Vic Mizzy -- The Addams Family

 

Welcome to a special Halloween version of Reminiscings of Youth.

I'm not sure whether the 1960s "The Addams Family" TV show ever made its way to Japanese channels like so many other American sitcoms and dramas of its time, but the 1991 movie adaptation did make its mark in Japan, spawning a half-decade campaign involving most of the cast from the movie to hawk the Honda Odyssey that I remember seeing all the time. 

What connected the 1964 sitcom to the 1991 movie though was the famous theme song. Now, I was probably too young to remember watching "The Addams Family" in its first run (September 1964 - April 1966) but the show always showed up in reruns on the local ABC affiliate in Buffalo, New York in the late afternoons. And of course, I was greeted by the fun if gothic theme by composer and singer Vic Mizzy. Mizzy is already here on KKP due to his creation of the "Green Acres" theme a year later that I posted as a ROY article.

Until I looked up Mizzy on Wikipedia, I had no idea that he had been behind both the themes for "Green Acres" and "The Addams Family" and that he was the one singing the "ooky and kooky" lyrics for the latter song. The song wasn't only catchy but it was audience-participatory because of the need to snap those fingers. By the way, at the time that I first got to know Gomez, Morticia and the rest of the Addams clan, I hadn't known that they were based on the cartoons by Charles Addams in "The New Yorker". I think Raul Julia's Gomez from the 1991 movie looks to be the closest to Charles' depiction in "The New Yorker", but I will always have a softer spot for John Astin's slightly unhinged Groucho Marx-like portrayal of the suave Gomez on the TV series.

I was also a Lurch fan, too.

Now, let's see what won some of the prizes at the Japan Record Awards in 1964.

Grand Prize: Kazuko Aoyama -- Ai to Shi wo Mitsumete（愛と死をみつめて）

Best New Artist: Teruhiko Saigo -- Kimi dake wo（君だけを）

Best New Artist: Harumi Miyako -- Anko Tsubaki wa Koi no Hana （アンコ椿は恋の花）

Kazuko Aoyama -- Ai to Shi wo Mitsumete（愛と死をみつめて）

 

From the tattered windmills of my mind, I remember the 1970 film "Love Story" with Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw, mostly through certain scenes (including the final one with Ryan's character sitting all by his lonesome in the park as he tries to process the fact that he lost the love of his life) and the famous theme song which was further popularized by Andy Williams.

Well, through a performance on a recent episode of "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新・BS日本のうた）and a Ken Shimura（志村けん）gag several years ago, I remember a kayo kyoku that was based on a 1963 best-selling novel that sold well over a million books. The novel was "Ai to Shi wo Mitsumete" (Looking at Love and Death) by journalist Makoto Kouno（河野實）and it was about his real-life three-year correspondence as a university student through letters with a young woman who would tragically succumb to disease at just 21 years of age.

Producer Masatoshi Sakai（酒井政利）was probably one of those millions who had read the book and decided that he needed to have a song created for "Ai to Shi wo Mitsumete". To get that feeling of wistful youth into the song, Sakai didn't bother ask a veteran lyricist but a Meiji University fourth-year student who was working at a record company, Hiroko Ohya（大矢弘子）, to come up with the words. Meanwhile, the producer contracted Keishiro Tsuchida（土田啓四郎）to compose the song. Released in July 1964, it was recorded by then-18-year-old singer Kazuko Aoyama（青山和子）, and by the sounds of it (including the mournful chorus), it looks like Sakai wanted to make this a three-hanky kayo reflecting the original story in the book, even including the names of the two main characters, Miko and Mako.

"Ai to Shi wo Mitsumete" would earn a Japan Record Award that same year and sell more than 700,000 records. However, the single wasn't the only media tribute to the novel. A few months later, a movie with the same title and plot would make its presence known, starring Sayuri Yoshinaga（吉永小百合）.