Issue No. 195: Dead Queen Paul Lynde Would Have Been 86 Wednesday.

Paul Lynde, b. Mt Vernon, Ohio, 1926. How does one pigeon-hole the show-biz persona of Paul Lynde? Perhaps it's not incorrect to say that he was Franklin Pangborn fifty years later, given the license to say that Hollywood Code prevented Panghorn from ever saying, even though you knew, just looking at his face, that he was capable of saying it. Or perhaps Lynde was Franklin Pangborn crossed with Eve Arden, women always having been given the opportunity fro comic bitchery denied men becasue in women such behavior was seen to be "in character". Whatever he was, Lynde was pretty funny at it. And he was known, on more than one occassion, to have shocked the hair-roller set with his acid queen-like tongue. "Why do motorcyclists wear leather?" he was asked on Hollywood Squares. "Because chiffon wrinkles too easily, that's why." That was Paul Lynde in our time. Franklin Pangborn wouldn't have been permitted to know what a motorcyclist was no less to have been known anything about leather. But he might have been seen ironing the chiffon. That's the difference that time makes.

Paul Lynde, Gemini

Franklin Pangborn, b. [January 23] Newark, New Jersey, 1893. This unforgettable character actor built his entire thirty-year film career on playing prissy, fluttery clerks, bank tellers, assistant hotel managers and department store floorwalkers. Was he in fact the gay Stepin Fetchit? Who cares. He was funny, had perfect comic timing, and brightened many an otherwise dreary picture by his amusing presence. And if Pangborn's public thought that sissies and sister-marys were one and the same, so what? They sure as hell don't think so now. Rest in peace, dear Franklin Pangborn.

Franklin Pangborn, Aquarius

From The Gay Book of Days by Martin Grief (with Foreword by Samuel Steward). The Main Street Press. 1982.