Fred Grandy

At 76 years old, Fred Grandy has this physical status:

Fredrick Lawrence Grandy (born June 29, 1948) is an American actor who appeared on "Gopher" on the television show The Love Boat and later became a member of the United States House of Representatives from the state of Iowa.

Grandy was the host of The Grandy Group, a morning drive time radio talk show on 630 WMAL in Washington, D.C.

Early life

Grandy was born in Sioux City, Iowa, as the youngest of three sons of William Grandy, who worked in his father's insurance company, and his wife Bonnie. His father died of a heart attack when Grandy was eleven years old. A year later, his mother died of an aneurysm.

Margaret Avery, his mother's closest friend (a widow who later married his father's doctor), raised the young Grandy. He went to public schools until ninth grade, after which he attended high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, as his father and brothers did.

Grandy, the roommate of David Eisenhower, President Dwight D. Eisenhower's grandson, and later became the best man at Eisenhower's wedding to Julie Nixon, the daughter of then-president Richard Nixon, in December 1968.

In 1970, a grandy graduated with a bachelor's degree in English studies from Harvard University. He formed "The Proposition," an improvisational group at Harvard in 1971, and then returned to the show when it was relocated off-Broadway in 1971. Jane Curtin, a former Saturday Night Live actor, was one of his co-stars.

Despite being old enough to vote for Vietnam, Grandy had a large lottery number and was not prepared for Vietnam.

Personal life

Grandy has been married twice before. He married Jan Gough in 1969, a Radcliffe undergraduate, but they were divorced in 1983. To this union, a son and a daughter were born. Grandy married romance novelist Catherine Mann, whom he had interviewed as one of the first reporters for Entertainment Tonight, on March 28, 1987. They have one child (born 1989). Grandy and his wife appeared on stage in 1993 as part of the play Love Letters for charity (especially children's charities).

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Acting career

On the American television series The Love Boat, Burl "Gopher" Smith played Grandy. The series aired for nine seasons (1977–86). Several vignettes for the show were also written. When travelling Turkey to film scenes for the show, Grandy suffered serious burns when a balloon filled with hydrogen exploded.

Grandy appeared on numerous television shows including Love, American Style (1969); Maude (1973); and Welcome Back, Kotter (1975). Grandy appeared in The Girl Most Likely to..., a 1973 made-for-TV film starring Ted Gates.

Walt, a criminology undergraduate working as a night watchman at "Fred's Wax Museum," appeared in the Saturday morning TV series Monster Squad (1976). In the late 1970s, he appeared in a number of Match Game episodes. In the male guest-star seat in the top row left, he sat in the male seat.

Grandy returned to the stage in May 2013 in a production of Sleuth at the Surflight Theatre in Beach Haven, New Jersey. Grandy appeared on Season 3 of The Mindy Project, in which his son, Charlie Grandy, is a writer, in 2014. He portrayed Dr. William Ledreau. He has appeared in three television series, The Mindy Project, Knight Squad, and the forthcoming Sprung. He has appeared in regional theatre productions around the country, including How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, On Golden Pond, I'm Not Rappaport, and Give 'em Hell, Harry!

Grandy holds a master of fine arts (MFA) degree from the Washington Shakespeare Theatre and George Washington University.

Political career

Grandy's political passions predated his acting career, and he was unknown to most television viewers during his tenure on The Love Boat. He began writing for Wiley Mayne, Iowa's 6th congressional district, in 1970-71, apart from his friendship with David Eisenhower.

Grandy, a Republican, ran for the open Iowa House of Representatives seat after Mayne's replacement, Democrat Berkley Bedell, refused to run in 1986, defeating challenger Clayton Hodgson by two percentage points (50% to 49.0%).

Even though Grandy attempted to separate himself from his film career (at the time), he admitted to People magazine that "if there is no Gopher, there would be no Fred Grandy for Congress."

He served on a variety of committees during his four terms in Congress, including Ways and Means, Agriculture, Standards of Official Conduct, and Education and the Workforce. Grandy received eight "Watchdog of the Treasury" awards as a member of Congress.

Grandy failed to run for another Congressional term in 1994 and instead entered the Republican primary election for governor of Iowa against incumbent Terry Branstad, but lost by almost four percentage points.

As a radio commentator and other fields, I have had a career as a radio journalist and others.

Grandy served as president and CEO of Goodwill Industries International from 1995 to 2000. He later worked as a national political analyst and taught a course on nonprofit organizations at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Andy Parks, a veteran of radio broadcasting, appeared on 630 WMAL in Washington, D.C., from 2003 to 2010. The service was rebranded in May 2010 and dubbed The Grandy Group shortly afterward. Grandy resigned from the programme on March 3, 2011 after allegations of mistrust among his and his wife's remarks regarding Islamic extremism or poor listenership.

Grandy was also the host of a show on Retirement Living TV called Daily Café (with MSNBC anchor Alex Witt). Since then, he has been a Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs at the Washington-based Center for National Security Policy, a far-right, anti-Muslim think tank, based in Washington, D.C., responsible for designing and implementing projects on domestic terrorism and counterintelligence.

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