Category: News and Views
Grandpa Munster' Al Lewis dies at 82
NEW YORK (AP) — Al Lewis, the cigar-chomping patriarch of The Munsters whose
work as a basketball scout, restaurateur and political candidate never
eclipsed
his role as Grandpa from the television sitcom, died after years of failing
health. He was 82.
Al Lewis, a longtime political activist, was best known for his television
role as Grandpa Munster.
By Tim Roske, AP
The actor was widely reported to have been born in 1910, but his son Ted
Lewis said Saturday that his father was born in 1923.
Lewis, with his wife at his bedside, passed away Friday night, said Bernard
White, program director at WBAI-FM, where the actor hosted a weekly radio
program.
White made the announcement on the air during the Saturday slot where Lewis
usually appeared.
"To say that we will miss his generous, cantankerous, engaging spirit is a
profound understatement," White said.
Lewis, sporting a somewhat cheesy Dracula outfit, became a pop culture icon
playing the irascible father-in-law to Fred Gwynne's ever-bumbling Herman
Munster
on the 1964-66 television show. He was also one of the stars of another
classic TV comedy, playing Officer Leo Schnauzer on Car 54, Where Are You?
But Lewis' life off the small screen ranged far beyond his acting antics. A
former ballplayer at Thomas Jefferson High School, 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
was a regular presence — chatting with customers, posing for pictures,
signing
autographs.
In 1998, a ponytailed Lewis ran as the Green Party candidate against
incumbent Gov. George Pataki. Lewis campaigned against what he said were
draconian
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 didn't defeat Pataki, but managed to collect more than 52,000 votes.
Lewis was born Albert Meister in upstate New York before his family moved to
Brooklyn, where the 6-foot-1 teen began a lifelong love affair with
basketball.
He later became a vaudeville and circus performer, but his career didn't
take off until television did the same.
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, about a family of clueless creatures plunked down in middle
America, was a success and ran through 1966. It forever locked Lewis in as
the memorably
twisted character; decades later, strangers would greet him on the street
with shouts of "Grandpa!"
Unlike some television stars, Lewis never complained about getting typecast
and made appearances in character for decades.
"Why would I mind?" he asked in a 1997 interview. "It pays my mortgage."
Lewis rarely slowed down, opening his restaurant and hosting his WBAI radio
program. At one point during the '90s, he was a frequent guest on the Howard
Stern radio show, once sending the shock jock diving for the delay button by
leading an undeniably obscene chant against the Federal Communications
Commission.
He also popped up in a number of movies, including the acclaimed They Shoot
Horses, Don't They? and Married to the Mob. Lewis reprised his role of
Schnauzer
in the movie remake of Car 54, and appeared as a guest star on television
shows such as Taxi,Green Acres and Lost in Space.
But in 2003, Lewis was hospitalized for an angioplasty. Complications during
surgery led to an emergency bypass and the amputation of his right leg below
the knee and all the toes on his left foot. Lewis spent the next month in a
coma.
A year later, he was back offering his recollections of a seminal punk band
on the DVD Ramones Raw.
He is survived by his wife, Karen Ingenthron-Lewis, three sons and four
grandchildren.