by Steve Wilson, Joe Florenski
|
| List Price: | $15.95 |
| Amazon Price: | $14.35 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
| You Save: | $1.60 (10%) |
| Average Rating: |  |
| Lowest New Price: | $8.70 |
| Availablitiy: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
|
 |
|
Product Description
Advocate Books Life Stories In an age when celebrities have turned the act of coming out into an empowering media event, Paul Lynde certainly seems like a campy relic of less-liberated times. This view of Lynde as an out-of-step, self-loathing queen of queens overlooks the man's great, if accidental, achievement: getting away with being gay on TV on an almost daily basis for years. During his three decades as a popular character actor on television, film and the stage, this fairy forefather's arch and bitchy wit snuck regular doses of the queer world into that bastion of intolerance, the American living room. Lynde showed mainstream viewers that a gay man could deliver the jokes, not just be the butt of them. In doing so, he helped make homosexuality more palatable to unwitting viewers who simply saw him as a stylish, funny man. Biographers Steve Wilson and Joe Florenski draw on revealing interviews with friends from Lynde's childhood, college days and adult years-including stars such as Phyllis Diller, Charlotte Rae, Cloris Leachman and Peter Marshall, who worked with Lynde in Broadway productions and in film and television. What emerges is a memorable portrait of a man who reaped his share of wealth, enjoyed a fair amount of fame and basked in the adoration of thousands of fans-but paid a price in hardship, heartbreak and hangovers. Steve Wilson met co-biographer Joe Florenski while researching an article on Paul Lynde for Out magazine in 2000. He ran across Florenski's website devoted to Lynde. Begun in 1997, the site contains exhaustive resources on Lynde, and Florenski has lent research support to both E! and A&E's Biography for their segments on the comedian. Wilson and Florenski worked so well together on the piece for Out that they decided to collaborate on a book.
Customers who bought this item also bought
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Poorly Written and Depressing, 2008-09-24
Wow. And I thought Leona Helmsley was 'The Queen of Mean' ...? Like most of America, I grew up loving the comedy of Paul Lynde and lived for his little short appearances here and there -- from Doris Day movies to Hollywood Squares. But if this book is even half way true, he was certainly one miserable individual. Too bad he flamed out like he did because he apparently did have a great deal of talent.
All I can say about this book is, "ohhhh, my good-nessssssssss...."
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
 Not great, better than I expected, 2006-09-17
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.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
 Enthralling from first page to last, 2006-01-11
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.
28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
 Not a fun read, not an overly enlightening read, 2005-10-22
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.
13 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
Poorly written with little insight. , 2005-10-13
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.
Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon website at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.
|
Store Categories
|