Frederick Hubbard Gwynne (July 10, 1926 – July 2, 1993) was an American actor, artist, and author, who is widely known for his roles in the 1960s television sitcoms Car 54, Where Are You? (as Francis Muldoon) and The Munsters (as Herman Munster), as well as his later film roles in The Cotton Club (1984), Pet Sematary (1989), and My Cousin Vinny (1992).

Gwynne was born on July 10, 1926, in New York City, the son of Frederick Walker Gwynne, a partner in the securities firm Gwynne Brothers, and his wife Dorothy Goddard (née Ficken) Gwynne, who, before her marriage, was a successful illustrator , known for the "first cereal mascot", the "Sunny Jim" advertising character for the breakfast cereal, Force, for the advertising agent Earnest Elmo Calkins. He had at least two siblings, Dorothy Gwynne and Bowers Gwynne, both of whom died young. His paternal grandfather, Walker Gwynne, was an Anglican priest, born c. 1846 in Camus, County Tyrone, Ireland, who married American Helen Lea Bowers. His maternal grandfather, H. Edwards Ficken, was a British immigrant who married the American Josephine (or Josephina) Preston Hubbard. Although Gwynne partially grew up in Tuxedo Park, New York, he spent most of his childhood in South Carolina, Florida, and Colorado because his father traveled extensively.

Following his father's death, his mother sent him to boarding school at Groton School, where he graduated in 1944 and may have set the school record for disciplinary black marks. He was president of the drama club and made his first stage appearance in a school production of Henry V. Forty years later, he used his drawing skills to pen the school's official campus map.

Having attended high school during World War II, Gwynne joined the United States Navy after graduation, serving as a radioman on submarine chaser USS Manville (PC-581).

After the war, Gwynne attended art school at the Phoenix School of Design (now affiliated with the Pratt Institute) in New York, with "the dream of doing Saturday Evening Post covers." He found that the work was not right for him, and transferred to Harvard College in 1948, graduating in 1951. He was a member of the Fly Club, served as president of the Harvard Lampoon (and as an in-house cartoonist), sang with the Harvard Krokodiloes a cappella group, and acted for the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. He was affiliated with Adams House. During his tenure as Lampoon president, the Middlesex County District Attorney once attempted to ban the publication of the Lampoon's parody magazine for obscenity. In response, Gwynne joked that "This just proves what we already knew – moral standards in New England are higher than elsewhere in the country."

In the 1940s, Gwynne was a summertime swimming instructor at the Duxbury Yacht Club pool in Duxbury, Massachusetts.

Gwynne joined the Brattle Theatre Repertory Company after his 1951 graduation, then moved to New York City. To support himself, Gwynne worked as a copywriter for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, resigning in 1952 upon being cast in his first Broadway role, a gangster in a comedy called Mrs. McThing starring Helen Hayes. Another early role was a New York City Drama Company production at City Center of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost in 1953, in the role of Dull, a constable. Gwynne preferred theater to film and television, and maintained that if the United States had a national theater mounting year-round productions, he would rather work there.

In 1954, he made his first cinematic appearance playing – in an uncredited role – the laconic character Slim in the Oscar-winning film On the Waterfront. Shortly afterwards, Phil Silvers sought him for his television show because he had been impressed by Gwynne's comedic work in Mrs. McThing. As a result, Gwynne made a memorable appearance on The Phil Silvers Show in the episode "The Eating Contest" as the character Corporal Ed Honnergar, whose depressive eating binges are exploited in an eating contest.^{[citation needed]}