Al ‘Grandpa Munster’ Lewis dead at 82

NEW YORK – Actor-comedian Al Lewis, who played “Grandpa” on the famed 1960s sitcom, “The Munsters,” died Friday night, friends said Saturday. He was 82.

With an unforgettable face and an ever-present cigar, in his later years “Grandpa Al” became a popular New York restaurant owner who was active in politics and even ran for governor.

Lewis was born Albert Meister in upstate New York and raised in Brooklyn. He worked as a salesman, waiter, poolroom owner, store detective, circus clown and vaudeville performer, and along the way he earned a Ph.D. in child psychology from Columbia University.

Then television made him famous, first in the role of Officer Leo Schnauser on the police sitcom “Car 54, Where Are You?” which ran from 1961 to 1963, then as the vampire Grandpa Munster in “The Munsters,” from 1964 to 1966. “The Munsters” especially has enjoyed an extended life in re-runs worldwide.

“You have no idea of the love I get from total strangers because of ‘The Munsters,’ ” Lewis once told the New York Daily News.

Later, he ran a brokerage firm in Los Angeles for a time, and made cameo appearances in a number of Hollywood films, including “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” and “Married to the Mob.”

Moving back to New York in the ‘90s, Lewis opened Grandpa’s restaurant in Greenwich Village and got into politics. In 1998, he ran for governor and got 50,000 votes as a Green Party candidate.

Lewis was hospitalized in 2003 for an angioplasty, but complications led to an emergency bypass and the amputation of his right leg below the knee and all the toes of his left foot. He was in a coma for a month, but recovered.

He is survived by his wife, Karen Ingenthron-Lewis, three sons and four grandchildren.