RIP Grandpa Munster

[StoneMtn]

Actor who played grandpa of 'The Munsters' dies

Last Updated Sat, 04 Feb 2006 17:01:11 EST

CBC Arts

Al Lewis, the cigar-chomping grandpa of The Munsters, has died after years of failing health.

The actor was widely reported to be 95, but on Saturday his son Ted Lewis said he had been born in 1923 and was 82 at the time of his death.

Lewis died Friday night with his wife at his side, said Bernard White, program director at WBAI-FM, where the actor hosted a weekly radio program.

"To say that we will miss his generous, cantankerous, engaging spirit is a profound understatement," White said, according to Associated Press.

In Dracula get-up, he became a pop-culture icon as the irascible father-in-law of Herman Munster, played on the 1964-66 TV show by Fred Gwynne. He and Gwynne had earlier starred on Car 54, Where Are You?

Lewis worked as a basketball scout, a restaurateur and ran for governor of New York at the age of 75, but nothing ever eclipsed his role as patriarch of The Munsters.

Lewis was born Alexander Meister in upstate New York. His family moved to Brooklyn, where the 6-foot-1 teen began a lifelong love affair with basketball.

Later in life, he achieved notoriety as a basketball talent scout familiar to coaching greats like Jerry Tarkanian and Red Auerbach.

He operated a successful Greenwich Village restaurant, Grandpa's, where he regularly chatted with customers and posed for pictures.

He was a frequent guest on the Howard Stern radio show, and once led an undeniably obscene chant against the Federal Communications Commission.

A ponytailed Lewis ran as the Green party candidate against incumbent New York Governor George Pataki in 1999. He campaigned against drug laws and the death penalty, while going to court in a losing battle to have his name appear on the ballot as Grandpa Al Lewis. He managed to collect more 52,000 votes.

Lewis, as Officer Schnauzer, played opposite Gwynne's Officer Francis Muldoon in Car 54, Where Are You? — a comedy about a Bronx police precinct that aired from 1961-63. One year later, the duo appeared together in The Munsters, taking up residence at the fictional 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

The series locked Lewis into an image of a memorably twisted head of a clueless family; trying to deal with the puzzle of middle-class America.

Lewis made appearances in character for decades in shows such as Taxi, Green Acres and Lost in Space. His movie appearances include roles in They Shoot Horses, Don't They and Married to the Mob.

He never complained about getting typecast. "Why would I mind?" he asked in a 1997 interview. "It pays my mortgage."

Copyright ©2006 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - All Rights Reserved

http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/02/04/al-lewis-obit.html

[Birdy]

oh this is too bad. i met him at a hard rock cafe in washington when i was eighteen or nineteen. nice man.