The Munsters

***The Munsters*** is an American sitcom depicting the home life of a family of benign monsters. The series starred Fred Gwynne as Frankenstein's monster and head-of-the-household Herman Munster; Yvonne De Carlo as his wife Lily; Al Lewis as Lily's father, Grandpa, the somewhat over-the-hill vampire Count Dracula who longs for the "good old days" in Transylvania; Beverley Owen (later replaced by Pat Priest) as their teenage niece Marilyn, who was attractive by conventional standards but the "ugly duckling" of the family; and Butch Patrick as their werewolfish son Eddie.

Produced by the creators of *Leave It to Beaver*, the series was a satire of American suburban life, as well as both traditional monster movies and the wholesome family fare of the era. It achieved higher Nielsen ratings than the similarly macabre-themed *The Addams Family,* which aired concurrently on ABC.

In 1965, *The Munsters* was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series but lost to *The Rogues*. In the 21st century it received several TV Land Award nominations, including one for Most Uninsurable Driver (Herman Munster).

The series originally aired on Thursday at 7:30 pm on CBS from September 24, 1964, to May 12, 1966. Seventy episodes were produced. It was cancelled after ratings dropped to a series low due to competition from ABC's *Batman*. Butch Patrick said, "I think ‘Batman’ was to blame. ’Batman' just came along and took our ratings away." But *The Munsters* found a large audience in syndication. This popularity warranted a spin-off series, as well as several films, including one with a theatrical release, and several more recent attempts to reboot it.

## Premise

The Munsters are a Transylvanian-American family living at 1313 Mockingbird Lane in the fictional city of Mockingbird Heights. The series' running gag is that the decidedly odd-looking family with strange tastes considers itself to be an average American family. Herman is the family's sole wage-earner, though Lily and Grandpa make short-lived attempts to earn money from time to time. While Herman is the head of the household, Lily also makes many decisions. According to episode 44 ("Happy 100th Anniversary"), in which Lily and Herman try to surprise each other for their anniversary, they were married in 1865.

Using a family of mostly supernatural-seeming creatures, the show satirized the typical family sitcom formula of the era: the well-meaning father, the nurturing mother, the eccentric live-in relative, the naïve teenager, and the precocious child. Members of the Munster family even mention by name several sitcoms which the Munsters themselves watch. Al Lewis, in an interview with *Daily Variety* explained, "We can do a lot of satirical pointed things on society that you couldn't do on an ordinary show."

Lewis also said, "Philosophically, the format is that in spite of the way people look to you physically, underneath there is a heart of gold.  *The Munsters* reflected changes in social attitudes during the Civil Rights Era, and in 2020 the speech Herman makes to Eddie in the 1965 episode "Eddie's Nickname" went viral: "The lesson I want you to learn is that it doesn’t matter what you look like. Whether you are tall or short; or fat or thin; or ugly or handsome – like your father – or you can be black, or yellow, or white. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the size of your heart and the strength of your character.".

The costumes and appearances of the family (other than Marilyn) were based on the classic monsters of Universal Studios films from the 1930s and 1940s, including the iconic version of Frankenstein's monster whose costume and make-up were first created by Jack Pierce for the 1931 Universal Studios film *Frankenstein*. Universal jointly produced *The Munsters* and was thus able to use these copyrighted designs. Make-up for the series was credited to Bud Westmore, who pioneered many other make-up effects and designs for Universal's monster movies after Pierce.

## Syndication

The series entered syndication on local stations after its original run. In the 1990s it aired on Nick at Nite and on TV Land from 2000 to 2008. In October 2011, the series was picked up by Cartoon Network's sister channel Boomerang and ran through the entire month of October that year for Halloween alongside *The Addams Family*. It vanished from Boomerang after Halloween 2013.

On October 5, 2015, Cozi TV began airing the series, currently on weeknights at 7pm Eastern and in a two-hour block on Sunday evenings.

On November 7, 2020, Qubo began airing all 70 episodes from both seasons.

## Trivia

* This is the first show distributed by NBCUniversal that Qubo has aired in over 11 years, the last one being Shelldon in 2009