In the 1960s, Bill Mumy was one of the busiest young actors on television, appearing on everything from Bewitched and The Twilight Zone to Perry Mason and The Virginian. But there was one famous TV role Mumy could have added to that list—and taking it might have changed his career completely.
Mumy revealed on the Up Next with John Contratti podcast that he was offered the role of Eddie Munster on The Munsters, the part that ultimately went to Butch Patrick.
“I did not audition for it. I was offered that role,” Mumy said, explaining that becoming the young werewolf simply “didn’t seem like a good fit” at the time.
One factor was the elaborate makeup required for Eddie, something Mumy wasn’t particularly interested in doing. More importantly, the young actor was enjoying the freedom of moving from series to series and playing dramatically different characters.
One week, Mumy recalled, he might be appearing on The Virginian, followed by Alfred Hitchcock, Bewitched, Ozzie and Harriet, a Disney movie, Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey or Perry Mason.
Those roles allowed him to play “the mean kid, the good kid, the sick kid, the messed up kid, the abandoned kid,” he said. By comparison, committing to Eddie Munster and potentially being “fourth banana” on a weekly series wasn’t particularly appealing.
Mumy has no regrets about passing. He praised Patrick, who played Eddie throughout The Munsters, saying his fellow actor “has honored that character and owns that role.”
But there was another enormous reason the decision worked out for Mumy.
“If I had taken the role of Eddie Munster, I wouldn’t have been able to do Lost in Space,” he said.
The Munsters was still in production when Mumy began Lost in Space, which premiered in 1965. Instead of Eddie Munster, Mumy became Will Robinson, the young space traveler whose adventures with the Robot produced one of the most recognizable relationships in 1960s television.
And Will was exactly the sort of character Mumy had wanted to play.
“Will Robinson was a superhero,” he recalled. “He had his superhero outfits, he knew how to program the robot and fly the ships, and he had a laser gun that he actually got to use.”
Mumy added simply, “I loved that guy.”
The role also transformed Mumy’s level of fame. He recalled that roughly 30 million people were watching Lost in Space each week during its three-season run, which produced 83 episodes. By the show’s second season, he experienced just how recognizable Will Robinson had become during a frightening visit to Disneyland, where hundreds of young fans suddenly surrounded him after someone spotted him near Main Street.
Nearly six decades later, it’s difficult to imagine anyone but Patrick as Eddie Munster—or anyone but Mumy warning the Robinson family about whatever danger awaited them in space.
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