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R.I.P. Vic Mizzy, Composer Of ‘Addams Family’ & ‘Green Acres’ Themes
At my moving away party, when I left NYC after 28 years to come live in Middle Georgia, my partner and I did a rousing rendition of the “Green Acres” theme song. (I sang Eva/Lisa’s part.) Now it’s my ringtone.
Vic Mizzy, the man who wrote it — he also wrote the ‘Addams Family’ theme song — died Saturday at his home in Bel-Air. The LATimes:
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. The song, memorably punctuated by finger-snapping, begins with: “They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky, they’re altogether ooky: the Addams family.”
In the 1996 book “TV’s Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes From ‘Dragnet’ to ‘Friends,’ ” author Jon Burlingame writes that Mizzy’s “musical conception was so specific that he became deeply involved with the filming of the main-title sequence, which involved all seven actors snapping their fingers in carefully timed rhythm to Mizzy’s music.” [...]
The season after “The Addams Family” made its debut, Mizzy composed the title song for “Green Acres,” the 1965-71 rural comedy starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor.
Via NPR.
6 Responses to “R.I.P. Vic Mizzy, Composer Of ‘Addams Family’ & ‘Green Acres’ Themes”
Slowly, the various parts of my childhood become history. How my parents worried that my love of the Addams Family cartoons and television show would warp me. And how unhappy they were when I played the show's theme song on the family‘s electronic organ. Simpler times.
“when I left NYC after 28 years to come live in Middle Georgia, my partner and I did a rousing rendition of the “Green Acres” theme song”
You can be sophisticated lefties all you want, but you don't dare criticize the same yuppies who were in the Country SUV television commercial!
DLS… Link please?
Joe — good think I looked back … it was an SUV commercial. (Yes, yuppies in their SUV.)
Let me try to find a link.
… I'm not able to find anything. It was an SUV commercial, if I remembered. The couple was a typical yuppie (and straight) couple moving into a suburban or exurban McMansion with lots of greenery around it. At the very end, I believe one of them had a pitchfork or something else held in one hand and tapping it twice on the ground (in time with the last two notes from the song) and it caused something else to topple. It may have been a Ford commercial and I'm certain it was for an SUV, but don't remember more.
Sorry, Joe — but if you're a sophisticate, you'll find recourse in that ordinary yuppie TV commercials apparently didn't win appreciation (ordinarily) and find their way on-line somewhere. (If you can find the commercial, I think you'll like it, though the home site would be more like Atlanta than Milledgeville.)
[...] Click here to perspective a embedded video. At my relocating divided party, when we left NYC after twenty-eight years to come live in Middle Georgia, my partner as well as we did a rousing delivery of a “Green Acres” thesis song. (I sang Eva/Lisa’s part.) Now it’s my ringtone . Vic Mizzy, a male who wrote it — he additionally wrote a ‘Addams Family’ thesis strain — died Saturday during his home in Bel-Air. The LATimes: For his thesis song, Mizzy played a harpsichord, that gives a thesis a singular flavor. And since a p Blog Source [...]