Paul Lynde Books

Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story is the true biography of Paul Lynde, well-known for his three decades of appearances as a character actor on TV, film, and stage. A popular actor known for his portrayal of a gay persona long before Ellen, Rosie, or "Will & Grace", Lynde dared to sneak doses of slanted wit into American living rooms during a noticeably more straight-laced era than today. In addition to Lynde's boisterous professional life, Center Square offers a glimpse into Lynde's tumultuous personal life, including his struggles with alcohol, his ever-changing love affairs, and his notoriously explosive temper. For all his flash, wealth, triumphs, and weaknesses, Lynde stayed true to himself - certainly a feat in Hollywood. Enthralling from first page to last.

I thought this book would be interesting; it is not. It is poorly written, story lines are not developed and even when it does cover an interesting topic, it just falls flat.

Paul Lynde had to be more interesting than this book makes him out to be. I would suggest it only if you have trouble falling asleep at night.

I read a lot of biographies, and this was pretty lame to say the least. To me, it would have been better off ending up as a two page People magazine article.

I would have liked to have known more about Paul Lynde and what made him tick beyond his only being a mean drunk. There just isn't any substance to this book. It never goes into much detail on his friends or short term lovers, only touches on his career moves, and basically leaves you wondering what this man was really all about. The quotes from Cloris Leachman, Charlotte Rae and the others are usually one liners and it seems as if they were obtained through a 30 second phone call. There are a couple of teasers like the spat with Jonathan Winters, yet it never discloses why the spat progressed or even what it was about. You're just left with this empty feeling of "Why am I reading this?"

Paul Lynde was never an A-List star, and this book sure isn't an A-List biography. I finished it, but it wasn't easy. I maybe chuckled twice during my reads, and then you remember that Paul Lynde didn't even write his own answers on Hollywood Squares. This is a boring book for a man that seemed to have led a boring life.

A friend once described me (as well as another friend, her husband) as a "child of the media". Not surprisingly, celebrity biographies are one of my literary junkfoods. Many of them are padded out magazine pieces or promise scandal, but deliver pablum, and many promise depth but never get beyond some "Cliff Notes" version of Freud. "Center Square" is relatively short and published in a small format, with fairly large print--it won't take long to read, but there's more here than than just an oversized magazine piece. The biggest drawback to the book is that it appears to have very little first hand information, although many longtime friends and colleagues of Lynde's were still alive when it was written. The book doesn't have much about Lynde's early life and some of the reason becomes evident near the end (he was not close to his surviving brother and his surviing sister denied his homosexuality and, otherwise, seemed a bit eccentric). Still, Lynde frequently retuned to his home town and stayed in touch with people more than one would expect from a guy who couldn't wait to leave. There are various quotes from Robert Osborne, Cloris Leachman, Kaye Ballard, and other who knew Paul for many years, but none of these people is acknowledged among the sources, which are largely from print archives. The relationship of some people who are quoted can be vague--it's unclear how a person so concerned with his own fame developed relationships with struggling actors and we are told that some characters like Dan Dittman and Paul Baressi were somewhat shady without much explanation (Baressi is probably the most easily documented--a porn director and star, who was part of an "outing" of a major movie star later to recant his relationship to the star; he has a new book in development). One guess is that Lynde met some of the minor characters as hustlers or hangers-on.

Perhaps because the book lacks first hand contacts with people who knew Lynde, some aspects of his character don't really come together. He had a horrible temper when drunk and alientated many colleagues, yet Lynde seemed to remain friends with many people over the course of several decades. He sounds like someone who would have been difficult to work with, yet he had a successful tv career over a relatively long period of time. Many other popular guest stars from 1960s variety shows and sitcoms had vanished by the late 70s, yet Lynde remained in demand. He never fully accepted his place as a supporting player with limited range. Hollywood is full of people who happily and lucratively play the same character over and overa again, yet Lynde wanted more. What he wanted, though, really isn't clear from the book. On the dinner theatre cicuit, Lynde played the leading man and there isn't a really good explanation what that didn't translate to other media. The simplest explanation may be that a little Lynde went a long way and a single performance every summer in light comedy isn't the same as a regular sitcom or a feature film.

It's clear that Lynde was a deeply unhappy and lonely man, who only seemed to be getting some aspects of his life together near the end. The authors place him as a transitional character in the evolution of gays on television, which seems right. He fit an era where one could wink about sexuality and telegraph alot to those "in the know" without offending people who would be put off by anyone truly playing gay. Doing this meant playing sexually ambiguous or asexual supporting characters who provided comic relief. It's evident that he slowly and sometimes subtley moved away from the pretext of heterosexuality and probably could have adapted to a more open era, although probably as a the gay uncle rather than the bachelor uncle, and not as a major star. Lynde comes across as a socially and politically rather conservative man and one wonders what he would have made of the era of AIDS and gay rights that came after his death.

Warning: This book is written in a sassy/sarcastic Entertainment Weekly house style knockoff that is something of an acquired taste (call it straining to be ironic and hip and funny and only occasionally succeeding at any of the above). One is tempted to shrug it off and say the style perfectly fits the subject, a past master at cutting sarcasm and the tangy retort, but I think far better of Paul Lynde than that. When HE tried to be funny, he usually hit bullseye. (Note to the authors: That's because he didn't really have to try.) Ultimately, because of the style in which it is told, the telling of this tale doesn't grow on you, it wears on you.

That out of the way, I fault Center Square more for being an unsympathetic and overly gossip-reliant portrait of a true comic original than for being gratingly written. The authors preface their book with a note of gratitude to Lynde for always being true to himself. Sounds promising -- and reasonably respectful. But very quickly, the grim and peevish bio devolves into umpteen stories of "club crawls" and posh dinner parties turned into ugly drunken scenes, with Lynde making a fool of himself before falling down drunk in the gutter, or alienating some friend for the last time.

If you take the authors at their word, this seems to be all Lynde was about. Which raises a question: if that's true, why write the book, why read the book? Why would we even care if this is all there really was to Lynde the man? We are subjected to the dark side, the miserable, insecure, nervous, neurotic, alcoholic side, in cascades of blunt and bruising detail. But the writers seem unacquainted with the real sense of joy and accomplishment that must have accompanied the triumphal moments of Lynde's life, such as his signing on to play Harry Macafee in Bye Bye Birdie. (Gower Champion was so sold on Lynde's talent, he begged him to join the cast and made good on his promise to see to it that a tiny role was rewritten to give Lynde plenty to do.) For whatever reason, they never linger long on the "up" moments of Lynde's life, and don't seem to know how to amplify them.

The emphasis on and repetition of awful scenes in this "life story" prompts me to agree with another reviewer that the definitive Lynde bio has yet to be written. This isn't a biography, it's a collection of really juicy gossip that apparently has been making the rounds for years now. (I can't tell you the number of times the authors preface a story with a "legend has it" or "rumor on the street is that" type of disclaimer.)

Center Square contains some good information, but not much more than the magazine article that is the genesis of this book. I hope someone, somewhere-- more a bona fide journalist or biographer, capable of balance and new insight and gravitas than a couple of wisenheimer supermarket magazine writers -- takes on Lynde's story. Until then, this book is at best a second rate tide-me-over hors d'oeuvre. I really hope it doesn't totally kill the appetite of those waiting for the main course of a better book on the topic.

Two and a half stars of five.

I think some reviewers here are having a tough time coming to terms with alternative sexual orientations. I bought this book for my son and he loved it. While he questioned the credibility of the author at times, he still enjoyed reading the background on some of Hollywood's notorious flamers.

The lengths people will go to to "defend" their favorite deceased stars from accusations about their private lives is laughable. All of the men profiled and interviewed in this book were long rumored or known to be gay -- it was the Hollywood studios, with their desire to keep their stars bankable, that cringed and worried the most about the truth getting out...along with the actors themselves wanting to maintain their livelihoods, of course.

How accurately Mr. Hadleigh was able to recreate/reconstruct the actual interviews (especially since notes and recordings were not always permitted, understandably) is open to debate.... but one CAN "hear" the subjects' voices speaking. They do NOT all sound the same, as one previous overheated reviewer stated. As for whether or not Cary Grant hit on the author, who's to say what type of man Mr. Grant was attracted to, especially at the age of 80? Anything is possible in this world!

I recommend this book as a great piece of entertainment, and a glimpse into the private thoughts of some openly gay and closeted icons.

WOW. This guy should be ashamed to present this as even being remotely journalistic. No sources, no tapes and such outlandish, unbelievable dialogue that you are embarrassed for the writer. Cary Grant at 80 came on to this guy? Its so ridiculous its funny. Just one of the many obvious personal sexual fantasies the author shares with the reader. I'm sure many of these people he supposedly interviewed were gay or bi-sexual, but it's not proven in this book. If anything it's disproven by the mere fact that the author has such little to back him up that he has to resort to faking interviews and offering anonymous sources.

The most obvious example is the Cary Grant interview, but the rest are just as blatant. There is no way a private person like Grant would speak to a known liar like Boze, let alone discuss his homoosexuality with him, when he had sued Chevy Chase around the time of the interview for calling him a fag.

The book is a waste of money and time. There are great biographies out there that contain substantiated facts rather than gossip and lies.

As a journalist myself, I can testify that Cary Grant never gave interviews, even for articles about him. When he HAD to give an interview, he managed never to say anything. So you can write off the Grant interview right away. No conceivable way would he EVER EVER have spoken to Boze Hadleigh. In fact, I can't see how anyone would.

Someone mentioned their curiosity as to why Hadleigh's interview subjects are always dead. Uh, libel laws. He doesn't want to be sued. As he surely would have been - just look at what Cary Grant did when Chevy Chase called him "queer." And here's Cary, talking to good old Boze and coming onto him. Right.

Boze joins Hector Arce and Charles Higham in that wonderful world of - hey, they're dead, let's say anything we want - even fake an interview. And don't ever forget their liberal use of anonymous sources.

We know in many cases that the men allegedly spoken to by Hadleigh were indeed gay. Some we suspected. Now, did these people speak to Hadleigh - knowing full well what he's about? Perhaps some did and just as perhaps, some didn't.

Why we can't love and admire these people for what they brought to us with their work, I don't know. Instead, people like Boze try desperately to out actors like Tyrone Power (I bring this up because Hadleigh works Romero mercilessly on the subject) and manage to overlook first person accounts of affairs with him, such as Mai Zetterling's "All Those Tomorrows," Lana Turner's "The Lady, The Legend, the Truth," Linda Christian's "Linda: My Own Story," and Gene Tierney's autobiography. But why listen to those liars when we have BOZE??? Before Boze, there was Whisper magazine, a Confidential ripoff, and they outed Ty -as fooling around with Anita Ekberg while he was married to Linda Christian. Strange, isn't it - Confidential would have outed Rock Hudson if his studio hadn't traded another story. Odd they never felt compelled to do that to Ty...hmm...Again, Power may have been bisexual, and I do think in Hollywood, there was a lot of that going around. But why tell Boze about it.

I agree that it is hard to know whether to trust this book's veracity (I found the moment when Cary Grant hits on the author particularly hard to take).

But I'm more bothered by all the vitriol in these reviews, as though saying someone is gay is the worst thing in the world! There is a lot of evidence outside of this book that these actors were gay or bisexual, so it's not absurd to think they were. And certainly not an insult.

The book is a fun read, whether it's based on actual interviews or not. "Hollywood Lesbians" seemed somewhat more believable.