Having agreed to appear in the second pilot film but not the series, former beauty contest winner Beverly Owen left the show after 13 episodes for the remainder of the series, Marilyn would be played by Pat Priest, whose chief claim to fame at the time was that she was the niece of former secretary of the treasury Ivy Baker Priest. By the time the series began, Beverly Owen and Butch Patrick had been respectively cast as Marilyn and Eddie. The series was sold to CBS in the form of a 15-minute pilot episode, lensed in color, in which Joan Marshall played the Munsters' beautiful niece (here named Phoebe) and Happy Derman played Eddie. Despite his fearsome appearance, Herman was a gentle, timid, childlike soul similarly, the rest of the Munsters were basically good-natured and goodhearted, though their personal habits and tastes were macabre to say the least. Though the family spent most of their time around the house, tending to such family pets as their dragon, Spot, Herman had to make a living, so he worked as general labor at the Gateman, Goodbury & Graves funeral home. Rounding out the Munster clan was Herman and Lily's son, Eddie, a ten-year-old werewolf (but a nice one), and their gorgeous niece Marilyn, the only normal-looking member of the family - who conversely regarded herself as abnormal and blamed herself whenever her potential boyfriends fled in terror after meeting the rest of the Munsters. Lily's grandfather Grandpa Munster (Al Lewis), a 350-year-old vampire who looked like a desiccated Count Dracula (and who, true to his batlike heritage, slept upside down, hanging by his heels) was a genially mad scientist - he had "built" Herman centuries before - whose various laboratory concoctions tended to blow up in his face. Herman's spouse, Lily (Yvonne de Carlo, top-billed because of her stellar film career), was a cross between Elsa Lanchester's Bride of Frankenstein (note that white streak in her black tresses) and TV horror-show hostess Vampira (note the garish makeup, chalk-white face, and flowing, tattered gowns). ![]() ![]() A crumbly old mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane was the home of Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne), a seven-foot-tall dead ringer for the Frankenstein monster, right down to the flat head and bolts in the neck. Filmed at Universal, The Munsters took advantage of that studio's stable of copyright horror movie "stars," reconfiguring them in a farcical fashion. One of two "monster spoof" sitcoms debuting during the 1964-1965 season, CBS's The Munsters premiered September 24, 1964, one day before ABC's The Addams Family, and was canceled after two seasons on Septem- one day before The Addams Family.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |