{PDF EPUB} Easy to See Why by Fred Gwynne Easy to See Why by Fred Gwynne
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Here’s What Happened to Fred Gwynne, from ‘The Munsters’ to ‘Youts’ and ‘My Cousin Vinnie’ By all accounts, Fred enjoyed a happy childhood, but that happiness would be torn away from him when he was only eight years old. He was born in New York City in 1926 and moved around the country quite a bit due to his father’s work as a stockbroker. He and his dad enjoyed a close relationship, which made it even more devastating when what should have been a routine sinus operation, resulted in the man’s death. In response, Fred retreated into himself, becoming withdrawn and more introspective. One outlet he found for his pain was through the sketches that he enjoyed drawing, a skill he quickly began to develop. Things didn’t really get better until he entered prep school. The fear was that the shell he’d locked himself in would continue to hold him emotional prisoner, not helped by the fact that he felt self-conscious that, at 13, he was already 6’6”. But in the end, that didn’t matter: at prep school he found himself genuinely happy for the first time in years, finally coming to grips with his father’s death. That happiness he felt came from the fact that he was enormously popular among his classmates, sang in the school choir and continued to explore his passion for art, discovering different styles and learning about a wide variety of artists he grew to admire who would influence him for the rest of his life. Did Fred Gwynne go to Harvard? Fred may have been looking for direction following prep school, but he also felt he had a patriotic duty to America and enlisted in the Navy during World War II. Once he returned to civilian life, it was time to focus on himself again — which is what led him to enroll at Harvard. It was while he was there that he got a sense for his own future. It started with him becoming a cartoonist for The Harvard Lampoon and then its president . More importantly, he decided to give acting a try and became a part of Harvard’s Hasty Pudding theatrical show. And that was it. His fate was sealed. The reaction from the audience turned acting into his true calling. He also realized that he could make his looks, which members of the media would later describe as “lanky and lantern-jawed,” work for him. And it absolutely did, given that his friends used to good-naturedly tell him that someone with his looks could never make a living as an actor. That’s the thing, Fred Gwynne absolutely had confidence in himself. Where others may have doubted, Fred pushed ever onward toward achieving his goals. And who could argue with the results? By the early 1950s, he was actually on Broadway in shows like Mrs. McThing, Love’s Labour Lost, and The Frogs of Eternity . But that wasn’t enough, so he began making guest appearances on the different anthologies and episodic TV shows. And just to prove his point, he co-starred with Marlon Brandon in the feature film On the Waterfront . ‘Car 54, Where Are You?’ Despite all that success, Fred wasn’t yet a household name, so in a move for some security and, more importantly, to make sure Hollywood knew who he was, he starred in the 1961 sitcom Car 54, Where Are You? , playing Officer Francis Muldoon. This show was a satire of police dramas and saw him co-star with Joe E. Ross and Al Lewis, who would eventually join him on The Munsters in the role of Grandpa. CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU?, Fred Gwynne and Joe E. Ross, 1961-1963. During the show’s production, Fred provided a bit of insight into himself and his self-perception when he wrote a guest column for The Pittsburgh Press where he was contrasting himself with co-star Joe E. Ross. He viewed Joe as an entertainer while Fred thought of himself as an actor. The distinction? Joe could just be himself and put everything out there. As to Fred? He wrote, “If I had to stand up in front of strangers and be Fred Gwynne, I’d be immobilized by embarrassment. As long as I have lines to say and a character to project, I’m all right.” DU PONT SHOW OF THE WEEK, Joe E. Ross, Fred Gwynne, Jayne Meadows, (‘SEVEN KEYS TO BALDPATE,’ Season 1, Episode 29, aired June 24, 1962) As was the case when he lost his father and slipped into that emotional shell of his own making, it was obvious that if he was going to present himself to the public, it needed to be in the form of acting, of basically losing himself while he was playing that character so that the audience would see Francis Muldoon or Herman Munster rather than Fred Gwynne. All of which must have made later difficulties finding roles, particularly in film and on TV, even more frustrating. Becoming Herman Munster. The Munsters made its debut in 1964, and the show is probably best described with the idea that if the old Universal Horror movies and the sitcom The Donna Reed Show had a baby, it would be The Munsters . In its, Fred’s Herman featured an amazing duplication of the makeup that had turned Boris Karloff, who you probably best know these days as the narrator of the animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas , into Frankenstein’s Monster in films from the 1930s. BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Boris Karloff, 1935. It wasn’t an easy role, physically, for Fred to play. Despite his height, they used platform shoes to bring him up to about 7 feet, and Herman’s padded outfit weighed about 50 pounds. On top of that, there was the time spent each morning applying all that makeup. He was also performing over-the-top material on a daily basis without an audience to play off of. Doing so on stage was one thing, but within the confines of a studio set, it was just a very different experience. THE MUNSTERS, Yvonne De Carlo, Fred Gwynne, 1964-1966. But whatever the challenges, the bottom line is that the audience fell in love with Herman Munster, who, despite his appearance, was basically an all-American dad that loved his family, worked at a funeral home each day — certainly a fitting occupation — and did the best he could to get through life. And then , on top of that, Fred added his boisterous, infectious laugh which only strengthened Herman’s appeal. At the time, one reviewer commented, “Watching his sporadically animated mannerisms, one is reminded of TV’s Mr. Ed enmeshed in deep conversation, punctuated with the facial pantomimes of Jerry Lewis.” Not too many people have been described as a mix of those two. ‘Legacy of The Munsters’ Due to the fact that it’s never been off the air thanks to reruns, people may not realize that The Munsters only ran for two seasons. It wrapped things up in 1966 and while Fred and the rest of the cast shot the film Munster, Go Home that year, which was designed to help sell the series in Europe, everyone moved on. And if Fred had his way, he never would have looked back, which had been a guiding principle in his life anyway. THE MUNSTERS, Fred Gwynne (bottom, right), 1964-66. But there is another reason that he wanted to leave that period of his life behind. While he was first embarking on his acting career, Fred had married socialite Jean Reynard in 1952 and together they had five children. The youngest was named Dylan, who was born in 1962. Tragically, less than a year later, Dylan drowned in the family pool. One can only imagine the personal pain and devastation that this must have caused Fred, Jean, and Dylan’s siblings. This had to have colored Fred’s personality for the rest of his life and is why he would barely talk about the past, choosing, again, to move ever forward. YOU ARE THERE, from left: Roger Davis, Fred Gwynne in ‘The Siege of the Alamo’ (aired October 9, 1971), 1971-72. Not that the rest of the world was willing to let him do so. With every year The Munsters aired in reruns, its popularity only grew and so did the connection between Fred and Herman, not only in the eyes of the audience but in Hollywood casting departments and the offices of producers. Acting, the thing that he loved so much, had become something of a curse. THE LINCOLN MASK, from left: Eva Marie Saint, Fred Gwynne, 1972.