Fred Gwynne

The Harvard Giant Who Didn't Want to Be a Monster

Fred Gwynne stood almost six feet six inches tall and had a jaw that looked carved from granite. But behind that giant's facade was a Harvard-educated baritone who preferred drawing characters on paper to performing them in front of a camera. In 1964 he accepted the role that would bring him fame and also cost him his identity for decades.

That contract to star in The Munsters looked like a golden opportunity for an actor who had just hit it big in the detective comedy Car 54, Where Are You?. However, the reality on the Universal set was very different. Gwynne spent three hours a day in the makeup chair and wore 22-pound platform shoes that wrecked his back every day.

And the show lasted only two seasons.

Despite the brevity of the original format, constant TV reruns etched his image as Herman Munster into the minds of millions of viewers. Hollywood stopped seeing the actor and saw only the product. Fred was an extremely cultured man who felt more at home in a drawing studio than at the cocktail parties of Los Angeles, and that came at a cost.

A Refuge in Children's Books

Gwynne didn't sit around waiting for a call from the major studios that never came. He moved to a farm in Maryland and began writing and illustrating children's books that are now classics in the United States. Titles such as A Chocolate Moose for Dinner proved that his visual talent went far beyond comic faces under layers of latex.

He earned more money from his children's books than from television.

This period of voluntary isolation allowed him to choose his projects with an almost reckless rigor. He turned down major roles because he did not want to become the odd man out in movies again. But theater remained his main passion, and there he won over New York audiences, making them forget his rubber scars thanks to his commanding stage presence and a voice that filled any auditorium without the need for microphones.

The Return of the Iron Judge

It took a long time for casting directors to forget his television past. In 1984 he appeared in The Cotton Club under the direction of Francis Ford Coppola, and regained the industry's respect. That marked the start of a second professional youth, in which he played supporting roles with a dramatic weight nobody expected from a former comedian.

But his definitive film legacy arrived in 1992.

In My Cousin Vinny, he played Judge Chamberlain Haller. His verbal duel with Joe Pesci over the meaning of the word "youse" is one of the most studied scenes in acting schools. Gwynne shot that movie while experiencing the first symptoms of pancreatic cancer, which he hid from almost the entire production crew so as not to delay the shooting schedule.

He died on July 2, 1993, at his home in Taneytown. There were no grand state funerals or immediate tributes on the national networks.

His remains rest in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of Sandy Mount, at the express wish of his family.