One is astounded to see how much Blyden worked during the ’60s in theatre and television given the turmoil of his personal life. He and Haney were divorced in in 1962. Two years later, she was dead of some combination of pneumonia and diabetes with severe alcohol abuse as a contributing factor. The pair had two small children:
Joshua (b. 1957, named after Joshua Logan, who’d given Blyden his first big break), and
Ellen (b. 1960). Blyden was to raise them while working constantly.
In the late ’60s Blyden supplemented his acting income by hosting several short-lived game shows. In 1970, he appeared in the screen version of
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, his last film, where he is fourth-billed after
Barbra Streisand,
Bob Newhart and
Yves Montand. In 1972 he took over as host of
What’s My Line? — the same year he won a Tony for his performance as Hysterium in the revival of
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which he also produced! In 1974 he had the lead in the original Broadway production of
Alan Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular, for which he was nominated for another Tony. In 1975 he co-hosted the Tonys and was about to co-host a new game show called
Showoffs.
I said “about”, for in 1975, like his wife Carol Haney, Larry Blyden met a tragic early end. He was vacationing alone in Morocco when he was killed in a car accident. Accounts differ about the circumstances. Some have claimed that it was a carjacking and that he was left for dead by the perpetrators. The official account makes it sound more like was alone in the car and merely went off the road. Many clues in the narrative above cause some to speculate that Mr. Blyden was a switch hitter in his private life. We assert nothing, but that it would explain some twists and turns in the story.
There are more dark elements to the tale. Blyden was a lover of old things. He and Haney had lived in an 18th century nook in rural New Jersey, the Achenbach House in Saddle River, which they had furnished with antiques and believed was haunted by the original owner. Blyden believed that the spirit of Haney also prowled the house after she passed away. (Blyden’s trip to Morocco was partially for the purpose of purchasing the sort of antiquities he loved to surround himself with.) The historical old house was destroyed by fire in 2004.
The postscript to this story is that in the year 2000, Joshua Blyden, a voice-over actor, died. The official cause,
via the L.A. County Medical Examiner (thank you,
Suzanne Stone!), was alcohol related organ damage. Gossipy internet chatter (in too many places to link here, just google it) has mentioned that he was attacked and beaten and possibly blinded, and died of those causes. That may well have happened, but the ultimate cause seems to be booze and liver damage.
