What with him dying last week, I guess it's old news but I can't help linking to this funny and fascinating interview with Al Lewis, best known as Grandpa Munster, that originally appeared in the anarchist newspaper The Shadow.
Richard at Commie Curmudgeon already has the choice highlights from the interview, so I will only recommend that you go ahead and read the interview in its entirety. From having a quick google search about Lewis, I note that there is dispute in some quarters about the veracity of some of the details he gives about his past, but who gives a toss? The only thing I'm looking forward to in being an old codger is the leeway it will give me in embellishing the facts of my life when chewing the ear off of some nearby youngster. Anyway, it has an almost Ben Traven quality to it.
What I really want to know, however, is what was it with radicalism and old actors who played crotchety old geezers on popular mainstream hit tv shows from the sixties and seventies? That's Lewis marked down as a self-described anarchist and one time Green Party mayoral candidate lining up alongside Max the Butler from Hart to Hart, Lionel "I was too left-wing for the Communist Party" Stander, and Grandpa Zeb Walton, Will Geer, from the Waltons.
Anyone got any inside gossip on John Forsythe? Someone that smooth and well dressed could only have been a member of the SLP.
Hat tip to Commie Curmudgeon.
6 comments:
In, like 1998/99 my friend and I sat next to Al Lewis (at a restaurant) while he was being interviewed - on Roosevelt Island, of all places! (If you don't know this place it is part of Manhattan, but it is it's own island, and it's known for having the most amputees living on it in a square mile - I was there cuz I'd never been there and thought I'd check it out.) Anyway, the dude was a freak. He was being interviewed by these two guys who incidently, a few years later, I sorta came to know - they were working on a start-up mag/zine - and he wouldn't quit yelling at them. They mentioned the Munsters and he acted like he was gonna kill them. He absolutely refused to let them take even a single photo. Seriously, the guy was strange. Later, when I ran into one of the guys interviewing him he said that it was the hardest and most shocking interview he ever had to give. I don't doubt it.
You obviously haven't met many anarchists. They are a special breed apart. That would be considered mild behaviour at the London Anarchist Bookfair.
Is this Ben Traven related to B. Traven , or are you just guessing its Ben and not Billy or Bob or Brian Traven .Just being my usual pedantic self .
You're right, of course.
For some reason I always refer to him as Ben. I should have been a smartarse and referred to him as Ret Marut. ;-)
And even then , you could still be wrong , Darren , since it is believed that Ret Marut , too , is just also another of B. Traven's assumed names , or more accurately, his stage name from his acting days .
The mystery of B. Traven's true identity continues to this day , contrary to the claims of all those biographers of having solved it .
Darren, this blog reminds me of the local bus service here on Tyneside. You wait ages for a posting [bus] and 5 come along at once;-)
Nice to see you back, Comrade.
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