I bought the The Munsters boxed set of DVDs over four years ago. I’ve finally popped one into the player.
Selecting ‘Play all’ from the menu, the first episode started… and it was in colour! It turns out that it was the 15-minute unaired pilot called ‘My Fair Munster’… that was filmed in colour with Joan Marshall as ‘Phoebe’ (later, Lily) and Happy Derman as a rather nasty Eddie. The second show to come up was ‘Munster Masquerade’ (Season 1, Episode 1), which has just finished. Season 1, Episode 2 is ‘My Fair Munster’, this time in black-and-white, 30 minutes long, and with Yvonne De Carlo and Butch Patrick as Lily and Eddie.
I wonder if they used the same sets in the series that they used in color pilot. I’ve seen color pictures of The Addams Family set and it’s all bright pink and peach in order for it to look right when shot in B&W.
I wonder how many series have been tweaked like this once they’re picked up for broadcast. I can think of several right offhand: Star Trek, Gilligan’s Island, The Patty Duke Show, That Girl…
I was just reviewing what TV Tropes had to say about the series. A common theory is that there’s some werewolf on Lily’s side of the family (possibly her never-seen mother) and that expressed with Eddie. Another speculation is that Herman’s gonads came from a werewolf, so he’d have passed those genes. It could even be that both are correct, if we’re going to take a goofy 60s sitcom that seriously.
The original pilot for Lost in Space (1965) had no Dr. Smith and no Robot (B-9). The Jupiter 2 was named the Gemini 12 and it was supposed to take them a lot longer to reach Alpha Centauri than 5 years. When LiS was picked up for network, Irwin Allen – ever frugal – chopped up the pilot and used pieces in different episodes of the first season.
I’d always assumed that Grandpa built the Munster Koach. Actually, it was introduced in S1.E4. Lily wants to get Herman a car for his birthday. She likes a hot rod, and she likes a hearse. So she buys both of them and has the used car dealer send it to a custom shop. Just shows ta go ya how Lily was.
(can’t remember the first line)
A vampire and a Frankenstein, giving birth to a little wolf boy
Grampa’s a vampire who goes out in the sun
And Marilyn, you’re normal, where the hell did YOU come from?
It seems that genetics don’t apply
To the Munsters
To the Munsters
The Jag wasn’t really the same thing as the Munster Koach. The Jag was just bodywork, whereas the Munster Koach was a hot rod. Hot rods were definitely a thing in the '50s and '60s, but I think they were supplanted by muscle cars.
The new Rob Zombie movie helpfully cleared up the werewolf confusion by adding a werewolf character who was related to Grandpa and Lily (Lily’s cousin?). So clearly there was some monster miscegenation at some point.
(Said tongue-in-cheek-- the abomination that is the Rob Zombie Munsters movie has no place in the Munsters canon)
As a child, I thought Lily was a ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ type because she had that streak of white in her hair, reminiscent of the Elsa Lanchester character, if she wore her hair down instead of Marge Simpson style.
If Joan Marshall’s Phoebe is any indication, I’d say the original idea was that the mom would be a Morticia Addams knockoff. Perhaps word of an Addams Family show made them recalibrate and go for a Morticia/Bride of Frankenstein/Daughter of Dracula mashup.
I read that Yvonne DeCarlo had been a renowned movie actress, but had gotten to the point where she wasn’t being cast for the big screen anymore, so at least the Munsters put food on her table. She was a diva on set, but in a good way. She’d entertain the cast with stories about Hollywood.
I guess it’s like if Meryl Streep joined a goofy TV show and the audience was too lowbrow to be familiar with her movies.
Interesting. So she kinda went the Lucille Ball route (although I don’t believe Lucille Ball never got much farther than “ingénue #2” in her movie career, and ‘owned’ her TV career much more than DeCarlo).
In a ‘Ginger vs. Mary Anne’ sense, who’s Team Lily and who’s Team Morticia? I think I’m a Morticia type, although Yvonne DeCarlo was quite a looker in her movie starlet days:
I wonder if they also “Spockified” his ears there, or if they were naturally pointy.
I seem to recall Lily Munster wearing a pointy witch hat at some point. Maybe it was a Halloween episode (did they even do them back then?) But yeah, the streak of white hair is very Bride of Frankenstein.
eta: from the wiki’s it seems Morticia was the one who once wore a witch hat.
I think “renowned” might be an exaggeration. Her career was mostly B-movie leads, with some supporting roles in bigger productions. And she had been appearing on TV since 1952, when a lot of Hollywood stars avoided the medium.
Lily was.
