
For anyone who might not know the show or its spin-off movies, The Munsters revolved around an unconventional family who lived in an equally unconventional, cobweb-covered household at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. Lily and Herman Munster, played by Yvonne DeCarlo and Fred Gwynne, were a married couple whose household included her father, “Grandpa” Munster (Al Lewis); her niece, Marilyn (initially played by Beverly Owen, then Pat Priest); and Lily and Herman’s young son, Eddie (Butch Patrick). One of the running jokes in the series was when unsuspecting people would finally meet the family. While Marilyn looked “normal,” Herman looked like the Frankenstein monster (there are references to him being made by Dr. Frankenstein and jokes about how he's literally pieced together). Lily, Grandpa, and Eddie all resemble vampires, and the family pet, Spot--well…it’s definitely not a lap dog.
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Grandpa, Marilyn, Eddie, Lily, and Herman |
The show is
filled with goofy puns and tame jokes; the US still had a fairly strict
production code for films at that time, limiting “questionable” material, and
television had certain censorship rules in place too, but some of the humor
still makes me laugh. In an episode that my son and I watched the other day,
the family has a guest show up at their door on a rainy day and they go out on
the porch to talk to him. When things start to clear up, Lily quips, “Oh dear;
it stopped raining. I’m afraid the weather is turning bad.”
Butch
Patrick, who played Eddie and still makes public appearances, created a
Munsters website that includes information about the cast members; you can find it at www.munsters.com. While I was
trying to find out when the show aired I stumbled upon the site, and learned
some things I never knew about the actors who played all of the beloved
Munsters characters. I knew that Fred Gwynne (Herman) had been in Car 54, Where
Are You?, another 1960s sitcom, and it had been fun to see him in a cameo in
the 1992 movie My Cousin Vinny. I had no idea that Gwynne also wrote children’s
books though, or that he’d also been a visual artist. Likewise, I was surprised
to find out that his onscreen wife, Yvonne DeCarlo (Lily), had an extensive film,
television, and even Broadway career. DeCarlo had quite a few roles in Westerns like Black Bart, Tomahawk, and Silver City, and
she appeared in the pilot of the TV series Bonanza. She also played the role of
Sephora in the epic 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film The Ten Commandments. And Al
Lewis (Grandpa) definitely lived an interesting life. Not only did he work in
burlesque and vaudeville theaters in the 1920s, but also as a circus clown, on
Broadway, and taught school, wrote two children’s books, and even had his Ph.D.
in child psychology! (Lewis had worked with Gwynne before too, as another cast
member of Car 54, Where Are You?)
Almost fifty
years after the show’s last episode aired, The Munsters still has legions of
fans who have—or are making— memories of laughing at, and along with, the lovable
“monsters” on Mockingbird Lane. There were so many comedic masters in the cast and
they played so well off of each other that I feel the silly comedy will always
be the biggest draw. The more serious undertone of the show was that The
Munsters were “oddballs” in a “normal” world, but they didn’t really try to
conform or fit in. They were puzzled when people had negative reactions to
them, but it didn't seem to phase them for long and they kept being themselves. Intentional or not, it’s a powerful
message.
The first
time my son and I sat down to watch the pilot episode, I snuck glances at him,
watching his face to see if his eyes were glazing over from boredom or if I’d
catch a smile. I was happy when it was the latter, and when he burst out with the type of laugh
that I know means he really finds something funny.
Score another one for mom, nostalgia, and The Munsters. Now, if I could get him
to budge on which Willy Wonka movie is better…
Let us know,
readers—is there an old television show that you loved as a kid that your
children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, etc. are hooked on too?