Huh… while digging for material about Yvonne DeCarlo, I learned that her Munsters co-star Al Lewis died just under a year ago, on February 3, 2006, at the age of 82. Somehow that little tidbit slipped past my notice. Here is an NPR obit for him.

He must’ve been quite a character. According to that article, he operated a restaurant in Greenwich Village, at which he was frequently present to sign autographs and pose for pictures. He once got the radio time-delay button pressed on him for getting obscene on the Howard Stern show. He even turned up on a DVD about punk band The Ramones. But this was the bit that made me chuckle:

In 2000, a ponytailed Lewis ran as the Green Party candidate against incumbent Gov. George Pataki. Lewis campaigned against 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.”

In 2000, he must’ve been around 76 years old. I hope I’m still rattling chains and wearing a ponytail when I’m 76. Rest in peace, Grandpa Munster…

Another of those familiar faces I grew up with, Yvonne DeCarlo of Munsters fame, died Monday, aged 84. Here is one of the more comprehensive obits for her.

The Munsters wasn’t great television — personally, I’ve always thought the show’s contemporary rival The Addams Family was smarter, sexier, and funnier — but it was reliably entertaining, making up for its pedestrian storylines with a charming cast and some fairly nifty production design. (I’ve always loved the staircase with the secret trapdoor leading down to the basement, and the two Munster cars custom-built by the legendary George Barris were the apotheosis of a 12-year-old boy’s automotive fantasies.) As Lily Munster, the wife/mother character in what was really a basic family sitcom with a strange-looking family, DeCarlo mostly served as straight-woman to Fred Gwynne’s Herman and Al Lewis as Grandpa. However, she occasionally got some good one-liners of her own, and while she didn’t display the same dangerous brand of sexuality as Morticia Addams (played in her TV incarnation by Carolyn Jones), Lily was a beautiful woman. Er, vampire. Whatever.

Looking around the ‘net, I see that Bijou Bob has a brief tribute to DeCarlo, which includes a sultry photo of her in one of her B-movie roles years before Lily Munster, and Jaime J. Weinman posts a YouTube clip of her with Burt Lancaster in Criss Cross, as well as an audio clip of her singing in Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. And here is the famous opening title sequence for The Munsters, featuring Lily bidding farewell to her various family members as they head out for their day. Watch for that trapdoor I mentioned; someday, I will have one of those…

http://youtu.be/8TTIqK9nFH8

I just learned that Mike Evans, the first actor to play Archie Bunker’s neighbor and occasional antagonist Lionel Jefferson on All in the Family (there were two Lionels, you know), died a couple weeks ago at the age of 57. As with so many others I eulogize around here, it was the damned cancer that got him. What a shame — 57 isn’t very old, and I’m sure he had lots of living left to do.

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