It's the Dearly Departed Podcast, featuring your host, historian Scott Michaels and filmmaker
Mike Dorsey. All right, it's another episode of Dearly Departed podcast. I'm
Mike Dorsey, I'm Scott Michaels, and this is episode thirty seven, Episode
thirty seven. Well, welcome, it's almost Halloween for us, it is.
Yeah, this we're releasing this for Halloween, and in honor of that,
we're doing The Monsters. Yay, the beloved classic. We've already done
the Adams Family, which technically the Adams Family came out first by one week,
so we are doing them in chronological order, technically in the order to
think well stnically, Yeah, I did the the Monsters. I was looking
into this because that was like what came first, the chick, know the
egg. Technically, the Adams Family was created by Adams Charles Adams in the
thirties, but the Monsters were in development in sixty three, and it wasn't
until February sixty four that they were working on the Adams Family, although they
launched by a week different, right I think, But the Lombunsters was in
development first, which I thought was interesting because they kind of morphed, you
know, at the same time, And I don't think it was something that
they were desperately trying to compete with, like they got a monster show,
we got to do it. Maybe there was a conversation, but that was
just really interesting to me how that turned out. And before we get started,
since we're gonna be talking about a very tall, famous actor, I
want to give a shout out and arrest in peace to one. I'm Richard
Mole from Night Court Bowl just passed away like an hour ago or it just
was released that he passed away, And so he's someone who could have played
Munster if he had He could have Herman Munster if he had wanted to.
You know, how do you know how t was? Yah? Richard Mole
was six foot eight, so he was actually two inches taller than Fred Gwynn
was. So yeah, he's a very tall guy. I know somebody that
flew him out to Australia for like a fishing show. He was an avid
outdoorsman and actually he was supposed to fly first class with something got mixed up
in the flight coach six foot eight flying coach to Australia. Yeah, I'm
only six two but I can feel his pain. Absolutely. That is just
awful. You're just oh my god, that's like a twenty four hour flight.
I mean that's I mean, obviously you have to stop. No,
actually, from here, it's not is it. It's only like twelve or
fourteen. It's like thirteen for it's like thirteen hours to get to Auckland,
New Zealand. So it's around that. Yeah, awful, awful anyways,
Rest in Peace Bowl from Night Court Richard Mole. So, yeah, as
we already said, the Adams Family technically premiered one week before The Monsters.
They were obviously very similar types of shows. Adams Family is for ABC,
months was for CBS. Both kind of monster ish families living in real living
in the real world. I thought it was interesting comparison. I saw online
that that the the Adams Family were a normal looking family ish that behaved weirdly,
and the Monsters were strange looking people who tried to act normal. They
were just Yeah, it was like that. They made references during the show
to the Donna Reid Show, and it was right. It was just that
a family comedy and uh right, and yeah, it's just interesting that they
at that. Ivonda de Carlos, who played Lily Munster, the wife of
the family, the matriarch. She said that her first direction on day one
was play her just like Donna Reid, So yeah, that's babe. It
was a send up of those fifties and sixties family sitcoms. Yeah, area
like, oh, it was similar to like The Monster I mean, I'm
sorry, the Honeymooners and the Flintstones. You know that was just an animated
version of the same show, right, so yeah, yeah, interesting.
Both only lasted two seasons, so it was a quick cultural thing, although
back then seasons were one season was like three seasons of a show. Now,
I mean Season one of The Monsters was thirty eight episodes and season two
was thirty two episodes. Seventy episodes for a lot of shows today would be
four or five seasons worth of show. Yeah, so yeah, And I
don't think they did a house cleaning thing like they did with The Hillbillies,
you know, they it just they just figured it ran its course. But
I mean it went on, it went into syndication almost immediately, and it's
still around. It it's just odd out of seventy you know episodes plus right,
there's still has never not been in syndication. Yeah. And what's interesting
is I grew up more into the Monsters in the Adams Family, just because
whatever syndication deal they had that for me growing up in the eighties, you
know, into the early nineties, that's what was on TV. I know
they had a deal with TV Land through the nineties for their syndication rights and
niked Knight and stuff, But I do I probably have seen just about every
Monster's episode in reruns, even though I grew up, you know, twenty
years after they left the air. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting that there
were so few. Well that's a lot of episodes. But still, and
I was never I was a big fan of the Adams Family growing up,
but the Monsters as an adult I've gone to appreciate a lot more because I
think I think it was more clever than it was than the Adams Family was.
Although I love the Adams Family for what it, you know, exactly
what it was, and I think maybe I liked it a lot because there
was a young boy like Pugsley who looked like a normal kid, you know,
when monsters there was really no one to identify with, So as a
kid, I probably liked the Adams Family more. But as an adult,
I definitely like the monsters more. You didn't, you didn't, You didn't
relate to beautiful Maryland monster. That isn't really my thing. They made they
made three pilots. You know, it took three pilots for them to get
it right, to get the cast right. They kept mixing up someone who
was playing some of the characters, and you can still find at least one
of the unaired pilots online. Yeah, and it was filmed in color,
which I thought was interesting, weird. Yeah, well, the salad.
They did the thing in color, and it was really not good. You
know. They they had they had a different Lily, they had a different
uh Eddie, and it was it was pretty painful to to sit through the
delivery. Well actually now knowing what we know and how the characters became so
you know, I hate that word iconic because it gets thrown around so much,
but we know them and we're so familiar with them, and the other
ones were quite painful to uh to sit through, knowing that they had to
go through, you know, these changes. But I guess yeah, Lily,
Lily came in at the last minute, or it's just say Yvon de
Carlo came in kind of as a last minute because the first Eddie was awful.
You know, he was like he played this little he was literally a
werewolf, like scratching and like and growling at people, like you know,
it was it was kind of odd. And the other thing that was kind
of weird was that grandpa. You know, he's Lily's father, but he
wanted to bite her neck. And the TV series, you know, they
had her biting his arm, but he was going to bite her neck.
It was kind of weird to bite your daughter's neck. You know. I
just thought that was kind of odd. That is odd. It was the
sixties, you know, and was a thing for people that are big on
Universal Studios and the houses there. This is a still I believe does it
still exist the house Universal? Does? I know? It was real?
It was reused later for the show's Coach and Desperate Housewives famously. You know,
they would just remodel it slightly and you know, take down the cobwebs
and you know, now it's a picturesque house on a street. Yeah,
they had it showed up on all those you know, Leave It to Beaver
was shot on that lot. Dragnet, the Incredible Hulk. It showed up
on all those shows. And it's on a little curve and right around the
curve is the Ghost of Mister Chicken house, which still stands too, although
that looks nothing like it did back then. But I just think that that
was kind of neat that those two houses are so iconic and both have that
same feel, that same kind of cool, quirky, you know, not
horror like scare you, slash you stuff, but just kind of fun,
fun, you know shows. And yeah, and that color, that beautiful
sixties color, and that was our ghosts and Mister Chicken was last year's Halloween
show that we did, right, I think, yeah, yeah, so
there. Look they're on the same street. And you know what's interesting,
I found out when I was doing the research, they released a movie after
just as the show got canceled, they started filming a reunion movie called Munster
Go Home. And it was so like right before it shot, they got
the news that the show was canceled. I'm kind of jumping ahead, but
that was when it was released. It was a double feature with the Monster
Go Home and the Ghost and Mister Chicken. They were released as a double
feature, which is kind of cool. That is cool. Before we get
into the cast and the above the line folks, you know, the producers
and the directors, I want to talk about one thing that was not a
person that was still iconic. The Munster Coach, the car that was designed
by George Barris's not George Barris himself didn't design it, but it was done
by his company. One of his most famous creations, for sure, I
would say, And it was built off of a nineteen twenty six Ford Model
T that they stretched. I think it was something like twenty feet long or
eighteen feet long. Technically it was built by other people there at his company,
but it's accredited to George Barris, and it appeared in over twenty episodes,
and they also wrote it in the I think the Macy's Day Parade it
drove. Yeah, it's a good story about that too, about the Macy's
Parade. But I got to sit in the Monster's car once. Where's it?
I was trying to where it is now because there's the commission a reading
creation of one in the eighties it was official, so I don't know where
the real one is. Well, yeah, I don't know when bears shot
the doors to his shop last. It was about two years ago, I
think after he died. They they they I don't know where anything went into
storage, but it was there on the As far as I know, the
original one was in his shop because I compared it to when I was sitting
in it, to the shot. Did I tell you I was sitting in
it because I said, I got a picture to prove it. But I
compared it, and it's very similar. The only thing that looks different are
the lamps in the very front of it, and but otherwise it looks really
pretty much the same. So I'm pretty sure it was the original one.
So I saw a pictures of it online and it looked like it was on
display somewhere, and the pictures like it was behind a like a rope or
something like it was on it is, so I wonder if I mean,
I know they made several dragulas, the casket one. Those are all over
the place, like the like the batmobile is too, you know, write
a ton of those. But no, I don't know where it is now.
You said there was a funny there was a good story behind the Macy's
parade. What was it for people who don't know. Okay, so so
well the Macy's parade, No, what was hopefully people know what the Mason's
prede is, but no, what's the story. Well, Fred Quinn,
you know, very famously kind of turned his back on the whole thing afterwards.
You know, it wasn't a happy experience for him. It was kind
of miserable. The whole shoot was a miserable shoot for him. And when
they were doing the Macy's parade, he and al Lewis were in the Munsters
coach and apparently he and Fred was drinking. He brought along a flask and
al Lewis, I guess, was pissed because Fred was getting more and more
drunk. And the story is, he says, al he know, I
got to give a shout out to my buddy Steve. We used his information
before on the on the Gilligan's Island podcast in the Beverly Hillbillies. But Steve
wrote this book called The Demonastres A Trip down Mark. Yeah, Steve Cox,
and it's an awesome book and I used they got a lot of information
from it. And I talked to what was the title of the book.
It's called The Monsters. The Monster is a trip down Mark, a trip
down Mockingbird Lane. Okay, great and uh And the story in it says
he and now did the Macy's parade and Fred got kind of hammered, and
so he started swearing. And so the guy they were playing the Monster's theme
turned up the Monster's theme in the car, so you wouldn't hear Fred Gwinn
swearing, and he said. Al Lewis said, we turned the corner at
Macy's and there was a media box with Betty White and Lawn Green describing the
parade. And Fred looked up at the camera and goes, fuck you.
Now, I don't want to jump in too much, but you would have
thought al Lewis would have been a little supportive of that, considering that al
Lewis was a big activist political activist in his personal life, especially a free
speech activist. He was constantly, you know, at bashing the CC and
other groups that were trying to control what wasn't wasn't allowed on air, and
you know, later in his later years he was a regular fixture on Howard
Stern's show, and Stern did this big like free speech rally that they broadcast
live on over the radio and al al Lewis was there, and al Lewis
famously, this was in I don't know when this was, but al Lewis
famously started shouting fuck the FCC live on air, over and over and over
again and it went out like it went out like that before Howard Stern could
get the mic away from him and they didn't get fined. Coincidentally, but
yeah, seeing grant'st going fuck the FCC, yeah he was hit at edge
to him most definitely. But I think he really I think he really respected
the characters. You know, he was always you know, happy to talk
to kids in costume and stuff like that. And and I think I think
Fred Gwimm is a little embarrassing, I think at that point. But it's
a funny story. Alan Burns. Alan Burns was the co creator of the
series with Chris Hayward, and shamelessly, you know, stole the idea,
even by his own admission, from Charles Adams and the Adams family. He's
his quote was, we sort of stole the idea from Charles Adams because Universal
owned the Frankenstein character and the Dracula character, and because of that they decided
to take to use those characters instead of I guess Alan Burns and Hayward have
kind of created their own kind of monster characters and then universals like we'll wait
a minute, we have the universal Classics monsters which you and I have done
a whole show on here, let's just make it base them off of those
where Wolf, Frankenstein, Dracula, and we kind of dip into that ip
that we own. He and Charles Adams was famously not supposedly not happy about
this. He clearly was, He was alive and clearly saw the this was
a ripoff to some extent of his idea, and also was apparently not happy
that the monsters continuously outperformed the Adams family in the ratings as well. Did
it? I didn't know that. That's exposedly supposedly yea. So Alan Burns
and Chris Hayward they started off in animation working on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show
and Dudley I think they created or worked on Dudley do Right and George of
the Jungle, and also he created the cap'n Crunch character for the Cereal Box.
Not the first time we're going to mention somebody creating a serial character for
this for this episode. And then he also co created My Mother the Car
with Hayward, I think, and then later on he partnered with James L.
Brooks and they created the Mary Tyler Moore Show show together. Of course,
so Alan Burns passed away fairly recently passed away on January thirty, twenty
twenty one. He had from Parkinson's and Louis body dimension, which we've talked
about a lot that Louis body dementia goes with Parkinson's often. And he was
eighty five, so he still live a long life. And wow, what
a what a Hollywood story that guy had, no kidding. And then and
then his his creating creative partner, Chris Hayward, who co created the series
with him. It was also on Rocky Bulwick and every and everything, and
then after they parted ways, Chris Hayward was a writer and producer on Barney
Miller and Get Smart among other shows. Were these the guys that because there
were they were there were the guys that created the monsters and the body and
and the sort of the story was taken away from them and uh, and
they fought with the Writers Guild to get their names put on his creators.
Interesting, that's yeah, they know, they went the one that wrote it.
I know they brought writers in to write the first episodes. Yeah,
because they Yeah, these guys had taken it, started it and started rolling
with it and then just fell out. And then they read one day that
The Monsters was in develop were in development, and hang on, that's our
show, and so they yeah, I got it because that's a good part
of it. They because they ended up getting their their names only on it
as creators or something to that effect, and uh, and prefer my own
one. But they were like, we're happy with not being involved with the
show. It went in the direction we didn't want it to go. And
oh, yeah, I didn't. I didn't have this. I figured it
was going to come up and I didn't. I know, I know that.
Ultimately this script was handed off to write the pilot to Ed Hass and
Norb Leibman and it was called I believe that they wrote a pilot called Lovedye
Monster. And interestingly, Ed Hass was also a writer on The Jerry Lewis
Show and other shows. I really couldn't find a whole bunch about him and
Norb Leibman, which is kind of interesting considering they obviously had big careers.
Yeah, there isn't a whole lot written about them, so I don't I
don't have a lot to share. I can go back real quick. Chris
Chris Hayward passed away on November twenty, two thousand and six from cancer,
and he was eighty one. And then going forward, the producers on the
show were Bob I want to say, Mosher Masher Mosher, Bob Mosher,
ms H e Er and Joe Conley. And Joe Conley wrote like twenty episodes
of the show, so he wrote, you know, a quarter of the
show pretty much. And he had previously written for twelve years for the Amos
and Andy radio show, as had Bob as his writing partner. And this
is really interesting. So they wrote leave it to Beaver, which is interesting
because this show is basically a send up of shows like that show in essence,
and Joe Conley had seven children, and so Beaver and his older brother
Wally were actually based on two of Joe Conley's sons who were fourteen and eight
and suppose and the name Beaver was the nickname of one of Conley's shipmates when
he served in the merchant Marines, and he basically what he would do is
he would just follow his seven kids around the house with a notepad and just
write down funny things that they did and set. And that became the inspiration
for the episodes. Huh, that's interesting. Well, I mean it makes
sense right, well, you know, right, that's true. And he
was right ass the street. And Joe Conley passed away in two thousand and
three, February thirteenth. He had a stroke and he also had Alzheimer's and
he was eighty five. These guys all lived a surprisingly long time for being
from the era they were from. A lot of these guys didn't live much
past sixty. From this ara, we find it's funny because the stuff that
they used, Like I was thinking about this, how toxic everything was around,
you know, around this set. I was trying to figure out how
they how they made those spider webs, and it was rubber cement and a
fan and they were that's where they were sprayed the fighter of spider webs.
But then it would melt under the lights. They had to keep doing it.
It's like imagine just sitting there and breathing that shit in all the time.
You know, and so many other things that they they you know,
that were that was around that it could not have been a healthy environment.
I mean, this is back in an era when artificial snow was made out
of asbestos, like yeah, like, and everybody smoked and drank like,
you know, a ton, and so yeah, the people tended to just
not live a very long time back then. There were a couple other people
I wanted to mention that were rioters on this Jerry Paris, who he directed
three episodes, so it wasn't a huge part of it, you know,
three out of seventy. But he had also been an actor and he was
a regular on The Untouchables and was famously Jerry helper on the Dick Van Dyke
Show that that was, you know, Dick Van Dyke's friend. And then
he started television directing on the Dick Van Dyke Show. So he kind of
owes his directing career to Dick Van Dyke and they said he just fell into
it, so naturally. Then he ended up directing I think eighty four episodes
of that show. He ended up directing two hundred and thirty seven episodes of
Happy Days nineteen. Episodes were many episodes of Happy Days. Oh my god,
it's like he must have directed all of them. And then if that
number is correct, and also he directed two of the Police Academy movies two
and three, and then he did all that in a relatively short life.
He died at sixty in nineteen eighty six from a brain tumor. So yeah,
yeah, yeah, he's very a busy guy in the sixties and seventies,
in early eighties, and the Police Academy three was in nineteen eighty six,
so he was still directing right up until, you know, the year
that he passed away. And then I also wanted to mention a director named
Gene Reynolds, who directed two episodes. He started out as an extra in
the Our Gang comedies and he went on to be the executive producer of Mash
and is a huge forcing the creation of the Mash TV show, and he
directed the pilot and he was supposedly largely responsible for casting Alan Alda and McLean
Stevenson and Jamie Farr in their roles, and he ended up directing two twenty
four episodes of that show of Mash, and he did thirty four episodes of
Hogan's Heroes and he was also the executive producer of Blossom and lou Grant,
which was a spin off of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, which is another
Alan Burns connection. And he won like six Primetime Emmys, and then he
was president of the DJA. So it's amazing group of people who even only
had you know, I mean, he only did two episodes of the Monsters,
and yet you know it was kind of back then. That's just it
was these shows. If you stuck around, you went on to do other
things, bigger things. An overachiever. I would say, I wonder how
many episodes of MASH there were, you know. I'll actually there were like
four hundred. It was lone for so long. I know, two hundred
and fifty one. That's it. There were more Happy Days than there were
Mash. I wouldn't have bet on that Happy Days was. Google says there
were two hundred and fifty five episodes of Happy Days, So I think that
number I must have read was wrong. Of how many episodes that guy must
have directed, what did I say he did? I thought you said seven.
So yeah, wow, he directed almost the entire series. I guess
that makes sense. He look at us trying to fact check ourselves live.
All right, Well, you know what, before we move on to that,
I just wanted to say, there's a house I noticed driving up on
Los Felis Boulevard, and if you go out just on on a Vermont pass
over Les Felis Boulevard up to the Greek Theater on the left is the Monster's
House. I mean there's a house, a brick house that shaped looks exactly
like all proportioned like the Monster's house. And I know when they made Bewitched,
there's a real house in Santa Monica that that is the Bewitched house.
I've never seen it written down or anything that this was the Monster's House.
And I don't know if that was a template back then, sure houses,
but it was. It's a big brick house and it's got the written in
everything. It's really it looks exactly like it like it's shap Yeah, it
might have been the inspiration. You never know. No, All right,
well, let's get into the cast and might as well start with fred Gwynn
Herman might as well Herman Munster. His mother was an artist named Dorothy Ficken
who she created the Sunny Gim character which audiences today are probably not familiar with,
but it was a character created in nineteen oh two to sell a wheat
flake cereal called Force Force cereal, which was still being made in the US
up until nineteen eighty three and was still popular in England until twenty thirteen.
But he was like the He was like the capa and crunch for Force Cereal.
He was this what do you call it? Character? Force like as
in use the force force like, use the Force force. Never heard of
it, and I never heard of that Sunny He was Sunny Gem and the
whole marketing campaign was always around like, you know, this cereal will make
your life better. You'll be like Sunny Jim. Everything is great because you'll
have the energy from the wheat flakes. Never in a million years if I
heard that one and quinc interestingly, you know Bogart's Bogart's mother was also a
famous artist, illustrator type artist, graphic artist, yeah, graphic artists,
illustrator, that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So during
World War Two he served on a submarine chaser and then went on to graduate
from Harvard in nineteen fifty one, and his first film appearance was a pretty
big one. He was uncredited, but he was on the waterfront looking at
it. He put it. He was in some wild movies. I mean
I was like, really he was in that. I don't remember, you
know, and he was six foot six. You're not going to miss him,
especially back then. Yeah, yeah, because I guess he played He
worked with Michael Douglass in Fatal Attraction. I'm like, really, I don't
remember him in Fatal Attraction at all. Yeah, he was in pet Cemetery,
the one what they came out like eighty nine. I think he was
in the Secret of My Success to Michael J. Fox movie. I know
him because one of my favorite bad movies as a kid. I'm that's being
mean. But The Boy who Could Fly probably has an aged super well.
I think it was a Disney movie with Fred Savage was in it. I
remember he was the uncle of like the the Boy who Could Fly the boys
like living with It's like the suchistic Boy who Can Fly supposedly watch it.
I don't wanna spoil it. Uh. And then he was also the judge
and my cousin Vinnie. That was a pretty prominent role. Yeah, that
was I think that was his last role, was my cousin Vinnie. I
think he decided to quit after that. Well, he, like so many
other actors we've talked about from the sitcoms of this era, they got type
cast, and he was type cast. He couldn't get he was he had
a hard time getting film and television roles after this show. Just two seasons
on this show, and he's he's he's, you know, Herman Munster for
the rest of his life. He even supposed the auditioned to play Henry on
Punky Brewster, you know, the male lead on that show, her her
you know, guardian on it. And and I guess during the audition the
director referred to him as Herman Munster insteaded by his real name, and he
like stormed off. So you know, just think about that twenty years later,
and that's happening. Well yeah, but I mean, you do something
that well, and we look at the castaways, you know, it's like
he was really you know, I mean, even ultimately everyone came around.
He was the only one that didn't. And you know, and I know
that was an emotional thing for him because it was painful makeup and it was
two years, but he came back for the sequels. There was another one
in eighty one and he came back for those, right, But he did
say the quote I got was I knew I was a leper after the series.
The only thing I could pick up after that was a twilight Zone or
something like that. But at the end, you know, he said,
I love ol Herman Muster. As much as I try not to, I
can't stop liking that fellow. So, you know, just confusing, and
yeah, I mean really, you know, he was all over the place
with it, but he didn't give interviews very rarely. Even Steve tried to
reach out to him writing the book, The Defenditive Book on the Monster is
a very kind book, and he was like, no, I'm not going
to talk about it. I'm can talk about it. It's like God,
right Hill, Yeah, bad. So. He was six six, but
he wore five inch boots. I think they were asphalt laying boots as part
of his character, and heither wore forty to fifty pounds of padding plus of
course all the makeup and his face was actually painted violet in color because that
would catch the light. The best shooting in black and white shows. Yeah,
that shows up in that pilot. I watched it last night. The
Color Pilot, and yeah, it's really weird because it's not it is blue,
it is violet. That was interesting, really interesting. Yeah, before
this, he had right before this show, he had a starring roles patrolman
Francis Muldoon in Car fifty four Where Are You? Another kind of iconic sixties
series that only ran for a couple seasons from sixty one to sixty three.
So yeah, his television career was brief, but he had two major,
major iconic roles in four year Chemistry, yeah, the Chemistry without Lewis from
Car fifty four, and they brought him back for the Monsters and theres was
a good, you know, comedy relationship, right, very good. He
started making children's books, he started doing he was always illustrating on the set.
He would he was a good caricature artist, and he started painting and
he had he had a show an opening in New York and Howard Stern,
you know, you know what he's like. So he sends Stuttering John,
who is one of his I don't know what you'd say, colleague, one
of the people who does on the on the fly interviews with people are on
location. So this guy, he got Stuttering John too want to go to
the art gallery opening and talk to Fred and he says, he says,
do you sign your paintings Herman Munster or Fred Gwynn. Oh gosh. And
he was very kind about it, you know, but it was clearly they're
trying to get, you know, a nasty reaction out of him. But
he but he's yeah, he says, where's Lily or something like that,
even toward Sturdy. Because as they were playing back the tape, Howard Street
says, I'm on the floor right now. I can't even look because I'm
so it's so cringey. But he was very he was very kind about it,
I guess because he knew it was an audio recording too, so he
couldn't really tell the guy to go get bent. But yeah, and that
was the other thing he asked about. Did Vincent vanco Ever wear bolts in
his neck? Answer? It's so mean, so mean, but so funny
and wow, it's it's it's worth listening to. Fred Gwynn passed away on
July second, nineteen ninety three, from pancreatic cancer. He was only sixty
six, and he's supposedly buried in an unmarked grave. Yeah, I think
Mike Massachusetts, I think, or Maryland. One of the they were retired
to a place called I think it was called Tiny Terrytown or Teeny Town and
they were raising beef cattle. Uh and uh yeah, so he just after
my cousin Vinnie, he just left. Uh. He he had only been
diagnosed like four months before he died, so it was a conscious you know,
it was before he started getting older and more ill. Uh that that
they moved out that way, So I think it just took him by surprise.
But he went quick. You know, it was after when he was
diagnosed. He he really went quickly. You think he's an an unmarked grave
because they're afraid someone will try to dig him up and bring them back to
life. That's funny. I knew he was in a mark grave, but
that's very funny. That's hilarious. You know. I imagine it's the thought
he had in his life. He's alive. And Lewis stayed in touch with
him too. He did stay in touch with him and talked to him a
couple of days before he died, So he and al Lewis maintained a friendship.
But everybody so far, all I've heard is d al Lewis was mad
at him during the parade, and then al Lewis of course was a regular
on Howard Stern and Howard Stern you know, made fun of the Herman Munster
thing. So I just thought maybe there was some something going on behind the
back, behind the scenes there between them. So I'm glad to hear that
they were friendly. Well, yeah, and it's funny because they were like
those two are against against the world, you know, as far as the
show goes, because they were both you know, although Eluis didn't have the
prosthetics like Herman Munster did, but they had the relationship, and I guess
it was a real problem when Evon de Carla was brought in because they're like,
who's this, you know, all of a sudden, we have this,
we have this relationship, we have we know how things are. All
of a Suddeny're bringing this big wig. So they were like they were objecting
to everything when she was first brought in. They were not having it who
they were really, but they as a team, we're not We're not react
well to the change of you know, probably for the fear of being upstaged.
Yeah, it's going to become the Yvonne de Carlo show. If she's
broading here a Hollywood legend. Right, Wow, that's interesting. But apparently
everyone chill. But theirs was a very That was a very show busy show,
you know what I mean as far as the relationships, show business relationships,
and how the industry works, how people get their nose bent out of
shape, how you know, people don't get along with other people. It's
like everything was encapsulated in this show. But ultimately, you know, they
it's a show. I think they all came to embrace on some level.
Sure, Vaughn never didn't. Never didn't. She was ready for it to
be done, but she never came out against it. Yeah, And look,
it also depends on how what their career did afterwards. And you know,
they might have been unhappy with her for a while, but eventually they
realized that was kind of it. That was my last big, big thing.
I kind of have no choice but to come around and eventually embrace it
later, And her career never really got any bigger after that either. It
was on the downslide to begin with. While she went into television from because
back then, to go from film to television was considered, you know,
a backwards move anyways, a downgrade. So you know that her career continued,
I think to go in that direction by that time as well. So
al Lewis famously Grandpa, a Dracula looking character, as you mentioned, was
also in the cast of car fifty four Where Are You? He had started
in vaudeville, and he was a game barker at Coney Island, But pretty
much everything else about his life you have to question. Because one of these
guys who just told all these tall tales, he said he had a PhD
from Columbia University. Columbia had never heard of him, had no record of
him. He had he gave different birth years. His official birth year was
in nineteen twenty three, but he kept telling people he was born in nineteen
ten. And in two thousand and two he made a reference to being ninety
two years old, which is how old he would be if he was born
in nineteen ten. But his son is adamant that no was nineteen twenty three.
And there's a census report from nineteen forty that makes a reference to someone
of his name being sixteen years old, which again would also line up with
you know, nineteen twenty three ish as being his thing, but for some
reason he wanted people to think he was older. But what's interesting to me
is if he was born in twenty three, that means he was in his
barely into his forties. When he's playing Grandpa Munster, he was one year
younger than Ivon de Carlo, right, who plays his Daughterantly that is nuts,
and that was shocking because he's one of those people that always looked like
he was ninety and uh yeah, yeah, he was the Wilford Brimley of
the monsters. But he was a very likable guy and never ever ever,
you know, he went by Grandpa. He ate it up, he loved
it. Yeah. He he ran, you know, as I said earlier,
he was politically active. He ran for governor of New York and he
tried to get on the ballot as Grandpa al Lewis, and he argued the
dunce how everybody knew him, and they rejected that. He also ran for
the US Senate and two in the year two thousand, always as the as
the Green Party candidate. He had bit parts and lost in space and taxi,
you know, taxi being late much later and he had you know,
he was in films like Pretty Boy Floyd and they shoot horses, don't they.
But again, this was kind of the pinnacle of his career as a
as a famous person was Grandpa from the Munsters. It became what he was
known as. But as you mentioned, you know, he was type cast,
but he liked it. Unlike Fred Gwynn, he would show up dresses
the Grandpa character for various things. He would, you know, he was
kind of like Alan Hale Junior from Galligan's Island that he opened the restaurants with
the name called Grandpa's Bellagent in New York City in the eighties. Yeah,
he leaned into it. He's like, eh, that's how I'm known,
That's how I'm known. Yeah, I know, he liked that. He
sounds like a well, he was good friends with Steve Cox, and you
know he again never ever didn't respond to an interview request, never ever didn't
stop and say hello to some body if they perched him. So so,
yeah, he was h And the fact that he called his restaurant Grandpa's I
thought that was great. Yeah. In Greenwich Village, which is where Fred
gwinliff for many many years after The Monsters in Greenwich village, which is just
odd because they don't you know, it just seems there, I don't know,
it just seems younger than them, especially village. Yes, yeah,
yeah, so but he apparently he had diabetes and he had they were they
were taking him away in pieces. I mean, you know, he took
away his leg, his foot, his toes. I mean it was he
got really really ill towards the end, but still on top of things from
what I understand, you know, still still very chatty and uh and and
he's still a lot of quotes I've read from him. I don't think there
were quotes like my father said, dot dot Dodd. I mean I think
there were. They were genuinely l Lewis remarks. So I think he was
was cognitant of what was going on. And yeah, and when he I
guess when he died, he was cremated and putting in his favorite cigar box.
Right. He died on February third, two thousand and six, from
natural causes. And he was either eighty two or or yeah or ninety five,
depending on who you ask. And I was like all those two.
I haven't been able to find it, but I recall that Butch Patrick was
at the funeral and drove the dragula. You know, I had like a
memorial service for him, and it was like a three hour memorial service.
But I haven't been able to back it up, but I'm positive I remember
but Patrick in the in the some sort of procession. I don't know if
his ashes were there, but yeah, but I'm sure because they were close.
He and Butch were good friends. Yeah, but Patrick, who who
played Eddie Monster. He said that the cast all drifted apart afterwards, but
then it sounds like they kind of became friends again later on when they did
the reunion shows, and he and maybe it was harder for him to stay
friends initially because he was still a kid when the show ended, and then
when they did their reunions, you know, he was older, maybe it
was easier for him to stay friends with these adults. But he did say
he reconnected with with al Lewis, and he reconnected with Evon de Carlow,
and she'd become a bit of a recluse by that point, was living north
of la up in the Solving area by then, and he was I think
he was helping her out trying to Goch was Butch was a mess. I
mean, but Patrick went, you know, I mean, honestly, there's
I was. I'll tell you about the time in Chicago, in Chicago ninety
ninety, this is we'll get We'll get to Butcher. I'll tell you that
story. Okay, But but even Butcher was saying they they he was such,
he was in such bad state with substance abuse and just just hooked up
with the wrong people at every single stage of his life almost but he and
Yvonne did a did a show together, one of those you know, I
think it was the Vicky Lawrence Show for a Halloween reunion. It was he
in Yvonne, and Yvonne was clearly into it at all, like she was
just really fed up with Butch for whatever reason behind behind the scenes at that
time. Wow. But but yeah, Butch had a real he spiraled big
time all right. Well. Speaking of Lily von de Carlo, one of
the big Hollywood icons of the forties and fifties, most famous role was a
Sephora and Cecil b de Mills The Ten Commandments in nineteen fifty six. She
was a Canadian descent and then moved out to Los Angeles and she started out
as a dancer at Florentine Gardens, as several other big stars did. Starlus
did from back in that era. In fact, I think I think we
mentioned her in our first documentary Do You Live, part of Volume one,
because they say the they say she may have The Florentine Gardens was a nightclub.
They had exotic dancers, not strippers. It wasn't like that. I
mean, it was like big floor shows. Of course they were wearing bikinis
and stuff like that, but it wasn't slutty. Yeah, it was.
It was like a perform rmans. Anyway, supposedly according to you know,
uh rumor. Anyway, she worked with the Black Dhia Elizabeth Short at the
Florentine Gardens for a while. I think we touched on that in our documentary.
I think we did. Yeah, And was Marilyn Monroe also at the
Florentine Gardens at some point early in her she got married or her first wedding
reception was there when she was sixteen. Yeah, yeah, which is still
there and it's still a nightclub in Hollywood, which is shocking. Yeah,
it's still active. It's still active. She was in debt apparently when she
signed on to do the Monsters, just a career had. You know,
it's interesting that she could have such a huge peak just seven years earlier with
the Ten Commandments and CCB to Mill, cecil B to Mill and all that,
and then seven years later, just for whatever reason, the career had
slid and she's in debt and she's having to do you know, the lowly
thing for film actors of going to do television now, yeah, yeah,
you know, and it was solely for money. But it is weird because
those guys probably like ten grand for you know, the Ten Commandments and no
royalties, you know, no residuals, nothing like that. So so it
was a one off. But but yeah, I know, it's a real
shame that people do these roles that become so iconic. There's that word again.
And she also was Solomme was what put her on the map in nineteen
forty five. Ultimately, her biggest role you said, was Ten Commandments in
films anyway, but she worked with you know, supposedly she supposedly had romances
with Burt Lancaster and Howard Hughes and Robert Stack and I don't I don't think
she I don't think she had a thing with Brando, I don't think,
but there was an incident on the set with Brando. I think Brando had
the hots for her in the lily costume, and the cast made a joke
or tried to play a joke on Marlon Brando where he was supposed to do
a scene on a different sound stage and it was going to be in a
confessional booth and Brianda was on one side of it, and the priest is
supposed to be on the other side of bend. Eddie Vaughne in her makeup
whip open the curtain of the combassion booth on Brando and it was there was
everyone. Everyone laughed uproarsally right. She also had a relationship with Billy Wilder,
the director. Yeah, she said, was not at all h her
type, except that he was such a charming and funny person that she charmed.
He charmed her and then he left her for another actress. But she
I think she tended to go for the big, tough guy types. She
had relationships I think with at least two stuntmen. One of them she married.
Yeh, she married a stuntman that was on The Ten Commandments. Actually,
when they were filming on she went when they were filming on location in
Egypt, and I think she met him there and married him, and then
he was injured. I want to say on the West was how the West
was one? I think he got injured badly on that shooting a scene where
he was you know, the stunt stand in for a stunt scene. So
anyways, yeah, well she had she had two sons with him, and
apparently one of the sons died in nineteen ninety seven. Uh, and Yvonne,
you know, was was not dead yet obviously, but they had She
and her one son had to you know, we're dealing with the grief of
that. And the one son straight out says that her he was murdered.
She thinks that they they're the official cause that was released was natural causes.
But the other son who lived is saying, no, it was definitely murder.
He was it was somebody with him in rehab when he was like in
a halfway house and uh, and he was They say he was murdered,
didn't say the method, but the son was was convinced that that he was
killed murdered by a drug dealer because he was recovering for alcoholism. I guess
that's why he was there. Jesus and she but she was really close with
her other son towards the other towards the end of her life, she was
living in the Motion Picture Country Home Hospital out in Woodland Hills and and her
son was out, you know, visiting her all the time, and they
were very close. And I guess the year well butch Patrick had visited her
in Thanksgiving the year before she died. That was the last time he saw
her. And they you know, they they were a good relationship at the
end. And her son, who visited her on New Year's Eve, said
something like, I hope you have a happy New Year, and she stopped
and said, I hope you have. No I hope you have a happy
New Year, which kind of looked like they made eye contact. And she's
like, I'm you know, she's ready to roll right, ready to be
gone. But but she did. She did die well. Her last words,
her son was with her and they were holding hands and and she said
she he said, I want you to go to the light or something to
that effect. It's time for you to go, time for you to go.
And he said that her head started going, you know, darting back
and forth and she said her last words were, what's happening to me?
And she kind of grabbed his hand and died right then. So it's just
interesting to know. It would be very interesting to know what was going on.
Yeah, she passed away on January eight, two thousand and seven,
from heart failure. She was eighty four. And I always have to mention
this whenever it pops up. She was in an episode of Murder, she
wrote in nineteen eighty five, which also the monsters have shows up in an
episode of Murder. I love it. But Yvonne also she had gang green
of the bowel and that doesn't sound fun. Archery, arterial collusion, arteriosclerosis,
chronic atrial fibrillate fibrillation. But yeah, gang green at the bowel is
listed on her death certificate, which was like, oh man, that got
to be something else. Yeah, that's not great. Peptobismal is not going
to help that one. That's not great. On that note, Rest in
peace, Avon de Carlo. Yeah, it'd be nice to know where that
where her ashes are. I know that her son has her ashes, but
it'd be nice for her to be put someplace where everyone could visit. Right,
butch Patrick, who we've mentioned a few times already. He was Eddie
Munster. He's still alive. He started acting as a kid in commercials and
TV guest appearances before this show and then afterwards. A few years later,
he starred as Mark in the side Marty Croft ABC Saturday morning series Liddsville that
ran from nineteen seventy one to nineteen seventy three. He must have been a
teenager or a young adult by that point. And then he had a guest
roles and I Dream of Jeanie and gun Smoke and the Monkeys and Daniel Boone
and Adam twelve. He had a recurring role of Gordon Deering on My Three
Sons and before he left acting eventually in nineteen seventy five, he did appear
as himself in The Simpsons at one point. Yeah, and my film Dicky
Roberts former child Star. He was in that. Yeah, I have to
look that one up. That was a good movie from what I remember.
The child Star. That's because they had a lot of child stars in that
movie. Right. They played poker or something and that was pretty funny scene.
I think like Rodney Allen Rippy was in there. But but yeah,
Lidsville was a wild show. I mean talk about people say that Sid Marty
Kroft. You know they denied being you know, it being drug related,
but you know, I mean to Lidsville, for God's sake. You know,
they were talking hats and you know, and there was puffing stuff.
You know, that thing was psychedelic with those guys. Yeah, with those
guys most definitely. But yeah, the originally the role of Eddie Munster was
offered to Billy Moomey from Lost in Space, and his parents didn't because he
ended up being everything. Billy Moomee was in everything you know there was.
There were so many you know, he was in Twilight, It was so
many sixty shows he showed up in and uh just you know, guest appearances,
Western and horror movies and stuff. He was in all of them.
And he was apparently in the movie The Phantom Told Booth, which I didn't
didn't realize, but so in he had. This has happened in nineteen ninety
and it was a Halloween event and my friend Bonn and I and when I
lived in Chicago, we went to all those things. And this is before
there were like autograph shows and stuff like that. It was like a shot
in the dark or needle in the haystack when anybody from was doing an appearance
quote unquote, And Butcher was doing a Halloween night in nineteen ninety in appearance
at this bar in Chicago. So we went and he was there, and
he would have been how old who do you have been in nineteen ninety Probably
thirty, close to thirties. Probably, I thin because I think he was
born in like fifty three. No, not born in fifty three. Was
he born in fifty three? I want to say he was born in like
fifty three. Hold on, okay, so because he sent eighty three ninety
three, so he's close to forty years old and he was born in he's
seventy nine, Okay. He showed up at this event in Eddie Munster makeup
like like it was, and his ears were like falling off and they were
like you know, it was like play. It was like silly putty ears.
I got a picture and I'll send it to you. You got to
see this picture. It looks it's like whoa, you know, and then
it's like the real sort of big spiraling at time of his But this is
the day after he did this thing that we that we saw him at.
This isn't Chicago. He they put him in in a van or in a
limo to take him to his hotel. And he and another guy and the
limo driver I guess they I guess the fee was like one hundred and seventy
five dollars to do this one run and three in the morning. And they
gave the limo driver like one hundred and thirty dollars and said they'll give you
the rest when they get to the house. But it ended up he got
lost a couple of times, and there was this physical altercation where they beat
him up and took his wallet away from him, and the police recalled and
he was arrested in charged with the aggravate to sault. Then they ended up
convicting him. He was he had to pay a two hundred dollars fine,
eight hundred and fifty dollars restitution, and one hundred hours of community service and
drug and alcohol treatment. After all this, he did get married one more
twice, and one of them both of them were to fans, you know,
he married fans. They had a really ugly breakup and she stole Eddie's
or Butcher's Eddie Monster costume and auctioned it off. Butcher didn't even you know,
he found out about it later on. Wow. And there was one
other thing where he made the tabloids in two thousand and seven, because there
was when he would do all these appearances. There was a one something called
a Monster Hall mobile home park that he would show up in, and there
was the guy who owned the mobile home park ended up being murdered and apparently
he wasn't involved, but it was just another thing, you know, he
just it just spiraled. Well, he's still alive, so I can't tell
you when he died. He did do a little Caesar's commercial as a grown
up Eddie Munster, which I need to track that down. I think that
McDonald's was remember McDonald's was doing like a weird thing for a while. They
like reunited some Gilligan's Island people and the Beverly Hill b Belife people, And
I wonder if it was Eddie and l Lewis for some reason that sounds kind
of familiar. Yeah, it was in the nineties and they were on this
this nostalgic kind of you know trip with that the Hill Belief remembers more specifically,
but interesting, Well, that would have been kind of the peak for
its syndication, you know, airing back then too. All those shows were
just all over tv Land at that era, just running like back to back
to back all day every day. You know, that was back when you
could. You know, they would they would run like Monsters episodes for like
four hours, you know what I mean. Like that, nobody had an
easier programming job than the guy at tv Land for our block of Gilligan's Island,
for block of My Dream of Genie. Yeah, come up with clever
commercials, right that. That's it the end, all right. Beverly Owen,
who was the first Marilyn Monster, she was only in the first thirteen
episodes. She didn't even make it. I mean she barely made it a
third of the way through the first season, which is crazy to me.
And she left to get married to a writer producer named John Stone who was
a future writer producer on Sesame Street, and then you know they were I
think they were married for like a decade roughly before getting divorced. So it's
interesting that why would she sign on to do a show and then leave after
thirteen episodes to go marry somebody? Did she not like the show? Was
this just an era where you decided to get married quickly to somebody that you
had barely dated. I would love to know the whole, like the story
behind how that, the drama behind how that had happened. I think it
was. I mean, as I understand it, it was sort of like
Natalie Schaeffer and Gilligan's Island where she did the pilot for a couple of bucks
and they offered her the role. Even Yeah, I think that might have
been it. But she she had no negative recollection of the show. She
didn't want to be and she didn't want to be in LA. She just
wanted to go back to New York with her with her husband. And apparently
the producers just kind of got sick of her crying all the time and going,
you know, she got me out of here, get me out here.
They're finally like, go just go. We're tired, we're tired of
you. And it wasn't nasty, it was it was amicable completely, and
she was lucky to get out of her contract too. Yeah, and it's
like, oh no, we're in LA. Where will we find a beautiful
blonde actress? There are none. An she wore a blonde wig. Actually
there wasn't that she wore she had a U and I think, what was
it? I think? But Patrick had very nice things to say about her
as well, that she was just he loved. I think when she passed
away, he made a really nice note about her, and he had a
crush on her when he was a kid, and then she was the nicest
person on set, and all this very positive things to say about her.
And of course the running gag for her character is she's the one normal looking
person and in the family and she's this gorgeous blonde and they all treat her
like she's the ugly one. In fact, the first big joke in the
pilot episode, the one that actually aired, the first episode that ever aired,
was herman comes in because she's just finishing up a date on the front
porch with the guy she's been dating. And herman comes up to to Lily
and says, this is the fourth date she's had with that young man,
and Lily says, yes, It's amazing how some boys will overlook a girl's
appearance. That show was freaking clever as hell, it really was. There
was the one I wrote down was never mind, never mind, Marilyn.
You must remember she's not as fortunate as the rest of us. And then
it literally goes, now you go up to bed, Eddie, and don't
forget to close the lid. Like this stuff, the stuff that they would
say, herman come to bed, Grandpa turned off the storm and all is
quiet. Is all this quiet is making me nervous. That's great. But
that was one other one that's, you know, hurry up and have well
her up and eat before the cheese dip crawls out of the bowl. I
think was another one of them. It was just so funny. It was
so funny. So Beverly Owen was into history, and she earned her master's
degree in nineteen eighty nine, and then I don't know much else about her
until she passed away in February twenty first, twenty nineteen from ovarian cancer and
she was eighty one. That is, yeah, she didn't have a whole
lot of a you know, career after leaving the shoulder that she did come
back I think in the seventies and did one of the big soap operas.
For a time. She was recurring role on a soaproper for for a few
years. I don't think she had any regrets, but it's sort of odd
when somebody's in a show that's considered a quote hit to bail on it.
Yeah, and then again, they were probably making they were probably making fifteen
hundred bucks an episode too. I mean, there was probably no money in
it. So yeah. In nineteen seventy two, she played doctor Paula McCree
on Another World for nine months, and that I think is kind of her
last role that she did, all right, And then the person who replaced
her as Marilynd Munster number two was Pat Priest, who then you know,
became the better I guess, probably the better known of the Maryland Monsters for
the run of the show. She is still alive, and her mother was
the US Treasurer, that the Treasurer of the United States in the nineteen fifties
and then was the California Treasurer in the sixties and seventies. And the fact
that she was the US treasure in the fifties means that her mother's signature is
on all the paper currency that was printed at that time. Isn't that cool?
That's cool? Yeah, it is, that's pretty neat. Yeah,
So she and they used her connections she got she was a page at like
one of the big national one of the big national political conventions back in the
day. And she was on episodes of my favorite Martian Perry Mason, the
Lucy Show, Mannix, Bewitched, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Another connection
there, et cetera, et cetera. One of these actresses that went on
to you know, an episode or two here or there on all these other
big sitcoms of the era which we see so much. In that time frame,
there were so many sitcoms being made. Yeah, yeah, for sure,
they I know that she was well, you know, it's kind of
like the original not well, maybe not the original, but the Darren Switch,
you know, which is like midway through the first season. They got
it unannounced because they sort of hit they hit a cookie cookie cutter with her.
You know, she was like a Marilyn Monroe Sandra d Cross, you
know, of of cross pollen, whatever you call that, of the of
the two character types. And you're talking to Darren Switch, you're making a
reference to Bewitched, which we did to show about where they replaced that the
husband character with a different actor. Yeah, and then she said basically,
my you know, maybe I had an episode or two, but mostly I
was in the kitchen helping h aunt Lily make you know, clean clean the
table, and say where's Uncle Herman, what's Grandpa up to? You know?
That was you know, she loved you know, she's another one that
went to all the I don't know if she still does, but went to
all the conventions and and loved all that stuff. Yeah. Sure, but
she's also realistic about her part and the show. You know, she was
you know, she was you can't really quote her very much, no,
I mean she was essentially the straight man in a cast of kooky characters.
So they you know, you're not going to have as much in the same
things to do when that's your role is to be the normal person for them,
to contrast everybody else against, right, And it's a one gag joke
of she's the beautiful one and they treat her like she's ugly. Like how
many times can you revisit that joke? You know? Oh my god,
it was so funny because I remember that that scene you were talking about with
the boyfriend in the episode, and and she walked by and says, Lily,
soas I don't know what's wrong with her or something to that effect.
And herman just has this look of absolutely disgust on his face. He's talking
about how she looks. It was really funny. And they do the I
don't know if they still do, but Butch and Pat Priest used to go.
There's this house in Waxahachie, Texas that Troy and I visited it.
I wish I'd be able to get in it. But these this couple built
the Monster's House to scale. Everything in it works. There's the coffin clock,
there's the thing that you you pulled down to open up the the stairway.
I mean, this house is perfect, perfectly done. The guy says,
if I had the money, I'd do you know, I'd have the
Psycho House at the end of my street. And you know that's sort of
a thing. But they have the Monster's House that they built from scratch in
Texas, which is really pretty cool. But do they have a dragon named
Spot? That's the big question. I'll bet you they have a prop.
They have to have a prop. You have to have a dog named Spot,
like you have to have some people with that name, yeah, or
a lizard that was funny whenever Scott was spot made an appearance. I mean,
of course, the iconic, iconic there's that word again, when the
when the when the stairway opens and he's there and he blasts out the fire.
But every once in a while he get out and all you choose this
enormous dinosaur taiale going past the back door. It was, it was,
It was really funny. That was such a clever show, such a clever
show. I wanted to mention a few of the guest stars from it.
You know Mel Blank and Bob Hastings voice the raven in sixteen episodes of the
show. Mel Blank, of course, the man of a thousand voices,
who did uh you know, the lady characters, Bugs, Bunny and all
them. Yeah, you know that. Then there's I can' had anything from
that show. That clock with the raven coming in, and that was amazing.
That clock is such a such an awesome prop. Really, everything that
whole place is filled with amazing props, but that clock. If I had
my choice of anything, it would be that and then other big guest stars
on the show. Over the years, Don Rickles played a doc Happy Have
meire Dom Deluiz played a doctor. Dudley. John Carradine appeared as a character
named mister Gateman, and Jane Withers he was the Yeah, I'm sorry,
that was the he on the funeral home. It was Gateman Kingsley, but
it was herman's boss, his herby's boss. Yeah. Yeah. Jane Withers
played a character named Fanny Pike. Of course. Jane Withers, famous child
star, was a rival of Shirley Temple's back in the day, and also
famous for being the Comic Cleanser spokesperson in the sixties. She was interesting.
We've mentioned her before and I don't know what the episode was, but it's
because her second husband had been one of the members of the Four Freshmen singing
group and Heed He died in a plane crash up Bass Lake in nineteen sixty
eight. And I don't know when that came up, but it came up
in another one of our episodes, and I don't remember it why it was.
She was She collected costumes before Debbie Reynolds did. She had some really
iconic stuff. Maybe it was during an obituary episode or something like that,
but maybe she She supposedly had warehouses, several warehouses full of movie memorabilia.
Yeah, exactly, And she sued the airport up there that her that.
Yeah, she sued and got a settlement when her husband was killed. His
husband, they were on a small plane it with him and three other people.
It was a business trip. They were scouting I think some real estate,
some land that they were thinking of buying, so they were getting an
aerial view of it. And she claimed that the airport there was a death
trap and known to have to be unsafe, and she sued them and years
later and supposedly got like two hundred thousand dollars settlement, which would have been
a lot at that, especially in the early seventies when she did it.
Their mid seventies when the case went through, Yal, I didn't know that.
That's fascinating. Another guy who had a bit part in it, John
Mitcham, who was Robert Mitchum's brother, had a role in one episode as
the first workman. Oh interesting, okay, And I think he did have
Robert Mitchum's look. You could definitely tell they were brothers. And then a
very famous football player named Elroy Hirsch whose nickname is Crazy Legs. He played
for the Rams. He's a Hall of Famer NFL receiver and he was their
general manager. Later on, he had a short movie career. Some big,
you know, famous athletes back then, could you know, sometimes branched
out into acting, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. He had a brief career
as an actor, and he was he appeared as I think as himself.
He was that famous as a football player, and he played himself in one
of the episodes. So they had a boxer. Max Rosenbloom showed up in
an episode. I think he was a kar thief or something like that.
But Maxie, he went by the nickname Slapsy Maxie, and he opened up
night clubs around l A, one of them being in the new Beverly Cinema
what it is now, but that used to be a really famous supper club
back in the day, owned by Max Rosenbloom or Slapsy Maxie is what it
was called. And that's Tarantino's Theater. So it's just a nod to We
got to get that in there somehow, something man related, of course.
Uh. But yeah, there was a good Do you have any more on
your list? The the the the the actors. Another one I wanted to
mention was Louis Nye probably in my opinion, the best episode of the Monsters,
because you know, the whole Monsters thing kind of started. Of course,
there was the universal Monsters, and then that kind of drifted away,
and then the late night horror show hosts started showing up and like vampiras,
and it became you know, bringing bringing them to the more youthful presence,
and that's one of the reasons they they worked on the Monsters and the Adams
Family or got it rolling at that point. And and Zombo was on the
show. The monster Zombo was a character who was a horror host, and
Eddie was obsessed with him. And there was this contester right in why I
love Zombo because and Eddie and Herman would get very jealous of Zombo because Zombo
is this creature with fangs and you know, messed up feet, our hands
and and you know, Eddie way what Eddie wins, and he wins like
a television and a bicycle and all this amazing stuff. And Herman's very jealous,
and he gets a guest stint. Eddie gets to go on the Zombo
show. And he goes and it's actually Louie and I the comic actor in
a makeup chair with nothing on, and you could hear the Zombo voice and
Eddie's like, it's like he's like just he's like really devastated that Zombo's not
real. And then when he gets all his get up on and Eddie's on
the show, Eddie just flips and goes, Zomba's a fake and starts rip
off his wig on the It's a It's an excellent episode. It's it's my
favorite. I think Zombo it was, Yeah, that was that was really
cool. It's like when Wryl Pharaoh attacks the Santa Claus impersonator in Elf.
There you are just like that, he said, you smell like beef.
Oh my god. And know and it was one other thing that it was
important to the show. I mean, of course, the show had so
many important aspecially the mood. The music was spectacular. The theme song,
although they changed it, you know, season one and season two had two
different theme songs. Both were composed by Jack Marshall was his name, and
they the sex the second season. I guess they wanted to get like a
Dick Dale kind of a guitar thing going on, and Jack Jack had Jack
Marshall I did that himself, but he composed both of them, and I
guess members of the Wrecking crew performed on that recording too. Oh wow,
a fantastic documentary. If you haven't seen it, by the Wreckon doc is
really good. Yeah. There was always kind of a surfy style, you
know exactly. It was always that kind of surfy style thing. You know,
which surf movies were big at that point, of course, and the
Beach Boys were big at that point. Dick Dale was big at that point.
So yeah, makes sense why they went away the same reason that Gilligan's
Island is set to kind of a clipso theme because clipso music was in vogue
at the time. Yeah, and another one that they switched after the first
season, you know, with a well they added the lyric different reasons,
different reasons, but both of the themes on the Monsters we were spectacular.
I think, ex all pieces of music. I don't know anything about the
creators. I don't know anything about the writers. I'm glad you had all
that stuff because I had nothing on that. I always gravitate towards that side
too, because I'm a producer. Yeah you do, and that always intrigues
me. Those guys' careers is always so interesting to me. It completes the
story most definitely. So there's a rumor that, well, I don't know
if you can actually track it down exactly, but they say the Monsters were
the first. Herman and Lidy were the first sitcom couple to be in bed
together. And they were in bed together in one bed, you know,
the Brady Bunch. Florence Henderson said they were, But the Brady Bunch happened
in nineteen sixty nine and Monsters proceeded that considerably. And Steve in his book
uncovered that when I Love Lucy was on and they went on a road trip,
Fred and Ethel were technically the first people on camera to be in the
same bed together. And as far as sitcoms go, the first couple in
bed together, I guess for the Flintstones, Willman and Fred Flintstone. They
showed him in bed together. So it's kind of interesting. But the Bunsters
totally poor kid children's eyes. Once you think of the children they on on
Lucy, they couldn't even say well, they couldn't even say pregnant. We
touched on that one too in our well. On the very first shot in
the entire series. In the first episode is Marilyn Munster kissing her date on
the front porch and him kind of getting handsy with her and trying to make
the moves. Marilyn Munster, that was a play. You think that was
a take on Marilyn Monroe. Oh, totally, totally. She just died
prior to the show coming out. Yeah, I mean not in personality,
as they said. It was a Sander d kind of a you know,
sweet girl character, but certainly, yeah, a nod to Marilyn Monroe.
I'm sure of that. I yeah, I don't know if that's written down,
but I have no doubt in my mind. I was just at last
weekend, I went and did brunch at the Hotel bel Air for the first
time, which of course has several famous connections to Marilyn Monroe. She lived
there off and on, so I think a couple of times. And then
her last photo shoot a few weeks six weeks before she died, was at
the Hotel bell Air as well. There's a famous picture of her standing next
to the pool diving board there during the photo shoot. It was for Vogue
magazine, I think, and she died six weeks later, so, and
you know, not too far away from where she lived at the interview down
the street, almost probably about two miles away. Yeah, yeah, beautiful
place. Spell their hotel has spen once only when it was renovating it for
like two years. And yeah, I wish I could have seen it before,
because I did hear from someone I was there with. She had been
there a bunch of times over the years going back, and she said that
it wasn't as charming as it used to be before they renovate, which happened
so often with these places. It wasn't as warm, I think, as
it used to be warm feeling, but it's still really nice. I love
it. It's great there. Yeah, it's beautiful grounds. It is beautiful.
It is beautiful quiet. So it got to the to the end of
it, so that the Monsters did their reunion in nineteen eighty one, and
I don't believe butch Or Maryland, butch Or pat Priests were even invited back
because they, you know, the other monsters well and Yvonne and Fred did
it. And this is you know what thirty twenty years twenty nineteen seventeen years
after they quit the series, I guess, and so they got older,
but Eddie and Maryland couldn't be older, so they hired young people to do
that. Oh that makes sense. Yeah, well, also they're not covered
in makeup, well, Eddie is, but Eddie has to be a kid
still. You can't make a hand look like a kid, and you know,
the Maryland character is going to look like however she looks. They can't
cover up in monster makeup to hide the age. So yeah, I guess
that makes sense. And Eddie was just like a normal kid, except he
looked funny. But he never had any any you know, there were hardly
any other any gags about him being a werewolf, you know they, yeah,
there was. It's always about the silly things that the family did.
And so I was looking at the reasons that they canceled the show, and
they said that the CBS programming had said it just he thinks it just wore
itself out. At two years at the seven thirty time slot is a lifetime
for a program, and just like seven thirty, who watches TV at seven
thirty anymore? You know, it's such a different such a different time.
And when they when hit shows were on Saturday nights, you know, which
is like unheard of anymore, you know, they hardly have any like real
shows. And also at seventy episodes they did in two years, how many
more gags can you come up with and storylines to fit this? And it's
They've tried to reboot it multiple times over the past couple decades. I think
Seth Myers tried to reboot it, and some other people have tried to bring
it back, and they just they keep failing to make this, to make
the series work for modern audiences, like what do you do? How do
you what tone do you strike with it? That would work with that would
work now? I don't know. Rob Zombie didn't find it. I didn't
watch his Monsters movie. The trailer did not look great. I'm sorry to
say. It was so awful and I and I was looking forward to it
because they sunk a lot of money into it and they recreated the house and
they did clear the trailer. Honestly, the trailer made it look a lot
like like an SNL sketch like quality okay production, which I remember them again,
they're trying to go for that original campy look. I get that's supposed
to look that way, but still yeah, yeah, no, that was
painful, really really really painful. And the other the quote I found it
about the producer Joe Connolly. I don't know. He always said, you
know, kind of nice things about it, but then he said at the
end of the show that the actors were pain in the ass. This is
a quote. Fred and al objected to anything. Fred hated the makeup and
caused a lot of trouble about it on the set. We could not stand
Fred Gwynn. We were happy with what we had done, but we had
just had it, huh see. And then I've heard other people, other
actors they were on it say it was a happy experience and fond memories and
people had a good time on set and offsets. So I guess it depends
on who you are and who you had to deal with exactly. I'm sure
that's what it is. I'm sure that's what it is. And there's one
other fun fact. I did watch this the other night in nineteen. In
two thousand and eight, they released a black and white porn film called This
Ain't the Monsters Triple X. Oh no, I did watch this the other
day. Lily and Herman celebrating their anniversary with a session in the cemetery,
Eddie finally gets a chance to howl with pleasure after having a run in with
two smoking hot girls, and cousin Marilyn will live out her fantasies in the
spooky mansion. But wait till you see what Grandpa has in store for you.
He's conjuring up plenty of plenty of treats in his laboratory. It's terrible,
of course, as you'd expect it to be. But they did work
on it, you know, they did make cool sets. It wasn't quite
you know, it wasn't up to the standards, of course. Was it
better than the rob Zombie Monsters movie? Well, yes, because there was
something to look at. Oh, it was so that agony, it was
so and you know what, the show needs a laugh track, you know,
That's what I meant. We watched Munster Go Home the other day.
Munster Go Home was a full length movie. That's when it had John John
Carrody played the butler. Hermione Gingle. They got this wacky old you know,
she used to be on Bewitch to this British actress and Terry Thomas was
was the main lead aside from the cast of the monsters, no laugh track?
And although I liked the movie Monster Go Home, you need that.
You just needed that because just fall flat and they do. Yeah, but
the Rob Zombie one man? That was that was agony? Was there a
the Rob Zombie one? No? No, I don't think so. At
least it wasn't in my head. It was so unfunny. You blocked out
the laugh track, is what happened? Yeah, I look. My thing
is as if Look, it's debatable, but if you're going to recreate something
faithfully like that, why not go all the way and add the laugh track?
I would say, I would say, especially in the porn version,
there you go, there you are, and there you are. I'm going
to reserve all the jokes that just hit my brain just now for it.
You can watch it for free. I found it just just type in.
Of course you're watching it for free. It's porn on the internet. Who
pays for that? This ain't the Monster's Triple X? Look it up?
All right? And with that, Oh god, I have there's too many
jokes in my head right now. I have to stop. All right,
Well, guys, Happy Halloween. Oh one more thing, one more thing.
Did you see that thing? I posted on Facebook the other day where
it was like the first or second episode where Herman Munster takes a fall,
Yeah, tolf of his wig kind of fell off. It just like popped
up like that was really wild. It was like it kind of made me
a little bit sick because it was kind of gross to think his head opened
up like it was scalped for a second. Yeah, now that was that
was a That was a neat little because I guess they had a problem with
the lights in his makeup and the glue and all that kind of anyway,
if like that, I love a little goose like Thattter when they throw a
character against the wall and the wall moves because it's a fake wall and look
stuff like that. Yeah, that's really funny. There were one of the
Terminator movies, one of the not great ones, one of the later ones
after T two. I remember there's a scene where they get thrown against the
brick wall and you could see the wall give oh when they hit It was
like, oh, how did that make it in? Yeah, he was
a different angle, right, But that house with the house was just insane.
That was such an amazing set to watch that house. That smoke coming
out of the chimney that was. That was an awesome, awesome set.
They did such an amazing job with that. Yeah, all right, well,
happy Halloween everybody, sincerely, thanks for joining us. Enjoy. If
you're dressing up, have fun. I'm dressing up as Karme from The Bear,
Who's interesting on Basic as a chef. It's the easiest one I could
dress up as because all I did do is buy a wig. Who is
it? Have you watched The Bear? The Bear's fantastic. It's kind of
a dramedy. It's about a chef in Chicago and it's the actor Jeremy Allen
White I think his name is from He's most famous from Shameless, I believe,
Okay, And yeah, they just finished their second season and it's really
good. I really like it. It's intense and funny and dramatic and yeah,
it's really really well. It's a really well made show. The Bear
pop culture thing. It's just dressed up as him as a chef. It's
just a chef's costume. Basically. I kind of have to have watched the
show to get it out of the way. It's like, oh, why
are you wearing an apron? But it could be Gordon Ramsey. That's true.
I could be anybody that they want, anybody. They could just yell
out of chef's name and yeah, yeah, you got it, you nailed
it. That's me. Well I'm going I'm going as Zoltar. Of course
your shoulder as always, yes, and I have the whole costume. I
won't be wearing any dark makeup because that wouldn't be right. But I've got
the whole costume. And I even found a box now, so amazing about
that. I love costumes like that because you can store them and bust them
out later and without. If you have, like a you need a last
minute costume, there's one ready for you. You know. I had a
Caveman costume forever that I could just throw on in two minutes if I needed
to, you know, last minute, get invited somewhere, and I didn't
plan on it. So it's nice to show those costumes. I did when
my friend Brian and I went as the Lobbyankas. Oh god, no,
I can't these are these are these? Can never know? I shouldn't never
see the internet. But yeah, believe that to everyone's imagination, because what
you're imagining is probably even more terrible than what it actually was, which was
not great. Probably, we know they were really good costumes. They were
really good. God, that's what I'm afraid of is that they were very
faithful. Yeah, the other people at the party were kind of like but
it worked. And with that, we'll see you on the next show.
Happy Halloween, and we'll have to come up with a Thanksgiving Day one.
Yeah, we'll to figure it out. We are going to do a Carpenter's
one one of these days. That's happening. Yeah, yeah, I'm going
to do one. Because somebody wanted us to do a Mash one too.
Did we ever do that? We? I think we did. There was
that one where I thought we did and we didn't. Hold on. Maybe,
how have we not done a Mash episode because I hate that show?
Probably? Yeah? Oh I loved that show growing up. It was on
a lot. My mom and my grandpa had it on all the time.
Wow, I am shocked that we haven't done a Mash episode. Why did
I think we'd done one? I don't know. We've talked about it enough
times, I think. Yeah. Also, someone wanted us to do Hogan's
Heroes, and you said you hated that show as well right, yeah,
yeah, well, you know it has a lot to do with being a
little homo, and the female presence is almost there's no female presence in it,
yeah, because it's a World War two very very minor, and that's
something that you know, there's no strong female characters in that. And that's
a gay thing. I can't explain it, but I've noticed that about a
lot of people, like gay people, they really don't gravitate towards shows that
don't have a large female presence. That makes sense, I guess that's interesting.
Yeah, and well Mash had good female presence hardly though. Yeah,
Hula Ham was a bit of a ballbuster. Yeah, but I mean she
was still you know, had so she was one character of an ensemble of
you know, right, and you know that was there was was it Margaret
Show? Once said the comedian Margaret Show was on stage Because when I was
a kid, I knew that one day I could grow up and be an
extra on Mash. Right, right, who's a Korean comic. She's a
comic with Korean descent, And it's just a frinny joke. I thought,
Yeah, all right, guys, happy Halloween and exciting and we're happy to
be doing the show on the regular and we will talk to you guys on
the next one. Thanks for joining. This has been an episode of the
Dearly Departed podcast. Dig up more episodes at dearlydepartedpod dot com and on iTunes
and Google Play. See you next time, he spo