Gothic humour – The Munsters v The Addams Family
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They might be creepy and spooky, but the ‘all together ooky’ television families of The Addams Family and The Munsters made audiences hysterical in the mid-Sixties, and we’re still laughing today. For these marvellous monsters next door, every day was Hallowe’en. Both shows arrived on American television in the same week in September 1964. Clearly, there was something in the air – but which of these kooky families amused us most back in the day?
MEET THE ADDAMS
The Addams Family had the deeper heritage, as it was based on cartoons from The New Yorker. Charles Addams’ single panel drawings had satirised the all-American nuclear family since the late Thirties. Until the television series came along, the family were unnamed and the cartoons were simple fun, playing up their Gothic overtones. Producer David Levy brought Addams’ cool characters to television, turning the macabre cartoon more family friendly for ABC. Although they were oddball, the Addams Family were never malicious. “They’re not monsters
or ghouls,” recalled Levy. “They’re simply a rather peculiar family in the neighbourhood.” It was Levy who came up with their names: Gomez, Morticia, Lurch, Uncle Fester, Wednesday, Pugsley, and Thing.
CREEPY BUT CATCHY
The combination of the writing, heavily influenced by Nat Perrin (who had written for the Marx Brothers), and the superb casting made The Addams Family a hit. Oscar-nominated Carolyn Jones embodied Morticia, often seen cutting the heads off roses. Her long, straight, dark hair and floor-length
dress was her trademark. Gomez, her husband, was an incorrigible romantic played by John Astin. Their children, Wednesday (Lisa Loring) and Pugsley (Ken Weatherwax), were as strange as their parents. Morticia’s Uncle Fester was Jackie Coogan, whose imposing bald head disguised the fact he’d once been a child star who’d featured alongside Charlie Chaplin in the 1921 tearjerker The Kid. Larger than life 6ft 9in Ted Cassidy played Lurch, the family butler (‘You rang?’), and often provided the disembodied hand that roamed the household, known as Thing. One character not in the original
cartoons was the enigmatic Cousin Itt, apparently made of nothing but hair and played by Felix Silla.
One of the most memorable parts was the finger-clicking opening titles set to a catchy harpsichord theme by Vic Mizzy (‘They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky, they’re altogether ooky, The Addams Family’). Cassidy’s Lurch popped in with deadpan but encouraging words like ‘neat’, ‘sweet’, and ‘petite’. Once heard, never forgotten.
The show ran for two years and 64 half-hour episodes. In the UK, it ran on ITV until 1966.