“Two finger snaps and you live in Bel Air,” Vic Mizzy said about the success of his theme song for tv’s The Addams Family. The film and television composer died of heart failure October 17 at the age of 93.

The 1964-66 tv series based on Charles Addams’ magazine cartoons starred John Astin as Gomez and Carolyn Jones as his wife, Morticia. The Los Angeles Times says that Mizzy himself performed all the bits that comprised its signature:

For his theme song, Mizzy played a harpsichord, which gives the theme its unique flavor. And because the production company, Filmways, refused to pay for singers, Mizzy sang it himself and overdubbed it three times. The song, memorably punctuated by finger-snapping, begins with: “They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky, they’re altogether ooky: the Addams family.”

Mizzy also wrote the theme song for the 1960s sit-com Green Acres.

Reading about The Addams Family brought to mind that other horror-comedy series, The Munsters, and its highly recognizable theme. I learned that The Munsters theme composer Jack Marshall died in 1973. He wrote many tv theme songs. And his son is Frank Marshall, producer of some of the best-known sf/f movies, including Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future.