The Addams Family, or The Munsters?

The two great monster family sitcoms...

The Addam's Family was higher class, imho.

The Munsters was low-rent and an obvious copy/rip-off.

Both were funny.

But I used to love the original Addam's Family comics, so I preferred the TV show based on them.

Which is better: "Game of Thrones" or "Two Broke Girls"?

Thing and Lurch were the reasons to watch.

I also enjoyed the occasional appearance of Cousin It.

The Munsters was funnier because of the chemistry between Fred Gwynn and Al Lewis.

The Munsters wasn't a ripoff a Addams at all. As a kid, it (The Munsters)had a slight edge for me. I thought it was more fun, and it did have a color second season. But as an adult looking back, it's obvious that The Addams Family was more sophisticated, better written, and better acted.

Morticia's sister Ophelia singing harmony with herself was not the kind of thing you'd find in a run-of-the-mill simple 60s sit-com like "The Munsters."

The ordinal Munsters theme music was brilliant.

The Munsters was clearly better than the Addams Family. The Munsters were real monsters. The Addams Family was just a group of eccentrics. No fun.

[quote]The Munsters wasn't a ripoff a Addams at all.

Of course it was.

A family of 'monsters', both which had a "weird" relative where the joke was that the weird one was "normal"... with frequent "fish out of water" jokes where they came in contact with "the real world".

They also started the same year, but The Addam's Family was adapted from previous material. And on two competing networks.

Yeah, not at all a rip off.

(rolling eyes)

I wanted more of them. More monster families. As a seven year old (and beyond), I felt the concept was inexhaustible.

I also treasure The Munsters' color-saturated movie debut, featuring their badass RatFink style family car, and Terry Thomas, set in England.

r12, it actually wasn't a rip-off.

Both shows premiered in the same year because there was a huge monster movie craze going on in the mid-Sixties in the United States with the re-release of old Universal Studios films. Both networks wanted a show to capitalize on it. CBS went directly to the source of the Universal horror films and used the archetypes from their films; ABC went to Charles Addams (who had famously combined horror and humor for his new Yorker cartoons) and asked him to create names for the family of ghoulish eccentrics he had created over the decades. But neither was an attempt of one network to steal the other's thunder; it just so happened that both networks were trying to cash in on the national craze for horror at the time (just the way as in 1981 all three networks tried to create college comedy shows to cash in on the success of "Animal House").

Oddly, the two TV shows still claim different fans. The Addams Family was the more original of the two shows, and many people loved that the Addamses were wealthy eccentrics who didn't care about fitting into society. The Munsters, on the other hand, thought of themselves as normal working class people, and were baffled that other people were horrified by them, and usually chalked it up to Marilyn's appearance ("She's not pretty like the rest of us," Eddie once sadly explained in a school report on his family): it may have been an obvious running joke, but it rarely if ever palled for children (both shows' intended audience). Both shows had great funny female leads who had been former B-list movie stars, but though John Astin's high spirits were fun, Fred Gwynne was much funnier as a male lead. The Addams Family had a great theme song from the first, but after the first season they souped up the orchestration of theme song of The Munsters so it was just as memorable.

I remember reading about two years ago that Tim Burton was doing work on a stop motion version of The Addams Family that was loyal to the look of The Chas Addams drawings. Wonder what happened there.

Everybody hated the musical version with Bebe Newirth, but didn't it make a lot of money?

[You do realize that this is a troll, right? It does not believe what it posts. It just craves attention. You might want to stop talking to it.]

As a kid I enjoyed The Munsters because it had better visual appeal. As I got older, I began to appreciate the subtlety and the subversive glee of The Addams Family.

Click on the link for color pics of The Addams Family sets. The color scheme is surprising.

I had to go with "The Munsters". I gave it the edge because of the utterly brilliant portrayal of Herman Munster by Fred Gwynne. Other than Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo, I cannot think of a more well observed, and perfectly acted example of a sit-com character with more heart and soul than most humans I've ever met. It gets better with age.

I'm serious.

I loved Grandpa ! He was a vampire from Transylvania who has a Brooklyn accent. "Hoiman ! Hoiman! Now where did that Hoiman go to?"

I'll buy that about Fred Gwynne's performance as Herman Munster, R18. Then again, I am someone who has spent decades trying to convince others that Gilligan's Island is well-executed and better than its reputation suggests. Low-brow comedy is legitimate comedy.

Munsters is better. I liked both, but Addams Family always seemed kind of pretentious to me. R14 gave a good description pointing out that the Munsters thought of themselves as normal family. That's what I thought was so clever about it. In fact, the producers/writers were the same ones who did all those 1950's family shows like Leave it to Beaver, so they were basically satirizing their own creations.

And for R8, Munsters did NOT have a color second season, you're thinking of their movie.

Hey r20, I am also a huge Gilligan fan!

My theory is that the timeless fun of the show is that the characters are the exact Commedia dell'Arte stock characters, so no others are needed for a huge variety of situations! I should write a term paper on it!

Loved the anti-perfect family aspect of both shows.

Did anyone ever see The New Munsters with John Schuck as Herman and (I think) Lee Merriwether as Lily? What about the latest reboot from a few years ago, 1313 Mockingbird Lane or something.

I love them both, but I give a slight edge to "The Addams Family" for the sheer eccentricness ( is that even a word? )

I wanted a "wolf-wolf" doll like Eddie Munster had.

I simply can't choose this time. I confess to a longstanding crush on Lurch, but The Munsters probably inspired more laughs.

I wish they had done a show in which both original casts met and had a party. Middle class American ghouls meet 1% Eastern European ghouls.

Lurch and Wednesday perform ballet.

Addams Family for me, if only for Carolyn Jones' sublime, understated, glamorous performance. (Mary!)

So different. Addams Family was derived from the cartoons, stitching the various Addams scenes and tableaux into a macabre, absurdist stew. All values of the main characters were idiosyncratic and anti-societal. For example, they were filthy rich and didn't care about money at all, and they were so secure in their heritage they didn't even notice social status. Women and men were equal, with women having the upper hand in parodies of chivalry.

The Munsters was derivative in other ways, but mainly was a parody of situation comedies with a little satire on American life. All values of the main characters were (with a few nods to the werewolf, vampiric and Frankenstein's Monster schtick) were mainstream and middle class. For example, they wanted money and social status. (The males, that is, because it also was constantly dinging the males and treated women as the wise homemakers and beauties.)

The original "Munsters" pilot is interesting -- it was in color, unlike the show (and Herman was blue instead of green).

Joan Marshall played the Lily role, which was originally called Phoebe and was a much more direct ripoff of Morticia Addams. And the kid who played Eddie was just too weird even for the show.

I'm giving my vote to the Addams Family.

Pugsley was originally going to be named "Pubert," but that was ultimately rejected as being too sexual. The Pubert name was finally used in the Addams Family Values movie when Gomez and Morticia had another baby.

Wow, R31, that was AWFUL.

And what a horrible, plodding credits sequence.

Yvonne DeCarlo and Butch Patrick's portrayals of the characters more as a normal mom and kid who just happened to be ghouls worked a lot better for the concept of the show. They were likeable characters you would have wanted for neighbors if you could get over the prejudice of living next to the daughter and grandson of Dracula.

R31: I don't think I've ever been more thankful for a pilot to be reworked and recast. The Munsters is so much better in b/w! And Yvonne DeCarlo and Butch Patrick were needed desperately.

[quote]Joan Marshall played the Lily role, which was originally called Phoebe and was a much more direct ripoff of Morticia Addams.

Read the post at r14: Lily was not a rip-off of Morticia.

Let's not forget the Flinstones ripoff, the Gruesomes.

I love the 2nd season intro, with the great revved-up theme music (I especially like how it gets light and swingy when Marilyn appears, and then goes back again).

Hugely agree that Yvonne DeCarlo was key to the show's success. She projected so much warmth and kindness--one of the reasons I liked that show the best was that they were much more of a family than the Addamses.

Beverley Owen really wanted to get off the show because she had a boyfriend in another city. They re-cast the part with a near-lookalike (Pat Priest) and hardly anyone noticed! Owen had to dye her hair dark hair, though, while Pat Priest was a natural blonde.

We were watching Munsters reruns in college and the guys were arguing about which Marilyn was hotter. I think Pat Priest won out, with one guy announcing that she really made his dick stand at attention. His public pronouncement made my dick stand at attention.

Pat Priest's mother was the Treasurer of the US under Eisenhower (and as such, her signature wa on the paper currency) and later the California state Treasurer. She was a Mormon Republican.

Yvonne HATED being on the show (she felt it was beneath her) and wasn't too happy that it went into 2nd season. The only reason why she didn't quit was that she had to support her sick husband.

That's a hard one. Both had their fun moments. I liked them both a lot, with a slight edge toward The Munsters.

Carolyn Jones and Yvonne de Carlo were both beautiful women.

Fred Gwynne and John Astin were both hilarious as the dads.

The Addams Family seemed weirder to me as a very young kid, borderline scary; The Munsters seemed good natured fun.

Al Lewis was priceless. I met him when he ran the restaurant in NY, great, warm man.

Only one of these shows spawned two hit movies...

how many seasons did each show have?

R18, go to YouTube and find the Fred Gwynne documentary. Fascinating story of how an actor deals with such "success."

The Addams Family never appealed to me as a kid, not one bit. I enjoyed the first movie with Raul Julia when it came out, however.

I was obsessed with The Munsters. I say this as someone born in '79, grew up watching the reruns on (I think) TBS, maybe WPIX 11 (New York), or WOR. Seeing that pilot was cool for the novel use of color (same reason I enjoyed Munsters Go Home!), but god almighty, the acting...

The second season of The Munsters was in color - wasn't it? Or was it just filmed in color but aired in b&w, like the second season of The a Lucy Show, which wasn't aired in color, but filmed in color.

I prefer the gay porno versions, The Cumsters and The Bottoms' Family.

I don't remember "The Munsters" ever being in color (except for that syndicated reboot that is best forgotten.) CBS was the last network to go "all color," and I think that was after "Munsters" was cancelled.

R47, where on earth are you getting this idea that the Munsters was filmed in color (but not shown in color)? It wasn't, but if that were the case, it would show up on the Wikipedia article for the show, and it doesn't.

R38, thank you for reminding me about the two different opening credits sequences. Of course there'd have to be, with the cast change, but I'd forgotten about the two different variations on the theme song.

Both are on YouTube; here's the link to the Season 2 opening.

"The Munsters" were a rip-off of "The Addams Family", just as "I Dream of Jeannie" was a rip-off of "Bewitched". The networks did it on purpose. It's not a theory. Networks are still doing it today. "Modern Family" led to "The New Normal".

R52, how did the show's creators get the idea to rip off the Addamses before the Addams Family even aired?

R52 You're an idiot. Please read the entire thread or at least do some research before posting this again.

My preference is the Addams Family though the Munsters come very close. The Munsters reminded me of a hilarious Vaudeville act and the chemistry between Herman and Grandpa was great. I liked the Addams Family more because it came off rather Gothic and strange. Plus John Astin and Carolyn Jones made such an intriguing couple.

"A family of 'monsters', both which had a "weird" relative where the joke was that the weird one was "normal".."

Who was the "normal" Addams' relative? I must have missed them.

Was there any behind-the-scenes dirt on either of these shows?

As a weird little girl, I loved the Addams Family. The Munsters was a minstrel act to me.

I liked The Munsters the best as a child and I now like The Addams Family the best as an adult

I prefer Monster vitamins.

Munsters was the poor person's Addams.

The Munster by far.

A little off topic but here's a great podcast from "You Must Remeber This" about Yvonne De Carlo's history as an upstart young dancer in Hollywood to a studio system B-movie starlet. It is a great listen.

I met Raul Julia's son in college.

It's not a question of one over the other. But it is interesting that while the Munsters sends up archetypes from the Universal Studios catalog of monster movies, Charles Addams used the same source as inspiration for his characters, which in turn was turned into a tv show.

So it would seem that in the "copycat" debate which frequently pits fans of either show against each other, The Munsters is the more authentic, less "copycat" show, having been drawn directly from Universal from its own original source material.

Which is better? Considering that only one family are technically monsters, (with the possible exception of zombie-like Lurch), the Munsters is the better of the two for monsterkids of all ages.

It was obvious that Gomez and Morticia had lots of freaky sex. As a kid I thought Morticia was the most beautiful name.

As soon as I saw your post R62 I remembered Screaming Mimi and how my sister and I would “compete” over getting her when we shook a Monster Vitamin into our hand.

Yvonne DeCarlo was considered a ‘B’ actress? What about her role in “The Ten Commandments” was that just a fluke? It seems like a juicy role for an actress.

With the exception of Lily, she never got too many really plum roles, poor thing.

But at least DL sent her a little bit of love:

This cast sounds kinda good

Raul Julia's son is hot in a weird looking way.

They were both horrible shows but between the two I preferred the Addams Family.

Neither was a rip-off of the other. They were proposed at the same time at different networks because of the fascination in American pop culture in the early 60s with monster movies (spurred by a re-release in theatres of the early 30s Universal monster movies and the popularity of the Hammer horror movies based on them).

They were completely different in tone. The Addamses were aristocratic and knew they were different (and wealthier) from everyone else, although not to the degree they imagined. They were not as mean-spirited as the family is in the Addams new Yorker cartoons, but were generally very hospitable, and were interested in meeting company, although they always thought the company overreacted to them.

The Munsters, on the other hand, were pretty blue-collar, despite the gigantic house. They had no idea they were different from everyone else, and actually imagined they were all physically pretty, except for poor Marilyn (and they even convinced her that she was the unattractive one and that her boyfriends ran away when they visited her at home because SHE was unattractive and scary).

They're both only okay. The central couples (John Astin and Carolyn Jones in "Addams" and Fred Gwynne and Yvonne DeCarlo) were both terrific and iconic, but the writing was often weak. The child actors were not very good in "The Addams Family"--Bruce Patrick as Eddie Munster was much better.

None of our child actors grew up to do porn.

r70....Keep my name out of your mouth if you dont know what youre talking about...

FACT...The Munsters had the higher ratings.

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