The star of Hollywood Squares made a bitchy, camp sensibility mainstream — and inspired a generation of gay performers. But he paid a high price for being different. The fascinating story and complex legacy of a troubled comic genius.
Not so very long ago, a lifetime ago, those words took Americans somewhere wicked. In the ’70s, if that sentence was uttered by a contestant on, lights would flash around the center cube in a grid of celebrities — those of the stripe who wind up on game shows — and settle on a genuine star. He was tanned, with shining teeth, if no leading man. He was in his 40s but looked older, and he had a whinnying snigger.
Lynde was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio. His father was a butcher, and as a child his only real experience of show business was playing the bass drum at school. When he entered Northwestern University in 1944, Lynde found theater and wowed his drama classmates with witty self-written monologues. After graduation, he moved to New York City and eventually landed his big break in 1960 in the Broadway hit. Lynde stole the show in the role of harried father Harry MacAfee .
Lynde’s personal life was volatile. The actor was a heavy drinker and infamously cruel when intoxicated. “Every word out of his mouth was venomous, with a sting that really hurt, into every unexpected vulnerability a human might have,” musician Jack Holmes said in another biography of Lynde,by Steve Wilson and Joe Florenski. Lynde’s behavior led to public-intoxication arrests and an incident where the actor launched into a drunken racist tirade at a Chicago Burger King.
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