Full name, Frederick Hubbard Gwynne; born July 10, 1926, in New York, NY; died of complications of pancreatic cancer, July 2, 1993, in Taneytown, MD. Actor, author, illustrator, and copywriter. After serving with the U.S. Navy during World War II and graduating from Harvard University, Gwynne played Stinkerin the 1952 Broadway production of Mrs. McThing, which starred noted American actress Helen Hayes. After a stint as a copywriter with the advertising firm of J. Walter Thompson, Gwynne returned to the stage, resuming a nearly forty-year career during which he showed his versatility in wide-ranging roles onstage, television, and screen. In the theatre, Gwynne earned recognition forhis portrayals of such characters as Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which he counted among his favorite roles, and Claudius inWilliam Shakespeare's Hamlet. In 1979, he won an Obie Award for his performance in Grand Magic. After making his film debut in 1954 as Slim in On the Waterfront, Gwynne also acted in numerous motion pictures, including The Cotton Club and My Cousin Vinny, where he played a mob member and a judge respectively. He was mostly widely known, however, for his roles in two 1960s televisionseries. From 1961 to 1963 he played Officer Francis Muldoon, half of a mismatched team of policemen on Car 54, Where Are You? He later became Herman Munster, a Frankenstein look-alike and a star of The Munsters, a popular situation comedy which features a ghoulish family as they try to adapt to suburban life. After his acting career peaked, Gwynne wrote several well-received booksfor children, including Ick's ABC's, which combines lessons about the alphabet with information on environmental stewardship, A Little Pigeon Toad in 1988, and Easy to See Why, a book set for publication at the time of his death. He also illustrated both his own work and books by other authors.
BOOKS
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