hough
he only played the part for two years, 6'5" Fred Gwynne will
always be remembered as Herman Munster.
Gwynne was born on July 10, 1926 in New York City. After
serving as a radio operator in the U.S. Navy at the tail end
of World War II, Gwynne attended Harvard, where he began acting
with the Brattle Theatre Group. A triumph in the role of Bottom
in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream led Gwynne
to the Broadway production of Mrs. McThing, a small
part in the film On the Waterfront, and eventually
a few guest appearances on The Phil Silvers Show, produced
by Nat Hiken. But he found acting work too sporadic, so he
took a job as a copywriter in the late '50s. There he developed
skills that would serve him later when he became a writer
and illustrator of several children's books, including The
King Who Rained and Chocolate Moose for Dinner.
When Nat Hiken created the comedy series Car 54, Where
Are You? in 1961, he remembered Gwynne's work with Phil
Silvers and cast him as the lead. The two-year series introduced
Gwynne to Al Lewis (Officer Schnauser). The two paired up
again for The Munsters in 1964 and the feature film
Munster Go Home in 1966. After the series was cancelled,
Gwynne found it next to impossible to find acting work, so
he retreated to New York to focus on painting and sculpture.
By the mid-1970s, however, Gwynne had returned to theater.
In 1984, Francis Ford Coppola helped Gwynne revive his career
by giving him a memorable role in The Cotton Club,
which led to appearances in films such as Fatal Attraction,
Ironweed, Shadows and Fog and Gwynne's final film My
Cousin Vinny, where he played an impatient southern judge.
Fred Gwynne passed away in 1993.
