See Rare ‘The Munsters’ Behind-the-Scenes Photos in Color

Matt Roush October 16, 8:00 am

THE MUNSTERS, (clockwise from top right): Al Lewis, Yvonne De Carlo, Fred Gwynne, Butch Patrick, Pat Priest, 1964-66 — Everett Collection

The Munsters was cult TV before TV cults were cool. There was nothing subtle about this supernatural family who sent up television domesticity and lived in shabby Victorian Gothic style at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, where an unseen pet dinosaur — or was it a dragon? —named Spot lurked beneath the stairs. The most reliable running gag (among too many to count) was that the Munsters saw themselves as perfectly normal and could never understand why fellow citizens would flee in terror at the sight of them.

And what a sight they were! Herman Munster, played by gangly Car 54, Where Are You? star Fred Gwynne, was an undead ringer for Boris Karloff‘s iconic Frankenstein monster, down to the neck plugs, albeit infused with a robust, childlike guilelessness. Former movie siren Yvonne De Carlo (The Ten Commandments) was his doting wife, Lily, a sleek and unflappable ancient vampire known to coo to her husband: “They just don’t make men like you anymore.”

The Munsters Butch Patrick, Fred Gwynne, Yvonne De Carlo, Pat Priest, Al Lewis, 1964-66

Rounding out the family: Lily’s wisecracking vampire father, Grandpa, played by Al Lewis with borscht-belt bravado; earnest werewolf son Eddie (Butch Patrick), who promised his mom, “I brushed my fangs and washed behind my points”; and black-sheep niece Marilyn (Beverley Owen, replaced by Pat Priest), pitied by her mutant relatives because of her conventional Sandra Dee looks. “Oh, Marilyn, the circles under your eyes,” Lily once gushed. “How lovely you look today.”

When it debuted in 1964, fans reveled in The Munsters‘ jolly embrace of its cornball cheesiness — but the show’s fate, sadly, was sealed by the arrival of Adam West’s Batman. Even more attuned to the tastes of the target hip young audience, the caped crusader helped send The Munsters into the ratings cellar in 1966.

Still, you can’t keep good grotesques like these down forever, which explains why new generations continue to groove to Herman, Lily and the gang. They’re immortal.