He was one of the greatest comic actors we’ve ever known.  He had such good timing and delivery that even people who wrote jokes for him couldn’t keep from laughing when he said them.  He is probably best known as the center square in the original Hollywood Squares.  We also knew him as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched.  He was the slightly neurotic father who sang “Kids” in Bye-Bye Birdie.  He was in Glass Bottom Boat and a couple of television movies about Gidget.  And like every comic actor, wanted to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor.

And he was a tortured soul.  Are all brilliant comics tortured souls?  I really want to think there are some who are actually happy people.  Anybody know anything about Steve Martin?

Anyway, the author of this biography, Cathy Rudolph, was an über-fan who became good friends with Paul.  So, she is able to show us aspects of him most of us would never have suspected.  Like that he really wanted an Oscar for a dramatic role.  And he did some dramatic roles and he did pretty well with them.  Unfortunately, his voice and nasal speech were so funny all by themselves, it was hard not to laugh at everything he said.

Paul was gay in a time when it wasn’t okay for celebrities to be gay.  I can’t even imagine how that feels, to have to hide such an essential part of your being.  He never did find the love he was looking for, either.  The great loves of his lives were his dogs, first Harry, then Alfred, named for the famous stage actor, Alfred Lunt.

In this book, Ms. Rudolph gives us what is often called an “unflinching look” at the comic.  She loved him, but she lets us see the ugly sides of him, too.  That’s not uncommon in biographies, but I think it is seen less often in a biography written by someone who loved the person.

Paul was also tremendously insecure – a trait shared by many performers, but not usually to the degree he felt.  He never used the bathroom in the master suite of his house because he didn’t want to get it dirty.  He often had dinner parties – always for eight – but would only have one other famous person.  He had become quite an accomplished cook in an effort to carefully control his diet.  Did you know Paul fought his weight his whole life?  He was 260lbs. as a kid and could have easily blown back up to that size if he wasn’t careful.  Some of his recipes are in the book.  Anyway, if anyone showed up early, he got very aggravated because everything wasn’t perfect yet.

And he was a mean drunk.  So much so that some friends, who never stopped caring for him, did stop socializing with him entirely. After his death, some of his friends remarked that he never really knew how famous and what a big star he was.  Again, what is it with great comics?

The information is wonderful and worth reading the book for.  But be forewarned, it is not well written.  Ms. Rudolph makes the biggest mistake beginning writers make: She over-writes.  That’s difficult to explain in just a few sentences, so I’m not going to try, but I can tell you it gets very tedious and confusing.  And even though the book is chronological, she still manages to skip around quite a bit, which is disorienting.  But you’ll get a really good picture of Paul Lynde.