Stanislav said:
He was often lost in the glare of the more popular members of the Laugh-In cast, but for me he was one of the best things about the show. Loved "Uncle Al, the Kiddie's Pal," always busted a gut when that segment came on. And his drag cloning of his good friend JoAnn Worley was so spot on, it was scary. He also had a great knack for ad-libbing, so any sketch involving him was likely to go off-script pretty quickly. Next to Paul Lynde, he was probably the most prominent "I'm as gay as Christmas and you damn well know it, but we just won't say it, wink wink" TV personality of the era.
Yes, it was the era when all gay men stayed in the closet, and 'wink-wink' was the operative strategy. By the late 70s, Paul Lynde was able to make jokes on
Hollywood Squares that more or less clued viewers in to his homosexuality, but not in the 60s.
The 'wink-wink' thing worked too - it allowed audiences to deny to themselves that the celebrities they liked were gay. My grandmother, who grew up in the Victorian era, loved Liberace, but she was convinced he was straight...just "flamboyant" in his dress and speech.
Along those same lines, my parents had an extremely gay single male friend, who nevertheless never revealed that personal side of his life to his straight friends. When he died in the 80s of a heart attack, my mother asked me, "do you think David was gay?" My first impulse was to laugh out loud, but of course, I didn't - in deference to her feelings. I did reply, "Yes, I think so."
