‘The Addams Family’ and ‘The Munsters’: Which Is TV’s True First Family of Fright?

Star Wars or Star Trek? Beatles or Stones? Marvel or DC? Many an identity is built around picking a side in these pop culture debates. You might bond with a co-worker over spending high school learning the steps to “Bye Bye Bye” instead of “I Want It That Way,” or form a low-key resentment of someone for choosing Friends over Seinfeld (or vice versa). Is any of this healthy? No! Is it fun? Sometimes! Can any of us help it? Not at all! And when October rolls around, there’s one dreadful dichotomy that people can’t stop debating: are you an Addams Family person or a Munsters person?

With a new Addams Family animated feature in theaters right now, this question feels spookily relevant in 2019. You can’t think of one without thinking of the other, and I’m sure there are plenty of confused parents out there looking for tickets to a Munsters movie right now. It’s no wonder the two have always been paired; they both debuted within a week of each other on TV in 1964, aired for two seasons, and then came crawling out of the grave every few years/decades with another TV show, cartoon, or feature film.

But—and here’s the question I personally wanted to answer—which came first? Did The Munsters ripoff The Addams Family? Was it the other way around? Was this just another instance of weird pop culture confluence?

Seriously—which came first, The Addams Family or The Munsters?

To answer that question, you have to go back in time 80 years and meet two cartoonists: Charles Addams and Bob Clampett. While working as a cartoonist for The New Yorker, Charles Addams introduced what would become the Addams Family (a name he never gave to them, by the way) in 1938. The cartoon was meant to be a one-off, a one-panel gag of a salesman cluelessly trying to sell a vacuum cleaner to a gothic woman and her lumbering, fur-faced companion.

Addams’ work was generally macabre, so he’d return to these unnamed characters time and time again, rounding out the cast with a pudgy companion in a chalk stripe suit (eventually named Gomez) in 1942 and two morose children, an old witch, and a bald weirdo. So The Addams Family came first. Or did they?

If you take a broad look at pop culture history, you could say that the Munsters‘ origin begins in 1931 with the release of two Universal monster movies: Dracula and Frankenstein. Both of those films dragged those literary monsters out of the 19th century and gave them iconic iterations that would be mimicked in everything from classroom decor to store bought costumes.

But unlike the off-brand knickknacks you can find of a green-skinned corpse monster at any store, The Munsters actually have a legit connection to the Universal monsters: The Munsters is a Universal production. In fact, Looney Tunes animator Bob Clampett pitched a cartoon about a monster family to Universal in 1943, just as Addams was building out a frightful family of his own in the pages of The New Yorker. Nothing came of Clampett’s pitch and production on classic monster movies slowed down in the 1950s while Charles Addams published collections of his New Yorker cartoons, including 1954’s Homebodies (more on that world-changing tome in a bit).

How did The Munsters and The Addams Family end up on TV at the exact same time?

The early-to-mid ’60s were a wild time for TV. After a decade dominated by the wholesome family comedy like Father Knows Best and the domestic slapstick brilliance of I Love Lucy, sitcoms got weird. It’s actually not surprising that The Addams Family and The Munsters debuted at the exact same time when you step back and realize that Bewitched also debuted that same week, and that My Favorite Martian debuted a year before and I Dream of Jeannie a year later. TV was filled with witches, genies, aliens, talking horses, possessed automobiles—this was just the thing (but not Thing, not yet).

That’s probably why a pair of writers approached Universal with a pitch eerily similar to the one Clampett made almost 20 years earlier. Accounts differ across various sources as to who those writers were. Either Gene L. Coons (Star Trek) and Les Colodny (Get Smart) made the pitch first, or Rocky and Bullwinkle writers Allan Burns and Chris Hayward did. Either way, one pair pitched the idea of a monstrous take on The Donna Reed Show and the other fleshed it out (Burns and Hayward ultimately got creator credit). Universal head Lew Wasserman wanted to bring back the studios’ classic monsters on the small screen—and this monster family pitch seemed like the right way to do it. Writing team Norm Liebmann and Ed Haas, who actually wrote for The Donna Reed Show, were hired to write a pilot script titled Love Thy Monster and a pilot presentation was filmed for CBS in early 1964—in color! The show was ultimately shot in black and white to save money.

So The Munsters came first… sorta?

It depends on what David Levy knew and when he knew it. Levy, formerly the VP in charge of programming at NBC, peaced out of the TV biz in the early ’60s because he was sick of all the sex and violence on TV at the time. It’s a good thing David Levy did not live to see Real World: Las Vegas. According to Addams Family lore, though, he was pulled back into the fray after taking a stroll down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and seeing the cover for Addams’ 1954 cartoon collection Homebodies. Levy then met with Addams, determined that these disparate-ish characters were all a family, and had Addams himself give them all names (except Wednesday, who was named by a toy manufacturer ahead of the show’s debut). It was even Levy’s idea to take a disembodied hand that had appeared in one cartoon from 1954 and make him a character—Thing—and Levy, not Addams, came up with fan-favorite Cousin Itt.

It’s appropriate that Cousin Itt’s creation is where dates get fuzzy. It’s undisputed that Levy created Itt while brainstorming with Addams (Levy actually sued Paramount in 1992 after they used Cousin Itt, Thing, and various other elements from the TV series he co-created in the feature film; it was settled out of court). After Levy came up with Itt, Addams worked the hirsute cousin into a New Yorker cartoon in October 1963, well over a year before Itt debuted on the TV show in early 1965. In fact, we know Itt had to have appeared in The New Yorker before the show debuted because magazine editor William Shawn banned the Addams Family from appearing in the high-class publication because he didn’t want it to be associated with a mainstream sitcom. So if Levy and Addams were working on an Addams Family pitch in 1963, that means they most likely came up with the idea independently of what Universal was doing with The Munsters (CBS didn’t announce The Munsters until early 1964). Of course, another source claims that Levy heard CBS was developing the Munsters and then reached out to Addams, but I don’t know if those dates line up with the stone cold facts about Cousin Itt.

So The Munsters and The Addams Family have nothing to do with each other?

Not exactly. It’s been said that Levy initially pitched The Addams Family to CBS, who passed on the idea because they were already working on the Munsters (other sources say they started work on The Munsters after the pitch, but I don’t know if those dates line up either). And then when Levy pitched ABC on The Addams Family, it’s said that they were game because they knew CBS had picked up The Munsters. So that’s why there’s not a clearcut answer as to which came first, The Munsters or The Addams Family, because depending on which source you find, they both influenced the other network to develop or green light the other show. What does seem accurate is that Universal and David Levy came up with the ideas independently.

Which debuted on TV first?

After shooting a pilot presentation in March 1964 (probably just after The Munsters shot theirs?), The Addams Family debuted first on ABC on September 18, 1964. The Munsters followed on CBS on September 24, 1964.

Even though both families were spooky AF, they had noticeably different tones. The Munsters came from the producers of Leave It to Beaver and you could tell from the more traditional, slapsticky plot lines. The Addams Family, however, was run by Nat Perrin, a frequent collaborator with the Marx Brothers who ensured his monster show had an undercurrent of bizarre satire to it. Both shows did well at first, with The Munsters ending the season ranked #18 in the ratings and the Addamses coming in at #23. Plenty of merchandise followed, as monster-mania hit its pop culture peak.

Why did The Munsters and The Addams Family both end after two seasons?

You can blame Nazis and Batman. I’m actually not joking! It’s theorized that both shows became too hot too fast, and adults burned out on overtly spooky sitcoms (Bewitched was likely spared because Samantha was all about assimilating). But on top of that, both shows faced stiff competition in their time slot—from the others’ network! ABC’s newly-launched Batman soundly beat CBS’ The Munsters, and CBS’ new WWII comedy Hogan’s Heroes defeated ABC’s Addams Family. They both aired their last episodes in Spring 1966. What a world!

To sum up, Charles Addams created the Addams Family characters in 1938 while the Munsters were inspired by characters that were re-introduced in 1931. The shows were pitched roughly around the same time around 1963 and probably helped each other get made. And The Addams Family literally debuted on TV first in 1964, although The Munsters lasted slightly longer.

That’s where the similarities end, right?

Wrong! Neither family would remain six feet under for long since the shows remained popular with kids. That led to the families coming back over and over again in strangely similar ways. They’ve both had:

• Feature films: Munster, Go Home! (1966); The Addams Family (1991), Addams Family Values (1993), The Addams Family (2019)
• Animated specials: The Addamses in The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1973); The Mini-Munsters (1973)
• TV movies: Halloween with the New Addams Family (1977), Addams Family Reunion (straight-to-video, 1998); The Munsters’ Revenge (1981), Here Come the Munsters (1995), The Munsters’ Scary Little Christmas (1996)

And, the most stunning coincidence of all, both shows had revival series that lasted longer than the 1964 originals! The Munsters Today (1988-1991) lasted 73 episodes compared to the original’s 70, and The New Addams Family (1998-1999) lasted 65 episodes compared to the original’s 64.

Also, I have to mention that Butch Patrick was both the original Eddie Munster and the second Pugsley in the 1973 variety special The Addams Family Fun-House. My jaw dropped.

What’s next for The Addams Family and The Munsters?

The Addamses have a movie in theaters right now, which is their first foray into TV or film in 20 years. The Munsters tried to make a comeback in 2012 with the highly-stylized hourlong dramedy pilot Mockingbird Lane from super producer Bryan Fuller (NBC didn’t pick it up). But since the Addams Family has an animated feature film, the first of either franchise to have such, it’s probably a safe bet that there’s a Munsters cartoon feature pitch floating around Universal right now. You can’t have one without the other, such is their delightful curse.

Stream The Addams Family (1964) on Prime Video

Where to watch The Munsters

Where to watch The Addams Family (1991)

Where to watch Addams Family Values (1993)