"Two finger snaps and you live in Bel-Air"
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Artist:Vic Mizzy
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Track:The Addams Family, Green Acres
'They're creepy and they're kooky/Mysterious and spooky.' With those lyrics, some harpsichord, and the aforementioned finger snaps, composer Vic Mizzy vaulted into pop culture immortality. Along with the theme for 'The Addams Family,' Mizzy also concocted the song that outlined the domestic scenario of 'Green Acres, with the timeless line, 'Darling, I love you, but gimme Park Avenue.' Mizzy died on Saturday, at 93, and his obituary is like something out of 'The Sunshine Boys.'
With his partner Irving Taylor (isn't that perfect?), Mizzy appeared on radio's 'Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour,' the 'American Idol' of pre-WWII America. Mizzy went on to write such works as 'With a Hey and a Hi and a Ho-Ho-Ho' (iTunes has the Louis Prima version, if you're interested), 'Choo N' Gum,' and 'No Bout Adoubt It.' He scored a bunch of movies starring Don Knotts, worked with Don Rickles and Phyliis Diller on TV, and wrote the much-recorded 'My Dreams Are Getting Better All The Time' (Doris Day has a nice version of that one with the Les Brown Orchestra).
All of which is swell, but his most indelible contributions, the ones that will last as long as there are machines that play vintage television shows, are songs that were about a minute long and introduced us to a family that was altogether ooky, and a husband and wife who left the big city for greener acres.
Comments (5)
RIP Vic
Ah yes, the days when TV had enough time for a series theme song/tune. Today's hyperdriven TV producers have ears of tin plate, and they wonder why vintage TV shows are popular with advertiser's "16-30" target demographic on TVLand. I'll end this polemic with a bit of pre-Internet urban legend: According to my Ag teacher/Elementary school Vice Principal father, "Green Acres" was a USDA testing ground somewhere in the midwest. Like Area 51, I can find no references to it via Google! (He was a post-World-War-II graduate of Stout Institute, and knew a thing or two about crops and chickens.)
Really, the only time "ooky" has ever worked in a song lyric....
I imagine that's true. Although Roy Orbison did ok with 'ooby' ('Ooby Dooby'),' and there are a number of songs with 'oo-wee.'
I have to go lie down now.