ABC aired “The Paul Lynde Halloween Special” on Oct. 29, 1976. The special marked its 50th anniversary this week. It ran in the 8 p.m. slot, right before the TV movie “Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby,” Michael Varrati wrote for Fangoria on Thursday.
Lynde was the center square on “Hollywood Squares” at the time. For his special, Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz,” played his housekeeper. Billie Hayes played Witchiepoo, her character from “H.R. Pufnstuf.” Tim Conway, Roz Kelly, Florence Henderson, Betty White and Donny and Marie Osmond all turned up, Parade reported.
The witches give Lynde three wishes, and each one becomes a sketch. In one, he’s a trucker in a rhinestone jumpsuit.
“Quirky, campy, and cockamamie, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special is a sight to behold,” Amanda Reyes, host of the Made-for-TV Mayhem Show, told Fangoria.
KISS Played ‘Beth’ and ‘Detroit Rock City’ on Paul Lynde’s Special
KISS performed “Detroit Rock City,” “Beth” and “King of the Night Time World.” Parade calls it the band’s primetime TV debut. It wasn’t KISS’s first time on national TV, though. Its national TV debut came in March 1974 on Dick Clark’s “In Concert,” Ultimate Classic Rock reported.
“It signified us being maybe embraced by middle America. We were suddenly on a family holiday variety special,” Paul Stanley told The Guardian, Parade reported.
Drummer Peter Criss wrote in his memoir, as quoted by Parade, that KISS spent Oct. 19 through 21, 1976, taping at ABC in Hollywood. “My mother was thrilled. Paul Lynde was her favorite comedian,” he wrote.
Lynde got his jokes in. Once “Beth” was over, the four musicians joined Lynde onstage. “Just what I always wanted. Four Kisses on the first date,” he cracked, Parade reported last year.
Bruce Vilanch and Fred Silverman Built the Special Around Halloween
Bruce Vilanch co-wrote it. In a Television Academy Foundation interview Parade quoted, he said that by then, Lynde worked best for ABC in small doses, as “a multi-millionaire utility player.”
“Paul was best taken as a flavor in a recipe,” Vilanch said. Tying Lynde to Halloween was Fred Silverman’s idea, he said. Silverman “thought those two elements worked well because there’s something essentially witchy about Paul Lynde and we dressed him up as a witch.”
It never aired again on ABC. Fans kept it going on bootleg tapes until it came out on DVD in 2007, Fangoria reported.
“One of the gifts of the internet is that crap you did 40 years ago shows up and a whole new audience begins to enjoy it and wonder how it got made,” Vilanch told BK magazine in 2023, per Parade.
How Biographers Describe Paul Lynde’s Life as a Closeted Gay Star
Lynde never came out publicly. Steve Wilson and Joe Florenski wrote about his life in the 2005 biography “Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story.” Reviewing it, Publishers Weekly said he was “out about his homosexuality to everyone but the oblivious home viewers.” PopMatters called his homosexuality “an open secret in Hollywood.”
Sean Abley, a Fangoria contributor who co-edits “Queer Horror: A Film Guide,” said Lynde “followed the social rules of the time, and was rewarded with a long career that only cost him his truth.”
“The Paul Lynde Halloween Special is an enduring piece of TV ephemera because it’s so gay,” Abley told the magazine. The show’s queerness, he said, “is like a homing beacon for LGBTQ+ people.”
Lynde was found dead at his Beverly Hills home in January 1982. He was 55. The county coroner said he’d had a heart attack, UPI reported.
“I’ll think of the middle square where Paul sat,” “Hollywood Squares” host Peter Marshall told UPI.
