Vic Mizzy RIP

Vic Mizzy, whose theme songs for TV's Green Acres and The Addams Family made an incalculable contribution to 1960s popular culture, died Monday at 93.

In an earlier interview with the Archive of American Television, Mizzy said he wanted the timing in the Addams Family opening sequence to be perfect. So he insisted on using a tool called a click track.

"Well, the director — Sidney Lanfield — he didn't know from click track," Mizzy said. "He said, 'Look, Vic, you wrote it. Why don't you just do it?' Well, that's what I did. I directed the main title on camera."



For the Addams Family theme song, Mizzy recorded his own voice and overdubbed it three times. He played the harpsichord, too. He used to joke that he bought his mansion in Bel Air with a couple of snaps of his fingers. That's where he died of heart failure Saturday. Mizzy's funeral was on Tuesday in California.



Original article by by Neda Ulaby for NPR.