Hollywood Gays (30 page)

Q: He really impressed you?

A: The ones you grow up with, they impress you. They’re familiar, like relatives, and like relatives, ya never get to know what makes them tick. But in
their
case, they’re glamorous, so you at least want to know....Someone at the party whispered in my shell-like ear that Cary Grant once tried to kill himself. I’ll bet
you
didn’t know that....

Q: No.
When?

A: (Snickers.) Not long after the, uh, first
marriage
....

Q:
That
makes one stop and think doesn’t it?

A: Who’s fooling who?

Q: The reality behind the public facade.

A: The public being the public.

Q: Did he ever admit to the suicide attempt?

A: They never do. They claim they cut a wrist trying to open a jammed window. But it’s
true
. I have a friend who collects clippings on Grant, and it was in all the papers, way, way back when.

Q: I imagine Hollywood has put that incident well out of mind. Speaking of Grant, who wed, what, five times? Do you find it curious that gay comedians, unlike gay actors, are usually bachelors? I mean, as far as women are concerned.

A: If you’re funny, they almost expect you to
be
a little funny....We don’t have the same pressures at
all
. A comedian doesn’t have to carry a movie or carry that burden of public sex fantasies, like Grant or Rock Hudson. They
have
to marry.

Q: They’re pressured to, but they don’t
have
to. Many haven’t, including Tab Hunter, Monty Clift, Sal Mineo, Ramon Novarro...a long list. And after all, Hudson married once. Why do you think Grant did it five times?

A: Five times more insecure? I dunno. But there’s different levels of integrity. There’s the official bachelor, the guy with one arranged marriage—like Hudson—there’s the guy who marries twice—

Q: Like Robert Taylor, whose first (to Barbara Stanwyck) was arranged.

A: Yeah, and the guy who does it four or five times.

Q: Then there are kids.

A: Well, even Adrian, the designer, had a kid. So that doesn’t prove much.

Q: No, I know that.

A: I have a friend, divorced, a passel of kids. Not only is he gay, he’s passive with a capital Pass....

Q: That gives one pause.

A: Oh, it’s a conspiracy of silence. They want all the homo roles played by heteros, and the gay actors or comedians only get to play straights.

Q: Why is that, do you think?

A: I don’t think, I
know
. Publicists have
told
me, often enough. They’re afraid if they have me play a gay—if I accepted such a role, which is iffy—when I’d get interviewed about what it’s like playing gay, I’d say it was no problem. No big deal. But they
want
it to be a big deal. They want the actor to say how he had to really use his imagination to play someone like
that
, and that at the end of a day’s shooting, he goes home to his wife, and she tells him what a brave thing he’s doing, and when the reporter asks
why
the actor took such a part, he says, “Well, I wanted the chance to stretch.”

Q: Mostly, they stretch the truth.

A: That’s just what they do.

Q: Mr. Lynde, have you ever had—

A: Oh... (waggles) call me
Paul
.

Q:
Paul
. (Semi-waggling; we both laugh.) Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

A: You do it well. A little subdued.

Q: Like they say, imitation is the sincerest form of—

A: The sincerest form of flattery is a blow-job.

Q: I’m sure it’s hard to beat....Where was I?

A: About seven inches away.

Q: More than that. But back to the question in hand. Have you ever had a lasting love relationship?

A: Like a marriage?

Q: A marriage in all but the legal sense. Since bigotry chooses to “legitimize” some relationships and not others.

A: It
is
bigoted—we all pay taxes. I don’t know
how
many families
I
help support! Let’s see, now. (Waggles.) How do I acquit myself? Let me count the ways. I’ll say this: I’ve been in love a few times. As for a real union—a marriage—not yet. Won’t happen, either, ‘cause I’m gay and famous.

Q: What’s gay got to do with it?

A: Men are tough to live with, haven’t you heard? Men won’t put up with as much as women do. So if I’m looking for a chappy to keep me happy
and
stick around, that’ll take some looking. But being a
star—
’cause that’s what I am, let’s face it—it’s that much tougher, finding one who wants
me
.

Q: Gold-diggers need not apply?

A: There ain’t that much gold in these here hills! I’m
famous
, not rich. Okay, I’m “comfortable.” But set for life? Not if it’s a long one. And I
love
long ones....

Q: Do you? If you had a partner for life, would you acknowledge it, that is, among other gay men?

A: In a kinder world than this, sure. It
should
be. If you can call a merger between two corporations a “marriage,” and they do, then a marriage between two men, or between two gals, is a marriage too.

Q: Besides which, that word isn’t a legal term, unlike “matrimony.”

A: Or mattress-phony, in Hollywood.

Q: Society discourages gay men from forming long-lasting relationships, then chastises the lack of such relationships and points to this as supposed proof of promiscuity.

A: Oh, but let’s hear it for promiscuity! Nothin’ wrong with
that!
Men are men, gay or what-have-you, and men are horny—with a capital Whore. It’s a fact of life.

Q: According to my lesbian friends, relationships between women last the longest.

A: I’m sure. That’s because there ain’t any men involved. Men can be such pricks!

Q: Literally.

A: But in my humble, non-lesbian opinion, no marriage should be without one. A prick, I mean!

Q: So you’re for gay marriage? As you know, many young gays shun the whole concept.

A: I
said
I’m a square. Promiscuity’s nice, but what’s wrong with a long-term relationship? What happens when you’re too old to hop from bed to bed? I think marriage, period, is a sound idea. Unfortunately, the heterosexuals, they want to keep marriage a restricted club. Keep the gays out. And that will not change in this century. (It had already changed in three Scandinavian countries, with more European nations to follow....)

You’ll probably find out, you can’t help it when you get to mixing with people, that a whole bunch of gays don’t really want anything legalized or brought out into the open. For a lot of them, it’s more fun and exciting, and more sexy to them, to have it be half in the dark and stay hidden and taboo.

Q: Isn’t that less and less with younger, less closeted gays?

A: You tell me, sonny! (Waggles.) It
is
a serious point, I know.

Q: Anyway, “a whole bunch” isn’t necessarily a big percentage, let alone most. Moving on, who’s the funniest comedian ever?

A: Myself excepted? Wouldn’t it be undiplomatic for me to say?

Q: Oh, come on. Most of this isn’t going into our interview,
obviously
.

A: Obviously! Tell ya what: I’m not a great believer in A versus B. How do you compare, for example, Charles Nelson Reilly to Franklin Pangborn? Who’s funnier? It’s an opinion. And Pangborn worked in the golden age of movies, had far more opportunities to do funny roles. Were movie comedians funnier than TV ones? Now, I think Tony Randall’s amusing. Not funny-funny, but amusing. I think W.C. Fields was, maybe, consistently the funniest man in motion pictures. Laurel and Hardy were entertaining, whatever they did. Sometimes funny, sometimes hilarious, sometimes amusing, always entertaining.

Q: Where do you rate Abbott and Costello?

A: Well, the first one wasn’t particularly gifted, and Costello was tedious, after a while,
so
repetitious.

Q: How about the hierarchy of gay comedians and comic actors?

A: I don’t want to say A is funnier than B.

Q: Okay, then who is funny and gay, period?

A: First of all, some people are funny doing one kind of thing. You have your English comics, who play butlers or bureaucrats. Richard Wattis does bureaucrats. He’s always funny, but of course he doesn’t tell jokes. The least funny people are the ones who have to tell jokes....Other people are funny in most any circumstance, because they think funny, they have a funny outlook. Billy De Wolfe. Pangborn. Jack Benny.

Ya know who else is funny, maybe funnier than even he thinks? Alan Sues. He was on
Laugh-In
, usually playing gay types, like Big Al, the poofy sportscaster. Everything he does, he’s funny—those faces of his, his reactions. He’s like me, very quick to get laughs.

Q: How do gay comedians differ from heterosexual ones? Or can comedy be categorized according to sexual orientation?

A: Oh, I think so. Don’t you? At least, there’s
one
big difference. The
others
specialize in put-down comedy. Straight men put down women—their nagging wives, their mothers-in-law, their moms. They also put down gay men—

Q: Attributing to gay men the feminine characteristics they hate in women, wouldn’t you agree?

A: Yes! That kind of comedian just demonstrates his contempt for women. ‘Course, in the old days, he could also put down other races and nationalities.
Put
-down humor. Gay comedians, we don’t dare to put anyone else down, and nowadays we’re trying not to put ourselves down, like we used to be expected to do.

Gays poke fun at pretensions, at the arrogant, and we laugh at things we
all
have in common—like dieting or foreign travel,
you
know. It’s a gentler comedy.

Q: Where do “comediennes” fit into being funny?

A: Again, they don’t do put-down comedy. Except of themselves, if they’re traditionalists.

Q: Like Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller, you mean, always going on about how ugly they supposedly are?

A: Yes. That’s very female. Men
never
do that; we’re so much more vain. We could never stand on a stage and ridicule our looks or desirability.

Q: Yet women are stereotyped as being more vain.

A: That’s why stereotypes are dangerous—they can be used to spread lies.

Q: And keep people down and make them
believe
the lies. As was the case with black film stereotypes.

A: You oughta write a book, sonny! You could be the male Margaret Mead (waggles).

Q: Come now. My hair’s not curly enough. Do you think if a Franklin Pangborn were alive today, he’d be on
Hollywood Squares
?

A: Oh, yes, he’d have beat me to it! I’m
sure
he’d be doing all sorts of things.

Q: Do you envy his career in movies?

A: Movies is
it
. It’s what I’d like to star in, so long as I could control my own. Ya see, at
my
level, I may as well not do a movie role if it’s in a crummy movie. It hurts me. I don’t need the money—there’s television for money....But in the golden era, someone like Pangborn could do movie after movie after movie, and some wouldn’t be that good, but it didn’t hurt him.

Q: Because of sheer quantity.

A: That’s it, plus he didn’t hang around long enough to share the blame if the movie bombed! I’m in a trickier position because I won’t take most roles that are too small. But if I take a sizeable one, I like to think the movie has a fighting chance at the box office. Otherwise, you get associated with clunkers, and so far I’m associated mostly with this long-running hit quiz show, so people think of me as a winner.

Q: Your comic type is very specific, and you’ve made a success of it. But hasn’t it also limited you?

A: You mean the prissy-Paul bit? (Nods gravely.) You’re right. For one thing, I don’t get taken seriously. People just see my name in the credits, and a smile forms on their faces.

Q: Which is preferable to days of old, where people saw Basil Rathbone’s name and hissed, right?

A: True, but then he got to be Sherlock Holmes. See,
I’ll
never get that much of a turnaround. It’ll always be Paul Lynde, funnyman.