Addams Family Songwriter Dies

Songwriter Vic Mizzy, best-known for the Addams Family and Green Acres theme tunes, has died at his Bel-Air home aged 93. Mizzy wrote songs for stars Dean Martin and Doris Day before moving into film and TV composing. The WWII vet wrote the Addams Family theme on harpsichord, singing and overlaying all the vocals himself because the production company refused to pay for singers.

"Vic was one of the wittiest composers I ever met," the author of a book on TV theme tunes tells the Los Angeles Times. "He had an uncanny ability to incorporate his own personal sense of humor into his music." Mizzy owned the publishing rights to the Addams Family theme and profited from the catchy tune's long-lived popularity. "I sat down; I went 'buh-buh-buh-bump [snap-snap], buh-buh-buh-bump," he recalled in an interview last year. "That's why I'm living in Bel-Air: Two finger snaps and you live in Bel-Air." (More theme song stories.)