
the food would get handed to you on a tray, and it was up to you to
carry your tray over to one of the stacks of bags, and do your own take-out.
(The WCTU was a few blocks from there, and it was also theoretically
a dry town at that time, too! Surreal!).
"This
apparently was incomprehensible to Paul Lynde, who made a big scene,
venting his ire at the young, non-white woman behind the counter. After
he spewed a few racial epithets at her, he was escorted out. As to whether
he was arrested or not, I don't know but he was out of town by the next
morning. And sadly, he was *not* invited to be in the Northwestern Alum
television show 'The Way They Were' the subsequent year mainly because
of this incident.
"The
show was the highlight of our sophomore year, and alas, no Paul. What
a wonderful, bitchy, witty performer!"
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