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Paul Lynde was starting to attract the wrong kind of attention in public as the 1970s were coming to an end following two arrests, both for drunken behavior.
"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.
Opening and interview with Paul Lynde from a 1976 Tonight show.
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 What
happened to Paul Lynde? Hit Shows of the Seventies: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy / Gene Roddenberry in the 1970s / Star Trek Animated / Fall Previews of the 70s / Lance Link, Secret Chimp / Star Wars Holiday Special / Alias Smith and Jones / 1977 Year in Review / Top Ten 1970-76 / The Rockford Files / All in the Family / Sam Hall (Dark Shadows) Interview / Battlestar Galactica / Wonder Woman / Network Jingles / Class of '74 / Happy Days / Good Times / Mr. Bill / Dinah! / Maude / Doris Day Show / Pamelyn Ferdin Interview / The Bicentennial Minute / Jingles & Catch Phrases of the 1970s / Early Cable TV 1970s / TV commercials for Women / TV Moms / Bette Midler in the 1970s / Bonus 1970's Stuff: Biff Burger / Latin Casino |
What
happened to Paul Lynde?
TV
on DVD
|
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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