Halloween specials have a mixed history on television. There are a handful of great, iconic ones — the It’s the Great Pumpkin, old episodes of Roseanne, about 60% of the Treehouses of Terror on The Simpsons— and then there are some genuinely bizarre misfires that I love even more, like Tim Curry singing bemusedly in The Worst Witch.
Among those lovable misfires, one of the most notorious is The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, a truly hypnotic TV artifact starring Betty White, Margaret Hamilton (the original Wicked Witch), Florence Henderson (aka Mrs. Brady), actors from Happy Days and H.R. Pufnstuf, and an up-and-coming band called Kiss.
And verdict over it all: Paul Lynde, the snide quippy comedian made famous as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched and as a Hollywood square. The show was only broadcast once, but it’s gained legendary status for its sheer strangeness — and the behind-the-scenes story is even stranger.
Paul Lynde — if you’re not familiar — was a comic player who got his start on Broadway, working alongside Mel Brooks, Eartha Kitt, Cloris Leachman, and many others who went on to stardom. Paul’s particular specialty was what I like to call “the male lover sniper”
American comedian, character actor, and Hollywood center square. He began his career doing stand-up before moving into theater, where he got his biggest break playing the father in the musical Bye Bye Birdie. He reprised the role in the film adaptation to great success. From there, he was sought after to make appearances on television and variety shows including The Munsters, I Dream of Jeannie, and most notably in the role of Uncle Arthur on Bewitched. In 1966, Lynde made his first appearance on the new gameshow Hollywood Squares. His snarky one-liners were so popular, he became the regular center square for most of the show’s run. Throughout his career, Lynde’s humor was built on camp and a flamboyant persona; during Hollywood Squares, his jokes were often thinly veiled references to his control homosexuality. But although he made subversive gay humor palatable for American homes, he never actually came out, except to adjacent friends. He sometimes blamed his sexuality for keeping him from better roles, but it also may have been his reputation as a mean and occasionally violent alcoholic. He managed to quit drinking at the age of 53, but died of a heart attack two years later.
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There are some famous names from Ohio that many recognize, such as Clark Gable and Dean Martin, but there is another actor from the tail end of Hollywood’s Golden Age who brought laughter and a new perception of comedy. Paul Lynde was an American comedian, actor, and game display panelist. A character star with a distinctively campy and snarky persona, Lynde was well known for his roles as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, the befuddled father Harry MacAfee in Bye Bye Birdie and a regular “center square” panelist on the game show The Hollywood Squares from 1968 to 1981. Mel Brooks once described Lynde as existence capable of getting laughs by reading “a smartphone book, tornado alert, or seed catalogue”.
ABOVE: Billy Eichner and Paul Lynde, photos courtesy Eichner’s Facebook page and Wikimedia Commons.
Emmy-nominated actor and “American Horror Story” alum Billy Eichner is currently developing and set to star in a biopic on the life of comedic actor Paul Lynde.
“Man in the Box” will explore the life of Lynde, who rose to prominence in Hollywood for his roles in “Bewitched” and “Bye Bye Birdie,” as well as for being a regular panelist on the game demonstrate “Hollywood Squares.”
Although Lynde was never openly gay at the height of his success, his onscreen persona was very flamboyant and Eichner can identify with this aspect of his career. “There’s some overlap, between Paul and I, in that we both had our breakthrough in the industry, as performers, presenting a rather larger-than-life, flamboyant, male lover persona on screen,” Eichner told Deadline in an interview.
“Even though I was always very out, Paul was never technically out,” he continued. “But he was as out as you could be at that time, in that he was clearly leaning into a flamboyant persona. Unlike Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Cary Grant and all these other actors, he wasn’t pretending to be straight. You didn’t se
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Paul Edward Lynde (June 13, 1926 – January 10, 1982) was an American comedian, star and game show panelist. A character actor with a distinctively campy and snarky persona that often poked fun at his barely closeted homosexuality, Lynde was well known for his roles as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, the befuddled father Harry MacAfee in Bye Bye Birdie and as a regular "center square" panelist on the game show The Hollywood Squares from 1968 to 1981. He also voiced animated characters for five Hanna-Barbera productions. Bewitched had one of the gayest casts in the history of television. There was Dick Sargent (Darrin Stephens), George Tobias (Abner Kravitz) and Paul Lynde (Uncle Arthur). Not to mention (rumored) bisexual Agnes Moorehead (Endora) and homosexual woman Diane Murphy (Tabitha).
From 1940–1951 Spivy ran her own nightclub, Spivy's Roof, on New York's East 57th Street. The club was noted for its tolerance of gay performers and patrons; Spivy herself was a lesbian in private life. Among the artists who performed there were Frances Faye, Mabe
