VIC MIZZY
The Addams Family
Brooklynite, accordion player and good-humored kid Victor Mizzy grew up post-World War I in the New York borough's Crown Heights neighborhood. His interest in music was all-consuming as he set his sights on a life of creating catchy melodies. Having mastered the piano while excelling in music theory and composition at New York University during the mid-1930s, it was over the course of doing arrangements for a series of school shows with hometown pal Irving Goldberg that Vic's chosen path became certain. For the next few decades he made a substantial living as a songwriter, then in the '60s, living in Los Angeles, hit his stride scoring television series; a chance opportunity to work with amusingly macabre cartoon artist Charles Addams resulted in TV's creepiest, kookiest, ooky-est comedy series, The Addams Family, for which Mizzy created one of the all-time most memorable small-screen theme songs.
Mizzy and Goldberg (who'd changed his name to Irving Taylor by the late 1930s) composed several hit songs, starting with "There's a Faraway Look in Your Eye" by bandleader Jimmy Dorsey featuring vocalist Bob Eberly in 1938. The following year they penned "Igloo," performed by Vincent Lopez and his orchestra with singer Betty Hutton (pronouncing the title 'ig-a-loo'), the first of many hit songs for the soon-to-be top-billed movie actress. Vic and Irv wrote popular songs interpreted by some of the biggest stars of the '40s big band period including Horace Heidt, The Andrews Sisters and Vaughn Monroe.
By 1945 Vic had teamed with a new songwriting partner, Manny Curtis; there were several versions of "My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time," the biggest of which was by Les Brown's orchestra with breakout star Doris Day, a long-running number one hit that year. It was Mizzy's biggest chart hit and best-known song...until the '60s, when TV provided an outlet for hummable singalong themes heard weekly by millions. Curtis shortened his first name to Mann and the two worked together well into the 1950s. Vic married Mary Small, a singer who'd worked regularly on radio; in 1951 she recorded the Mizzy-Curtis song "I Like It, I Like It" for King Records, with Vic leading the orchestra, though it was Jane Turzy's version (as "I Like It") that became a hit. Other best sellers of that time written by Vic and Mann were "Choo'n Gum" by Teresa Brewer and "The Jones Boy" by The Mills Brothers.
Since 1932, Charles Addams had been a regular cartoonist for the New Yorker magazine. In 1938, the first of a long series of single-panel cartoons appeared featuring a bizarre family who remained nameless for many years, enjoyed by millions who found haunted houses, graveyards and deathlike creatures to their liking. Those close to Charles during his childhood showed concerns about his morbid sense of humor, though when fame came as a result of his creepy drawings, he appeared publically as a well-dressed, dapper ladies' man, dating movie stars like Greta Garbo and Joan Fontaine and counting celebrities like Alfred Hitchcock, Burgess Meredith and Ray Bradbury among his close friends. He also had a preference for women who resembled the main female character in his comic panels (whose name, it was later revealed, was Morticia); all three of his wives throughout the years bore a resemblance to her.
In 1960, Vic Mizzy was hired to compose music for a short-lived TV drama series, Moment of Fear, and it was immediately obvious that he excelled at creating suspenseful music cues. In 1964 he scored his first of several theatrical films, The Night Walker, which led to an assignment from producer David Levy, a friend of Vic's since his time in New York City. Levy, a fan of Addams' cartoons, developed a TV version and both Addams and Mizzy were brought together to collaborate on its creation. Charles finally had a reason to name his beloved characters: sensuous parents Morticia and Gomez, portrayed by Carolyn Jones (an Oscar nominee in 1957 for The Bachelor Party) and John Astin (previous star of sitcom I'm Dickens, He's Fenster), Uncle Fester, played with bald-headed gusto by former child star Jackie Coogan, children Wednesday and Pugsley (Lisa Loring and Ken Weatherwax), Grandmama (character actress Blossom Rock) and Frankenstein Monster-like butler Lurch, played with head-shaking bewilderment by six-foot-nine-inch Ted Cassidy. Other regular characters were Thing, a mischevious, disembodied hand, and the short-statured, long-haired Cousin Itt. Such 'neat, sweet, petite' kinfolk!
Addams and Mizzy, ever-present advisors to the weird and wonderful dark comedy series, were key components to its success as they actually directed the directors of various episodes, worked with the writers and offered guidance to the actors on character traits (in Addams' case) and musical cues (a la Mizzy). The show's opening sequence was directed by Mizzy, who also voiced the theme song (overdubbed four times to sound like a group) while playing harpsichord. He had the entire cast snapping their fingers onscreen and it wasn't long before viewers mimicked the intro while singing along: 'Their house is a museum, when people come to see 'em, they really are a screea-um, the Addams family!' Hideous and humorous: a formula for success in a year known for two other supernatural-type TV sitcoms: Bewitched and The Munsters.
"Main Title - The Addams Family," an all-instrumental single release by Mizzy of the show's theme, was followed by an entire soundtrack album that included the melodies he'd written for the characters: a pensive "Morticia's Theme," bouncy "Gomez" tune, mildly rocking "Uncle Fester's Blues" and lighthearted "Lurch" and "Thing" themes. Even "The Addams House" had its own theme, heard at the beginning of each episode's opening scene. All are quite infectious and well-known to regular viewers. There were, not surprisingly, cover versions of the song: Milton Delugg and Lawrence Welk each did versions and Sonny Bono produced an oddball variation, "The Addams Family (Thank You, Thing)," credited to The Fiends. As the series began its second season in the fall of '65, Cassidy released a novelty single, "The Lurch" on Capitol Records (credited to Ted Cassidy as Lurch), with a cheerful vocal chorus offset by his character's ominous-sounding comments (starting with signature line "You rang?").
A new comedy series in the fall of '65 had a Mizzy-penned sitcom theme that became nearly as widely-loved as the 'mysterious and spooky' Addams tune. Green Acres (a spinoff of Petticoat Junction) starred Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor as Oliver and Lisa Douglas, who left New York for a simpler life down on the farm. As with the previous show, Mizzy wrote the theme and directed the sequence to sync the actors to the lines that describe the show's premise. Oliver: 'Land...spreadin' out so far and wide...keep Manhattan, just gimme that countryside'...Lisa: 'I...just adore a penthouse view...dahlin' I love you, but give me Park Avenue!' The series had a six-year run. Don Knotts (a five-time Emmy winner for playing Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show) starred in a quintet of big-screen comedies between 1966 and 1971 that all had Vic Mizzy music scores: The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, The Reluctant Astronaut, The Shakiest Gun in the West, The Love God? and How to Frame a Figg.
In addition to other publications, Charles continued contributing to the New Yorker, keeping the Addams Family panel cartoons coming until his death in 1988. Vic stuck around well into the 21st century, long enough to enjoy countless revivals of The Addams Family in animated and live-action form, not to mention seemingly endless reruns of the mid-'60s TV series and a 1977 reunion special, Halloween with the New Addams Family, featuring nearly every original cast member. The most popular of the big-screen adaptations of Charles Addams' frightfully funny creation, The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, appeared in 1991 and 1993; as before, Vic Mizzy's freakishly infectious theme was an important ingredient in the films' popularity.
