How ‘Hollywood Squares’ Popularized the Comedy Game Show

Plenty of celebrities had an agreeable attitude about being featured on The Hollywood Squares, the long-running and often-revitalized game show that originated on NBC in 1966.

John Wayne was not one of them.

After a joke answer to a question about what Wayne’s children might call him (“Sir”) in 1975, the Western film icon dashed off an angry note to the show’s host, Peter Marshall. “I take a dim view of your assumptions concerning my life and my family,” Wayne wrote. “My children are the dearest things in my life, and I speak to them with nothing but affection; and I God damned well resent your saying I make them call me Sir, and I suggest you correct it on your show or don’t ever pass me on the street … I mean this.”

It was a rare bit of vitriol directed at Squares, which took a strange conceit—making a tic-tac-toe board out of entertainers—and turned it into a franchise about to enter its seventh decade. But the show didn’t just use celebrities. In at least one case, it created one: a center Square who became the center of attention.

1. Gridlock
2. Square Deal

Gridlock

As Peter Marshall recalled in his 2002 memoir Backstage With the Original Hollywood Square, show creators Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley had already shot two pilot episodes of their newest game show but had failed to garner interest from networks. Now they were trying again, this time looking for what they dubbed “a complete nonentity” to host.

“Well, look no further,” Marshall told them.

Though his response was self-deprecating, Marshall understood what they meant. The producers had an idea to populate a game show with familiar faces—nine of them in all, sitting inside of a grid that made up a tic-tac-toe board. The host didn’t need to compete with them: He simply needed to emcee.

“I was looking for the impact of multiple stars,” Heatter said in 1985. “I spent most of my weekends analyzing ways I could use nine or 10 celebrities in a familiar configuration without having to teach the audience a new game. I ended up with the tic-tac-toe concept. I drew up a game layout and pasted in photos of celebrities. It looked as dramatic as hell.”

Contestants would choose a square, listen to Marshall ask a question, hear a frivolous answer from the celebrity panelist, and then decide whether to agree or disagree with their second (and more genuine) response. If they were right, they’d get an X or O. Three Xs or Os in a row (up, across, or diagonally) won the game.

It worked. The Hollywood Squares was sold to NBC, which began running the show on daytime television in 1966. The panelists were not quite A-list—the show booked Psycho star Vera Miles and Dick Van Dyke Show co-stars Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam, among others—but familiar enough for audiences to tune in to hear what they’d have to say in response to Marshall’s questions. Squares was not so much about rooting for the contestants as it was watching a comedy set disguised as a game show.

“Can intense pleasure bring on a heart attack?” Marshall once asked Rose Marie.

“How would I know?” Marie replied.

Double entendres and subversive responses quickly became the heart of Squares thanks to the relative restraint of both network television in general and daytime programming in particular. That proved especially true with Paul Lynde, an actor (Bewitched) who made frequent guest appearances before becoming the regular center square in 1968. Lynde was the ideal panelist: droll, witty, and able to deliver his one-liners with searing aim.

“What fictional character ran around screaming, ‘I’m late, I’m late’?” Marshall asked.

“That was Alice, and her mother’s sick about it,” Lynde said.

“Paul, why do motorcyclists wear leather?”

“Because chiffon wrinkles,” Lynde shot back.

Lynde also happened to be gay, which was barely represented in television of the era. “He was probably the first gay person—whether he was using the word or not—in a lot of people’s homes across America,” Billy Eichner told Entertainment Weekly in 2020. “He was ahead of his time in terms of being as overtly gay as one could be, unlike so many stars of that time.”

If viewers knew, they hardly seemed to care. All that mattered was that Lynde’s brand of acerbic wit was worth tuning in for. The actor earned three Daytime Emmy Award nominations for his work on Squares and headed two sitcoms, though neither one caught on to the extent of Squares, which was a ratings hit and attracted a wide net of celebrities including Walter Matthau, Vincent Price, Joan Rivers, and even notoriously prickly actor George C. Scott. It helped the show offered only scale wages for panelists: Everyone made the same $750, eliminating any envy over another performer earning more.

Lynde’s answers did invite one controversy: Was Squares a game show or an entertainment show? If it was the former, did writing down comedic answers for panelists amount to misleading viewers?

Square Deal

At that time, television was not far removed from the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, which saw networks and producers of shows like Twenty-One and Dotto come under media and government fire for allegedly feeding favored contestants correct answers. It led to federal regulations that made orchestrating show outcomes a crime.

The comical responses from Lynde and other Squares were usually the work of the show’s writers. (Others, like guests Joan Rivers and Mel Brooks, didn’t need any assistance being funny.) In 1976, game show producer Mark Goodson (The Price Is Right, Match Game) complained that Squares was being deceptive to viewers.

“Shows like Hollywood Squares and Celebrity Sweepstakes, after giving their stars a pretty good notion of the answers, run disclaimers at the end that are inherently dishonest,” Goodson said. “No one sees them but the producer’s cousin. Though apparently this comes within the law, I maintain viewers’ expectations are being defrauded. They believe Paul Lynde has an incredible capacity for bluff answers. How do they feel on learning he’s fed them?”

NBC had a ready answer. “Hollywood Squares ... briefs stars on the various categories ... possible fake answers, and funny lines,” compliance and practices director Alan Gerson said. “Correct answers are never discussed.” In other words, there was no law against being funny.

The Hollywood Squares ran through 1980, at which point NBC canceled it to make room for a new daytime show starring a pre-Late Night David Letterman. It continued in syndication for another year before wrapping in 1981.

In 1985, co-creator Merrill Heatter said that he believed the format would be difficult to revive. “I don’t think you could do Hollywood Squares today,” he said. “Today, the celebrities are either major movie stars or people noted for playing a particular on a television show. There seems to be no in between.”

But just a year later, Hollywood Squares was revived in syndication, this time with John Davidson as host. (Lynde would not take part: He had died in 1982 of a heart attack.) The stakes were a bit higher—the show was now giving away cars—but it was otherwise mostly the same. Instead of Lynde, the show had comedian and actor Jim J. Bullock as a regular panelist. Like Lynde, he had garnered fame earlier for a role in the stage production Bye Bye Birdie, albeit in high school. (Lynde, who co-starred in the Broadway version, sent the school an autographed photo.) Unlike Lynde, he didn’t see himself doing it for 14 years.

“People make comparisons [to Lynde], and that’s flattering,” Bullock said. “Without sounding arrogant, though, I think I’m better looking and more versatile than Paul Lynde. There are always dangers involved in any job, and I don’t want to be known for just giving funny answers on Hollywood Squares.”

Bullock didn’t have to worry: The new Squares was canceled in 1989. (Bullock went on to join ALF after the puppet appeared on Squares.) It’s been revived periodically ever since. Whoopi Goldberg was a center square in a 1998 edition that ran through 2004; spin-offs like Hip-Hop Squares and Nashville Squares popped up periodically. The latest iteration, which debuted in January 2025, has Drew Barrymore as the executive producer and center square. Among her inspirations for resurrecting the show: Paul Lynde.

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