Keenan Wynn - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Wynn was born in New York City as Francis Xavier Aloysius James Jeremiah Keenan Wynn, the son of vaudeville comedian Ed Wynn and wife, the former Hilda Keenan. He took his stage name from his maternal grandfather, Frank Keenan, one of the first Broadway actors to star in Hollywood. His father was Jewish and his mother was of Irish Catholic background.

Ed Wynn encouraged his son to become an actor, and the two appeared together in the original Playhouse 90 television production of Rod Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight. The son was returning the favour: according to radio historian Elizabeth McLeod, it was Keenan who had helped his father overcome professional collapse and a harrowing divorce and nervous breakdown to return to work a decade earlier, and who now helped convince Serling and producer Martin Manulis that the elder Wynn should play the wistful trainer. He also appeared in a subsequent TV drama detailing the problems they had experienced while working on that show called The Man in the Funny Suit. In it, the Wynns, Serling, and much of the cast and crew played themselves. Keenan also featured in another Rod Serling production, a The Twilight Zone episode entitled, "A World of His Own" (1960) as playwright Gregory West, who uniquely caused the series's creator Rod Serling to disappear.