February 13, 2006
History in the Making, Part II: Grandpa Lied Posted by Frederick E. Allen at 04:00 PM EST I observed a week ago that the actor Al Lewis, aka Grandpa Munster, had died at the age of 95—or was it 82 or 83? Oddly enough, none of his obituary writers could ascertain his age to within even a decade, and amateur historians and others were scrambling to find the truth. Now it has been revealed: Grandpa Lied. He was born in 1923, though he claimed to be 13 years older. He never served on the Sacco and Vanzetti defense committee (he was four when they were executed). Nor was he a champion of the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930s. There’s no evidence he was a circus clown and trapeze artist, or that he once hired Charles Manson as a babysitter, or that he escorted W. E. B. Dubois to the burial of the Rosenbergs, or that he had a Ph.D. from Columbia. How did he build such an extensive, if fictional, résumé? One theory is that it began when he feared he wouldn’t get the Grandpa job if the producers of The Munsters knew he was younger than the actress playing his daughter, Yvonne De Carlo. At any rate, the historical record is now considerably clearer—if also duller. And even his widow doesn’t seem to mind. “He always told me he was born in 1910,” she told a reporter for The New York Times. “But I don’t think it matters at all.” In other news, it has been observed that Dick Cheney is the first Vice President in more than 200 years to shoot a man while in office. His one predecessor: Aaron Burr, who of course took out Alexander Hamilton in July 1804.
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