Fred Gwynne

Frederick Hubbard Gwynne was born on July 10, 1926, in New York City, the son of Frederick Walker Gwynne, a partner in the securities firm Gwynne Brothers, and Dorothy Goddard Ficken Gwynne, who before her marriage had worked as a successful illustrator credited with creating the "Sunny Jim" advertising character for the breakfast cereal Force. Gwynne spent portions of his childhood in South Carolina, Florida, and Colorado, as his father traveled extensively, though he also lived in Tuxedo Park, New York. After his father's death, he was enrolled at Groton School, where he graduated in 1944, served as president of the drama club, and made his first stage appearance in a school production of Henry V. Following graduation, he enlisted in the United States Navy and served as a radioman aboard the submarine chaser USS Manville (PC-581) during World War II.

After the war, Gwynne briefly attended the Phoenix School of Design in New York before transferring to Harvard College in 1948, graduating in 1951. At Harvard he was a member of the Fly Club, served as president of the Harvard Lampoon and contributed cartoons to the publication, sang with the Harvard Krokodiloes a cappella group, and performed with the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. Following graduation he joined the Brattle Theatre Repertory Company before relocating to New York City, where he supported himself as a copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency until being cast in his first Broadway role in 1952.

Gwynne resigned from the advertising agency upon being cast as a gangster in the Broadway comedy Mrs. McThing, starring Helen Hayes. His Broadway career, which spanned from 1952 to 1982, included productions such as Angela, Players, Whodunnit, and two parts of A Texas Trilogy: The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia and The Oldest Living Graduate. In 1974 he appeared on Broadway as Big Daddy Pollitt in a revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof alongside Elizabeth Ashley, Keir Dullea, and Kate Reid. He returned to Broadway in 1976 as Colonel J.C. Kinkaid in A Texas Trilogy, a role for which he received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Play in 1977. In 1975, between those Broadway engagements, he played the Stage Manager in Our Town at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut.

In 1953, Gwynne appeared in a New York City Drama Company production of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost at City Center, playing the constable Dull. His first film appearance came in 1954, when he played the uncredited role of Slim in the Oscar-winning On the Waterfront. His comedic work in Mrs. McThing caught the attention of Phil Silvers, who cast him in an episode of The Phil Silvers Show as Corporal Ed Honnergar. Those television appearances led writer-producer Nat Hiken to cast Gwynne as Patrolman Francis Muldoon in the sitcom Car 54, Where Are You? Standing 6 feet 5 inches tall, Gwynne was subsequently cast as Herman Munster in The Munsters, a role that required him to wear 40 to 50 pounds of padding, makeup, and five-inch asphalt-spreader boots, with his face painted violet to capture light on black-and-white film. The role brought him wide recognition but also led to a period of typecasting in which he was unable to secure new film roles for more than two years. Despite his reservations about the typecasting, he agreed to reprise the character in the 1981 television reunion movie The Munsters' Revenge.

From 1975 to 1982, Gwynne appeared in 83 episodes in various roles on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, produced and directed by Himan Brown. In 1969 he was cast as Jonathan Brewster in a television production of Arsenic and Old Lace, a character originally played on Broadway by Boris Karloff, who had also portrayed Frankenstein's monster, the figure upon which Herman Munster was based. That same year Gwynne sang in the Hallmark Hall of Fame television production The Littlest Angel. His later film work included roles in The Cotton Club (1984), Pet Sematary (1989), in which he played Jud Crandall, and My Cousin Vinny (1992), in which he played Judge Chamberlain Haller, his final film role. His performance as Jud Crandall was modeled on author Stephen King, who is approximately one inch shorter than Gwynne and speaks with a similarly thick Maine dialect.

Beyond acting, Gwynne was a painter, professional singer, and author-illustrator of children's books, including A Chocolate Moose for Dinner, The King Who Rained, A Little Pigeon Toad, Pondlarker, The Battle of the Frogs and Mice, and Best in Show. Many of these books drew on children's misperceptions of phrases heard from adults. He also used his drawing skills to create the official campus map for Groton School, his alma mater, some four decades after graduating. Frederick Gwynne died on July 2, 1993, eight days before what would have been his sixty-seventh birthday.