A gift for connecting

In the ‘70s, a golden age of TV comedy, the two funniest men on the air were launching their wit from most unlikely platforms -- network game shows. No one on Peter Marshall’s “Hollywood Squares” could compete with center square Paul Lynde, whose riotous ripostes were typically underscored by a sinister, almost sniveling laugh. And the hilarious exasperation and off-color innuendos of Charles Nelson Reilly, who died Friday after a long illness, were the reasons we tuned in to Gene Rayburn’s “Match Game.”

These two men, of course, had other things in common. They both were in “Bye Bye Birdie” on Broadway. They both seemed like they were at least as funny off stage as they were on. And they both were presumably homosexual at a time when the closet, especially for public figures, was the expectation rather than the exception.

Lynde, who skirted any acknowledgment of being gay up to his death in 1982, and Reilly, who wasn’t especially forthcoming until he was nearing retirement age, had to walk a razor’s edge, risking the forbidden in their jester roles while not risking so much that they wouldn’t be invited back to the party. Their kitschy TV gigs made them household names and Beverly Hills residents, but game show familiarity allowed people to underestimate their gifts. They were celebrity curios at best, the punch line of homophobic jokes at worst.

Yet within the theater community, Reilly was a figure of great affection and respect. He was not just a comedian but also an actor, director, teacher and advocate of the unique human wisdom that underlies theater.

I got to know Reilly after the death of his acting mentor Uta Hagen in 2004. I had asked him to write a tribute to her in the Village Voice, where I was the theater editor.

He called me at home on a Saturday morning and spoke passionately and at great length about how she had taught him everything he knew about acting. All that he had achieved in his life, he said, he owed to her.

He told tales about Hagen’s acting classes in New York and her occasional visits to his home in California after he had become a star. As the conversation stretched on, fascinating yet unwieldy, I realized that this string of anecdotes was his tribute and that I had better start writing some of it down if it was ever going to be published.

A man who really cared

I missed my matinee that afternoon, but I had a theatrical experience via phone that would have been hard to top. A few months later, while in Los Angeles, I phoned Reilly, and he made a lunch reservation for us at the Hotel Bel-Air to thank me for the Hagen memorial.

He picked me up at my West Hollywood hotel in his Lexus and gave me a tour of his ‘hood.

“Do you like the weather?” he asked, taking in the perfect April day as we drove west on Sunset. “When I first came out to shoot the pilot for ‘The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,’ it was in the winter and the weather was just like this -- clear, sunny, warm. I said to myself, ‘How long has this been going on?’ ”

Our lunch was boozy, though not sloppy. He performed an informal version of his one-man show, “ ‘Save It for the Stage’ ... The Life of Reilly,” which recapped his life in warm, often hysterical and seemingly inexhaustible detail. He unspooled kind words for his famous pals: Angie Dickinson was a great “broad”; Burt Reynolds was a “god”; and being summoned to Lucille Ball’s house for drinks back in the day was an honor he didn’t dare refuse.

For someone who loved to talk as much as he did, he had a remarkable gift for connecting. He listened, the secret of all great actors. And he seemed to care about your answers and your life, the secret of all great teachers.

I’ve never laughed so much and with such expensive food in my mouth. Reilly’s comic timing, honed by years of working in theater before coming out to Hollywood, was impeccable. And he wielded that booming voice of his to demonstrate just how uproarious the missed obvious can be.

There’s a reason why, even after his TV career had shrunk, he was still in demand as an acting coach and a stage star as peerless as Julie Harris would repeatedly ask him to be her director. He had come of age as a theater artist in the ‘50s with some of the greatest dramatic talent this country has ever produced. At HB Studio, where Hagen taught, his classmates included Geraldine Page, Frank Langella and Hal Holbrook, along with such memorable cutups as Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara and Harvey Korman, and he was part of that theatrical ferment.

The greatest role of all

Reilly won a Tony for “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” which he did between “Hello, Dolly!” and “Bye Bye Birdie” -- a six-year Broadway span that had been preceded by a decade of off-Broadway and stock. He had known immense struggle before arriving at success in New York, and when he was offered highly remunerative work in Hollywood he wasn’t about to snub it.

Yet it wasn’t long before he realized that the greatest role he would be offered was that of Charles Nelson Reilly. Self-dramatizing by nature, he knew the depth, intelligence and heart of his character, and he had no need to bluff.

Still, as he related in his solo show, he was astonished by his own success in the part. Never in his wildest dream would he have imagined that he -- an oddball kid from the Bronx -- would have appeared, by his own count, more than 100 times on “The Tonight Show” and been able to circle his name 38 times in the TV Guide listings for a single week. For an actor who had been told by a TV executive when he was starting out that a “queer” like him didn’t stand a chance, his prevalence on the air must have been intoxicating.

But he was always sober enough to know where he came from and to carry the stage along with him wherever he entertainingly went.

charles.mcnulty@latimes.com