One year ago: Vic Mizzy

"They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky, they're altogether ooky: the Addams family."

With that catchy tune from the popular sitcom "Addams Family," film and television composer Vic Mizzy, who died one year ago, was propelled into Hollywood fame.

"I sat down; I went 'buh-buh-buh-bump [snap-snap], buh-buh-buh-bump,' " Mizzy recalled in a 2008 interview on CBS' "Sunday Morning" show. "Two finger snaps and you live in Bel-Air."

For his theme song, Mizzy played a harpsichord, which gives the theme its unique flavor. And because the production company, Filmways, refused to pay for singers, Mizzy sang it himself and overdubbed it three times.

Mizzy is also well known for writing the theme for another popular sitcom, "Green Acres," the 1965-71 rural comedy starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor.

Author Jon Burlingame described the themes for "The Addams Family" and "Green Acres" as "two of the best-remembered sitcom themes of all time."

Before his TV composing days, Mizzy wrote popular songs such as "There's a Faraway Look in Your Eye" and "Pretty Kitty Blue Eyes." Before that, he attended New York University and served four years in the Navy during World War II.

For more on the composer, read Vic Mizzy's obituary by The Times' Dennis McLellan.

-- Michael Farr

Photo: Vic Mizzy. Credit: Associated Press

 

Comments

[Mike Dudnikov]

Vic Mizzy, the son of poor immigrant Jewish parents born in 1916 in Brooklyn, New York, was a composer who wrote numerous songs and scored many Hollywood pictures. He composed songs for such as Perry Como and Dean Martin, his best known being My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time, a hit recording for Doris Day. Mizzy also worked on some of the biggest MGM films of the 1950s, including several Esther Williams movies, and contributed theme music for movies at Paramount and Universal. Despite this and providing music for television shows featuring Red Buttons and Phyllis Diller, and numerous dramatic shows, as well as arranging music for Ray Bloch and Andre Kostalonetz, he is best remembered for two sitcom theme songs. One was for Green Acres and the other for The Addams Family. Taking the then unprecented move of securing the rights to both of these themes he continued to profit later in life as both songs continued to be played at sporting events and used in commercials. Mizzy referring to The Addams Family song was fond of saying, as the above article notes, "Two finger snaps and you live in Bel Air."