Actor Fred Gwynne of “The Munsters” got his start in Cambridge

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By Sharon Oliver
Contributing Writer

CAMBRIDGE – Fans of the 1960s ghoulish sitcom “The Munsters” will likely remember Herman Munster, played by Fred Gwynne, the patriarch of a family of benign characters that appeared to be lifted straight out of classic horror movies. Surrounded by spider webs, bare trees and dead leaves on unkept grounds, the Munster mansion’s fictional address is famously known as 1313 Mockingbird Lane in Mockingbird Heights.

Actor Fred Gwynne, front row, center, the lovable father on the 1960s TV series “The Munsters,” got his start in acting while a student at Harvard University in Cambridge.Photo/Wikimedia Commons
Actor Fred Gwynne, front row, center, the lovable father on the 1960s TV series “The Munsters,” got his start in acting while a student at Harvard University in Cambridge.
Photo/Wikimedia Commons

However, it has never been clear as to which state the Transylvanian-American family resided in. On the other hand, it is quite clear as to which state Gwynne got his career start in— Massachusetts.

Harvard days 
During the 1940s, the native New Yorker worked as a summertime swimming instructor at the exclusive Duxbury Yacht Club pool in Duxbury while he studied at Harvard on the G.I. Bill after serving as a radioman aboard the USS Manville in the Pacific during World War II. While at Cambridge, Gwynne drew cartoons for The Harvard Lampoon and sang bass in the tuxedo-clad a cappella group the Harvard Krokodiloes.

He is also among a long list of those who acted for the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, a list which includes Andover native and CNN anchor John Berman and Academy Award winner Newton native Jack Lemmon. Upon graduation in 1951, Gwynne joined the Brattle Theatre Repertory Company. The small movie house is one of the few remaining theaters that uses a rear-projection system. The projector is located behind the screen instead of behind an audience.

According to lifelong friend David S. Biddle, who attended Harvard with “Freddy,” drawing and painting were the actor’s first loves. Biddle recalls one life-changing vacation the two took together. Biddle stated for a Crimson interview, “Freddy was a wonderful cartoonist. He inspired me to begin writing a comic strip for my local newspaper. I was at Cape May with Freddy a few years ago, and we agreed to draw caricatures of each other. I drew him as a man in his 60s, but he drew me as I looked when we were kids. When we came to Harvard, it was bereft of the arts. We started arts at Harvard.” Biddle and fellow co-founder of the Krokodiloes, David G. Binger, credit Gwynne with helping popularize the theater scene at Harvard and fill seats in the Brattle Theater.

Gwynne’s daughter, Madyne Gwynne, agreed that her father was “foremost an artist, not an actor” and spoke about some of her his fondest memories, stating, “I went to a Krokodiloes reunion with him once. He loved singing, and he loved his college years, especially the Lampoon.”

Artistic talent
Biddle added that his friend really came to Harvard for the Kroks and had a wonderful voice. He also loved clever puns. A gifted illustrator who loved wordplay, Gwynne illustrated and wrote several children’s books such as “Chocolate Moose for Dinner,” “The King Who Rained” and “Daddy Has a Mole on His Nose.”

Fred Gwynne, with his six-foot-five-inch imposing figure, was widely known as the purple-faced, lovable funeral parlor worker and family man on “The Munsters,” but his career in acting did not start there. He was discovered by Broadway actress Helen Hayes while performing in a Shakespeare play. She helped him launch his Broadway debut in 1952, playing a gangster in “Mrs. McThing.”

TV and movie career
He went on to star in 1960s television sitcoms “Car 54, Where Are You? as Francis Muldoon, “The Munsters” as Herman Munster, as well as films like 1984’s “The Cotton Club,” 1989’s “Pet Sematary,” and 1992’s “My Cousin Vinny.”

Prior to “The Munsters,” actor Fred Gwynne starred as Officer Francis Muldoon on the TV series "Car 54, Where Are You?”Photo/Wikimedia Commons
Prior to “The Munsters,” actor Fred Gwynne starred as Officer Francis Muldoon on the TV series “Car 54, Where Are You?”
Photo/Wikimedia Commons

Following a career in acting, Fred Gwynne retired to a quiet life in Taneytown, Maryland. The father of five died of complications from pancreatic cancer in his home in 1993 at 66.

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