Comrade Grandpa Munster RIP

international | anti-capitalism | other press Thursday February 09, 2006 12:15 by Grandpa Munster http://dailyireland.televisual.co.uk/home.tvt?_scope=DailyIreland/Content/Comment&id=20231&opp=1

“It doesn't happen. The struggle goes on. The victory is in the struggle, for me. And I accepted that a long time ago.”

Al Lewis, the actor who played Grandpa Munster in the 1960s TV sitcom
Grandpa Munster actor was a firm socialist until the end

The Munsters, died in New York last Friday at the age of 95.
In the 1960s, Grandpa Munster — the cigar-smoking vampire father-in-law of the Frankenstein’s monster-like Herman on The Munsters — was a regular presence on television screens from Cairo to Chicago, and Belfast to Buenos Aires.
JIM DEE Daily Ireland USA correspondent

Grandpa Munster actor was a firm socialist until the end

“My mother was an immigrant woman, a peasant woman. Struggled all her life. Worked in the garment centre. Understood what the struggle was about. My mother couldn’t read or write but she had more sense than many a graduate from Harvard.” – Actor Al Lewis

JIM DEE Daily Ireland USA correspondent

08/02/2006

Al Lewis, the actor who played Grandpa Munster in the 1960s TV sitcom The Munsters, died in New York last Friday at the age of 95.
In the 1960s, Grandpa Munster — the cigar-smoking vampire father-in-law of the Frankenstein’s monster-like Herman on The Munsters — was a regular presence on television screens from Cairo to Chicago, and Belfast to Buenos Aires.
Given that he rode the wings of US cultural imperialism to global fame, it would seem likely that Lewis had a soft spot for the US brand of capitalism. In fact, he had anything but that.
Born as Alexander Meister on a farm in upstate New York in 1910, he moved to Brooklyn with his family as a child. His introduction to show business occurred at 13 when he began an eight-year stint as a circus worker — initially cleaning up elephant droppings before graduating to become a clown and eventually a trapeze artist.
From there, his trajectory as an entertainer would take him into vaudeville and Broadway, before eventually landing him a role in the hit TV sitcom Car 54, Where Are You? in 1961. Car 54, a comedy about a police precinct in the Bronx, saw him team up with the actor Fred Gwynne.
In 1964, a year after Car 54 went off the air, the pair joined up again to play Grandpa and Herman in The Munsters, which ran until 1966 and is still running on the TV Land nostalgia network.
On paper at least, Lewis’ career appeared linear or as linear as an entertainer’s could be. However, through it all, he also developed deep progressive political convictions, convictions that took him on periodic tangents into union organising in the south and protesting for civil rights and against the Vietnam War.
Along the way, he also acquired the title Dr Al Lewis, by earning a doctorate in child psychology from New York’s Columbia University in 1941.
In the 1960s, he would also become an ally and advocate of the Black Panther Party. He actually taught black history at some of the group’s teach-ins and helped to raise money for defence lawyers needed by the group when it was targeted by the FBI’s infamous Cointelpro programme.
He also became an ardent defender of Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution. He continued to visited the Caribbean island regularly despite the 1963 law banning US citizens from travel there. (Lewis’ PhD allowed him to exploit exemption for academics in the law.)
By the 1990s, Lewis was owner of a popular restaurant in Manhattan — named Grandpa’s, naturally. He had also become a fixture on public radio in New York, where he used his weekly show to champion the rights of workers, unions, the poor and underprivileged. In 1998, he even ran for governor of New York as a Green Party candidate. He didn’t have a prayer of winning but his garnering of more than 52,000 votes was enough to guarantee the Greens a place on New York’s electoral ballots for the next four years.
In 1997, during an extensive interview with The Shadow, an underground New York newspaper, Lewis credited his mother with giving him his political direction in life.
“My mother was an immigrant woman, a peasant woman. Struggled all her life. Worked in the garment centre. Understood what the struggle was about. My mother couldn't read or write but she had more sense than many a graduate from Harvard,” he said.
He said he had attended large May Day demonstrations in New York with his mother from an early age. By the time the Great Depression hit, he was a full-blown socialist. He said the hard times of that era had solidified his beliefs.
“You’re aware of bread-and-butter issues. How could I not be aware during the Depression that people were starving? And I was helping my mother sell apples. How could I not be aware?” said Lewis.
He said his activism, particularly in defending the rights of homeless people during the Great Depression, had frequently led to confrontations with the police.
“During the Depression, people were getting evicted, ten a day. We used to come along and break the lock and put the furniture back in again,” said Lewis.
“We would storm the Home Relief Centres, that or this person didn't get a cheque for $8 or something, and get hit on the head” by police, he said.
After an era of progressive gains during the 1960s, the United States went on to experience a backlash during the Reagan years that turned the country sharply to the right but Lewis never lost his idealism.
“Everybody in this society wants the quick fix,” he told The Shadow.
“So do the radicals, whatever you want to call them. A bumper sticker, put it on your car: ‘I'm a radical’, ‘I'm a lefty’, ‘I'm a progressive’, ‘I'm left of centre’. It's all bullshit. I learned a long time ago — I've been in the struggle over 70 years. It doesn't bother me I may not win.
“After doing X amount of time or years, don't throw your hands up in the air because, you see, everybody wants ‘the win’. They want it today,” he added.
“It doesn't happen. The struggle goes on. The victory is in the struggle, for me. And I accepted that a long time ago.”

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