Vic Mizzy, 93, a film and television composer best known for writing the theme songs for the 1960s sit-coms "Green Acres" and "The Addams Family," died of heart failure Saturday at his home in Los Angeles' Bel-Air neighborhood, said Scott Harper, a friend and fellow composer.
A veteran writer of popular songs such as "There's a Faraway Look in Your Eye" and "Pretty Kitty Blue Eyes," Mizzy launched his TV career in 1960 when he was asked to compose music for the dramatic anthology series "Moment of Fear."
He moved on to score episodes of "Shirley Temple's Storybook" and "The Richard Boone Show" and to write the themes for "Klondike" and the Dennis Weaver series "Kentucky Jones."
Then came an offbeat assignment: "The Addams Family," the 1964-66 TV series based on Charles Addams' macabre magazine cartoons and starring John Astin as Gomez Addams and Carolyn Jones as his wife, Morticia.
For his theme song, Mizzy played a harpsichord, which gives the theme its flavor. And because production company Filmways refused to pay for singers, Mizzy sang it himself and overdubbed it three times.
The song, 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."
For Mizzy, who owned the publishing rights to "The Addams Family" theme, it was an easy payday.
