Paul Lynde

Paul Lynde (1926–1982) was an American comedian and actor known for his sharp, campy delivery, television appearances, and voice acting. He became a familiar presence as the center square on the game show Hollywood Squares.

Connect

Hollywood Squares: An American television game show in which celebrities occupied a human tic-tac-toe grid. Lynde’s center-square appearances made him the show’s most recognizable comic presence.
Paul Lynde Center Square: The recurring celebrity position occupied by Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares. His deadpan answers and double entendres turned this seat into his defining television role.
Northwestern University School of Communication: A school at Northwestern University that offers programs in theatre, communication, and related disciplines. Lynde studied drama there before beginning his professional acting career.
Camp (style): An aesthetic style that treats artifice, exaggeration, and theatricality as sources of pleasure or humor. Lynde’s emphatic delivery and cultivated manner are often discussed as camp performance.
Bewitched: An American sitcom about a witch who marries a mortal and tries to live an ordinary suburban life. Lynde played the recurring character Uncle Arthur, a mischievous warlock.
Brett Somers: A Canadian-American actress and comedian known for her appearances on Match Game. Like Lynde, Somers built a television persona through quick, irreverent panel-show banter.
Broadway theatre: The professional theatre industry centered on productions in Manhattan’s Broadway district. Lynde’s early career included Broadway performances before television made him widely known.
Queer coding: The use of indirect signals to suggest a character’s queerness without stating it explicitly. Television often left Lynde’s sexuality unspoken while his comic persona carried recognizable queer cues.
The Paul Lynde Show: A 1972–1973 American sitcom starring Paul Lynde as a conservative father navigating family life. This sitcom placed Lynde’s comic persona at the center of a series.
Charles Nelson Reilly: An American actor, comedian, and director known for game-show appearances and flamboyant comic style. Reilly was a fellow Hollywood Squares regular whose theatrical humor invites comparison with Lynde’s.