I’ve always been meaning to ask…
Which came first? The Munsters or Addams Family?
- Jinx
The Addams Family premiered Sept. 18, 1964. The Munsters on Sept. 24, 1964.
IIRC, The Addams Family was in production first and spies stole the idea to make the Munsters.
FTR, The Addams Family is MUCH funnier. (IMHO)
The Addams Family is funnier, more subtle, more clever, and more consistent in its mythos/storytelling.
Yeah, but the Munsters had a cooler car.
From books I’ve read, most of the Munster scripts were rewrites of old Leave It To Beaver episodes.
Plus, Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoons of the Addams Family (not named until the television series) go back to 1937.
Do you have any examples of this?
But which did better in the ratings?
The Munsters got to the big screen back in the '60s, so I’m guessing they had more viewers. (I actually saw that darn movie when it was first released, but I can’t remember the title to save my life.)
No evidence for the assertion that the Munsters shows were reworked Beaver scripts, but Bill Connely and Bob Mosher created both programs.
It’s entirely possible they recycled some ideas.
IIRC, one of the reasons Universal did The Munsters was to keep/renew the trademark for the makeup designs for Frankenstein and thier other classic monsters.
Morticia, suspecting Gomez of being unfaithful: “Gomez, do you know what the penalty for bigamy is in this state?”
Gomez, without missing a beat: “I would imagine it’s having two wives!”
rimshot
Such activity is not how a copyright is kept or renewed. The copyright on Universal’s visual conception of the Frankenstein monster derived from their 1931 movie Frankenstein, whose copyright was renewed by Universal in 1959, several years before The Munsters.
I thing The Addams Family is a much better show, but I’ve only seen reruns, and I don’t know what was more popular in the 60s.
IIRC, the Munsters movie was Munster Go Home
The Addams Family was brilliant and wonderful
The Munsters sucked goat ass.
Just felt I needed to share.
Addams family without a doubt.
They were first concieved as a complete counter to American family values, anti-mush and anti-sentimentality.
Bingo, plus the Munsters kept going out of their way to seem normal and whitebread and if they ran into a “normal” that freaked out at their unusual appearance, then it was the normal’s fault.
Of course, neither of them were exactly Shakespeare, relying on dumb running gags and whatnot. The laugh track, when used, was more irritating than anything else. Were we supposed to believe that an actual studio audience would chuckle when Morticia says “Thank you, Thing” for the eighth time?
In any event, the Addams movies rocked. Damn shame about Raul Julia, his last movie being (blech) Street Fighter, and all.
The Addams family, while campy, were more surreal and just weird, without becoming cliched.
The bed of nails, the bell pulls. Plus everything was actually very glamorous.
And the movies with Raul Julia and Christina Ricci were the best!
Oh yeah, The Addams Family had Lurch. Best damned butler. Ever.
I enjoyed the Addams Family much more then the Munsters.
However, I agree with Iawoot that the Munsters had the cooler car.