The Actor Who Was Munster, Not Monster

Frankenstein’s monster isn’t scary.

Not when it’s a look-alike version played by Fred Gwynne.

The Munsters was a sitcom where the characters were inspired by old horror movie characters. They didn’t behave like them, they just looked like them, and acted normally. That was the comedy.

Gwynne, Yvonne De Carlo and the others squeezed two seasons and a feature film for fans only out of the idea in the mid-1960s. That was enough for reruns in those days, and they ensured Gwynne would be associated with the role until the wire services wrote his obituary. And, as Gwynne noted to newspaper columnist Holly Hill in 1974, “it’s putting the kids through school.”

Herman Munster’s appearance wasn’t Gwynne’s first stereotype role. While a member at Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Club in May 1949, he played Pablo, a shoeless, lazy Latin American. In July the next year, he was a member of the Brattle Theatre Company, where he appeared with John Carradine in a production of “Julius Caesar” (as a soothsayer). Two weeks later, the company mounted a comedy starring Zero Mostel. “Fred Gwynne got a flurry of applause for his playing of an almost simpering idiot,” reported the Boston Globe.

His Munster role overshadowed his first starring on television opposite the New York-shot Car 54, Where Are You?. Reported columnist Erskine Johnson in 1965: “Gwynne says he was eager to play something different from Sgt. Muldoon. He jumped at the Munster role. ‘After all,’ he says, ‘television doesn’t offer much variety—doctors, lawyers, private eyes. I figured the show would be a hit’.”

An excellent summary of his career to date came from the typewriter of Ben Gross, the Daily News TV reporter in his Sunday feature column of January 10, 1965:

He’s a Lovable, Grotesque Munster
Fred Gwynne, Harvard Man and Former Funny Cop, Talks of TV, Art & Money
By BEN GROSS
Lovable, Fred Gwynne is a living contradiction. A posh Groton and Harvard man, he won fame as a funny dumb cop in Car 54, Where Are You? And this season he is starring as the lovable, grotesque Herman Munster in CBS-TV's off-beat comedy series, The Munsters (Thursdays, 7:30 P.M.).
A highly cultivated, at times morose, fellow with a marked strain of mysticism and a mordant wit, he can discuss art, drama and poetry with the assurance and knowledge of an expert. Yet on television this tall and analytical actor has made his reputation in roles which, to put it mildly, are not exactly intellectual.
Dining with him at Jack LaRue's restaurant in Southern California's Studio City, I found him at first to be in an uncommunicative mood. A bit grumpy, in fact.
However, after I had asked him why he, an actor who once had played a great deal of Shakespeare, was now appearing in the new but by no-means subtle situation comedy, the dam of silence cracked and a stream of talk poured forth.
What's Art?
"The explanation is simple," he said. "You see, I don't make the mistake of confusing art and business. Being in a TV series is fine and ours is a very good one. But art . . . well that is something else again."
"Okay," I came back. "What is art?"
"It's when you take something that God has put on this earth and heighten it. You find art in the cave drawings, in ancient Egyptian civilization and the Chinese brush painters. "Of course, if you're going to apply the highest standards, many famous painters of today would fail to qualify," he continued. "Take Picasso. He's the world greatest idea man, Madison Avenue-wise, but he certainly is no great artist."
"But coming back to TV," I remarked, "why the sudden vogue this season for monster shows yours and ABC's The Addams Family."
Not at all surprisingly, Fred commented that he thinks The Munsters is by far the best of the two. "It's the only monster series with already identifiable characters: mine, a Frankenstein sort of fellow and Al Lewis' kindly Dracula-like creation.
"But answering your question as to why such shows have come on this season . . . I suppose it's because no one really thought of doing them before."
The Right Answer
Incidentally, appearing as the friendly monstrous character is no easy job. To put on his make-up requires two-and-a-half hours every day.
"How do your children react to seeing their father in this guise?" I asked.
"I have two, you know, a boy and a girl, 10 and 11," Fred said. "My daughter has the right answer. She tells her friends: 'My father earns money that way and that is why I can go to the fine school I do.”
Fred Gwynne, the son of a stockbroker, is a native of New York, but spent a goodly portion of his youth in South Carolina, Florida and Colorado. After attending Groton, one of the swankiest of prep schools, he served as a radioman on a subchaser in the South Pacific during World War II.
Before that, he had made his debut in Shakespeare's "Henry V” and studied with the famous portrait painter, R. S. Merryman. Then after his discharge from the Navy he enrolled in New York's Phoenix School of Design. However, before completing his course, Fred decided to finish his education at Harvard.
"While there I joined the repertory company at the Brattle Theatre of Cambridge, and after graduation in 1951, I stayed with them for two years," he told me.
Fred made such a hit as Bottom in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" that he decided to try his fortunes on Broadway. There he appeared in numerous successful plays and later also in Elia Kazan's movie, "On the Waterfront."
Joined Ad Agency
"During a lull in engagements, I joined an advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson, and among the things I worked on were the Ford commercials," he recalled. "But what I wanted to do, above all, was to act, and on the day I quit the agency, I got a call to appear in the Broadway musical, 'Irma La Douce.’ Then, of course, came TV with Car 54."
A versatile actor and painter, Fred has also written and illustrated two books, "What's a Nude?" and "Best in Show," the latter for children.
"Although you still paint, you are now primarily an actor," I pointed out. "Why did you choose that as a career?"
He Was Discouraged
"Oh, I intended to become a full-time painter," he said. "But in art school I was discouraged. And, as a matter of fact, I was also discouraged when I tried to attend a school for acting, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.
"I tried to audition, but the teacher who passed on applicants told me, 'You are too tall for the theatre.’ I, however, insisted on an audition and finally got one. After that he said to me, 'Okay, I'll take you, but I still say you're too tall for the theatre.’ Then he smiled. 'But then I also once told Ezra Stone that he was too short. And look what a success he made!”
Holywood's [sic] a Machine
"Anyway, I didn't go to the Academy. Instead I went to Harvard on the GI Bill."
"As a New Yorker have you become accustomed to working in Hollywood?" I asked.
"Yes, though eventually I intend to return to New York," Fred said. "As for Hollywood, it's just a gigantic machine, but I like it as much as Mt. Kiscoe or the Bronx."
"Can TV ever replace the theatre for an actor?" I queried.
"It depends on how old he is. If he's over 30, no; if he's under 30, yes.”
Good Tunes
"As a man who used to be a copy-writer in an ad agency, what do you think of those singing commercials?" I wanted to know.
"Well, I can tell you this: Considering the state of popular music today, you can hear some of the best tunes in TV on those commercials."
"You're also a writer. So tell me why is it that so many famous authors when they come to Hollywood seem to lose their ability to write good stuff? Even the late F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner couldn't do it while out here."
He pondered for a moment. "It's because they confused art with business. When you do business, you do it for money. When you do art, money doesn't matter," said Fred Gwynne.

Gwynne wore blue-green make-up as Herman, which was a challenge because the series was shot in black and white. Karl Silvera was his make-up man, and told the Tulsa World in 1964 Herman’s head was built with rubber stuck on with a special cement, with castor oil partly responsible for the colour. “This color makes the face look dead and pasty in black and white,” said Silvera. “That’s what we’re shooting for.” World columnist Chuck Wheat observed: “Green skin almost makes the most healthy eyeballs in the world look like fugitives from the liver cartoon. That plus purple lipstick make for rather startling appearances.”

Like others known for their regular TV performance as a stand-out character, Gwynne had some troubles afterward. “Producers look at me as Herman and that don’t bode me too good,” Gwynne told the Hartford Courant in 1975. But the American Shakespeare Theatre ignored that and he appeared on stage as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night and then as the Stage Manager in Our Town authored by Thornton Wilder, who was teaching at Harvard when Gwynne attended.

He was only 66 when he died in 1993. His Associated Press obituary concluded with an admission from a 1982 interview: “And I might as well tell you the truth. I love old Herman Munster,” he said. “Much as I try not to, I can’t stop liking that fellow.”