the addams family, and the munsters
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The Addams Family was by far the cooler family. They are on my list of top ten TV families to have as neighbors. Amazingly enough as weird as they were, the Addams family was a very functional and supportive unit. They loved each other very much and were willing to go to extremes to help each other. The concern Gomez and Morticia had for Pugsly when he started hanging out with that questionable group the Boy Scouts was priceless.
The Munsters had the better theme music. That rockin surf guitar is still great today and works outside of the context of the show. What I remember most about the movie was their black sheep niece and their tricked out car. The Munster movie Munster Go Home is also a fun romp. The coffin race car was and still is a classic movie viehicle.
That was great, and a nice subtle message of inclusiveness. These "weirdos" with their macabre, unconventional lifestyle (and implicitly some rather kinky, fetishistic sexual practices) were the happiest, most well-adjusted characters on the show, and it was all the "normal" people who were neurotic. And while the Addamses saw normal folks as strange and eccentric, they didn't hate or fear them for it, but just shrugged it off and did their best to be helpful and neighborly.
Gomez and Morticia were also one of the only '60s-sitcom married couples to express overt romantic passion for one another, and I think they may have been the first (or at least among the first) to sleep in the same bed.
I never got into The Munsters. It always seemed like a pale imitation of TAF, though I know they were developed more or less simultaneously. It wasn't as funny, it was more self-conscious, and the characters and performers weren't as appealing.
They were definitely of different social strata, that's for sure. The Munsters struck me as a working-class immigrant family, as the characters were all of European origin. Neither rich nor poor, but Herman had to work for a living. They truly didn't see themselves as being different from anyone else (which, alas, was the show's one and only joke). As American as their lifestyle seemed to be though, there was still an Old World quality about them that emphasized that they really didn't fit in at all. A not so subtle dig at social equality in the 1960s.
The Addams embodied the idle rich. They knew they were different from other people and embraced it, setting themselves apart in their own private world of kink and fetishes. They had more money than they knew what to do with and seemed to spend frivilously. Did they really need a butler? Probably not but that's what rich people do. They staged elaborate games and pranks to occupy their time. But Gomez and Morticia truly did love each other, passionately. Lily and Herman's relationship was almost like a mother taking care of a slow child.
So of the two families, which one actually had the most fun? No contest. But the Munsters surf guitar and booming bass section totally beats the Addams harpsichord.
The Addams embodied the idle rich. They knew they were different from other people and embraced it, setting themselves apart in their own private world of kink and fetishes. They had more money than they knew what to do with and seemed to spend frivilously. Did they really need a butler? Probably not but that's what rich people do. They staged elaborate games and pranks to occupy their time. But Gomez and Morticia truly did love each other, passionately. Lily and Herman's relationship was almost like a mother taking care of a slow child.
So of the two families, which one actually had the most fun? No contest. But the Munsters surf guitar and booming bass section totally beats the Addams harpsichord.
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I don't agree. Maybe that's true of the movie version, but not the TV version. A running gag throughout the series was that they considered their behavior to be normal. They were always surprised when ordinary people didn't like the same things they did, and couldn't understand why their neighbors ran screaming from the house when confronted with a carnivorous plant or a pet "kitty-cat" (lion). Yes, they were idle rich, but I don't think they ever realized there was anything anomalous about that any more than about any of their other attributes.
No way. (Snap, snap!)
That's a valid point. (snap, snap!)
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Also note that The Addams Family was based on a comic strip of the same name and characters.
Not exactly. It was based on a set of recurring characters appearing intermittently in the single-panel cartoons which Charles Addams did for The New Yorker. The cartoons didn't constitute a strip and had no series name. The characters became known simply as "the family." And in the cartoons, none of them had names, aside from Morticia, who was addressed by name in one cartoon. When the TV series was developed by Nat Perrin, Charles Addams was consulted and he coined names for the rest of the characters in the show.
The cartoon versions of the characters were somewhat darker and more sinister, more like the family in the Sonnenfeld movies. For instance, the bald uncle (who became Fester in the show) had a definite sex-pervert vibe about him. Many of the gags and one-liners in the first Addams Family movie are direct re-enactments of Addams cartoons, and the films are definitely truer to the cartoons than the sitcom was. In fact, the movie didn't even give Nat Perrin credit, even though the TV series was the source of the title, most of the character names, some of the supporting characters such as Cousin Itt and the Thing (a composite of ideas from two separate Addams cartoons), and various other elements that the movies emulated.
And Nat Perrin was the primary one responsible for the tone and flavor of TAF as a sitcom. He was a writer on several Marx Brothers films and a longtime friend of Groucho Marx. The TV Addamses have a carefree, childlike, high-energy zaniness and surrealism that's evocative of the Marx Brothers' humor. I guess that's why I like the show so much. From what I've seen of The Munsters, it seemed more like an ordinary '60s sitcom. TAF had something distinctive about it, and I guess that Marxian influence is the source.
^^ My mistake. I always understood it to have been based on a regular strip. Thank you for the clarification.
Glad to help.
I think I'd have to say I prefer TAF to TM also. I haven't seen either in a long time but I do remember watching some repeats of the Munsters some years ago and being surprised and disappointed in it, when compared to The Addams Family.
Both had their strengths though. I thought Fred Gwynne was great as Hermann - that big goofy grin and the straight-armed hand clap. And Grandpa Munster was very memorable (not to mention the obvious fashion role model for Paulie Walnuts in The Sopranos!).
TAF just had a little more zaniness (in the best sense) or sense of the absurd though - just that little extra twist and kinkiness. And good as Fred/ Herman was, he wasn't quite as special as John Astin (the adoptive father of LOTR's Sean, btw).
In a very interesting post by Christopher, that piece in particular stood out to me. I didn't know of the Marx connection but I've always thought that Astin's Gomez had a very Groucho-esque quality. Indeed, if I could cast an 'all-time' Addams Family movie, I'd definitely have Groucho for Gomez. The late Raul Julia was very enjoyable in the movies, but he was a little too straightlaced, too Latin Lover and not enough Manic Marxist.
(Speaking of the movie adaptations, I also think it surprising that The Munsters never became a big budget movie on the back of the Addams' successes. Remember the talk of Arnie as Hermann and Danny DeVito as Grandpa Munster?)
Finally, I've always put these show's near contemporary The Beverly Hillbillies in the same bracket as the Munsters and Addams. It lacked the supernatural or freakish twist but was also about a bunch of misfits who frequently turned out to be more sensible and grounded than normal people. I always think of it as a sort of mainstream version of those shows.
Both had their strengths though. I thought Fred Gwynne was great as Hermann - that big goofy grin and the straight-armed hand clap. And Grandpa Munster was very memorable (not to mention the obvious fashion role model for Paulie Walnuts in The Sopranos!).
TAF just had a little more zaniness (in the best sense) or sense of the absurd though - just that little extra twist and kinkiness. And good as Fred/ Herman was, he wasn't quite as special as John Astin (the adoptive father of LOTR's Sean, btw).
In a very interesting post by Christopher, that piece in particular stood out to me. I didn't know of the Marx connection but I've always thought that Astin's Gomez had a very Groucho-esque quality. Indeed, if I could cast an 'all-time' Addams Family movie, I'd definitely have Groucho for Gomez. The late Raul Julia was very enjoyable in the movies, but he was a little too straightlaced, too Latin Lover and not enough Manic Marxist.
(Speaking of the movie adaptations, I also think it surprising that The Munsters never became a big budget movie on the back of the Addams' successes. Remember the talk of Arnie as Hermann and Danny DeVito as Grandpa Munster?)
Finally, I've always put these show's near contemporary The Beverly Hillbillies in the same bracket as the Munsters and Addams. It lacked the supernatural or freakish twist but was also about a bunch of misfits who frequently turned out to be more sensible and grounded than normal people. I always think of it as a sort of mainstream version of those shows.
It was a staple of 1960s sitcoms to feature either of the following:
1. Normal people in an outlandish setting
2. Outlandish people in a normal setting
The list is daunting. The Munsters, The Addams Family, Gilligan's Island, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, The Flying Nun, My Mother the Car, Nanny and the Professor, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, My Favorite Martian, Mr. Ed, Batman, The Ugliest Girl in Town, My Living Doll, Hogan's Heroes, Gomer Pyle, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Captain Nice, Mr. Teriffic, on and on. It's About Time had both: modern astronauts in the prehistoric past and cavemen in the present day.
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According to a Gilligan's Island documentary I watched about 6 years ago, the Castaways were a microcosm of American culture stranded on a desert island.
The Beverly Hillbillies was part of the "Hooterville Trilogy" that also included Petticoat Junction and Green Acres, and while it may not have been "supernatural or freakish," Green Acres was one of the most surreal sitcoms of the '60s. It was nominally about the normal Oliver Douglas (Eddie Albert) and his flaky wife (Eva Gabor) in the zany town of Hooterville, but Oliver ended up being the one who was out of touch with the insane reality that all the other characters happily embraced -- making it an inversion of the Addams formula in a different way. This was a show where the characters actually noticed and commented on the credits superimposed above them on the screen, or the stirring patriotic music that came out of nowhere to accompany Oliver's frequent speeches, yet Oliver remained perennially unaware, the only character on the show who was trapped by the fourth wall.
It seemed as if Oliver existed in a tangent universe of his own, in that he always performed his daily farm chores while wearing a three-piece suit and tie. No one in Hooterville even noticed. Then again, no one seemed to notice that Arnold Ziffle, a pig, was indeed a pig.
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If you ever saw Yvonne DeCarlo without her make-up you would reconsider that statement.
She didn't look that bad wearing the make-up. But Carolyn Jones in skin-tight black has always been my weakness, so I gotta go with Morticia...hot.
Oh, don't get me wrong. They were both
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