“TV’s Year of the Monster.”

That’s how, 60 years ago, Life magazine described the television landscape in an Aug. 21, 1964 cover story. Three new sitcoms led the way as Bewitched and The Munsters premiered on ABC while The Addams Family arrived on CBS, all within days of each other that September. 

These were not scary monsters, however. They were funny ones. Even though Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster was modelled after Universal’s Frankenstein’s monster from horror films dating back to the early 1930s, he was really a big, over-stitched pussycat. And zombie-like Lurch (Ted Cassidy) may have shocked visitors to 1313 Mockingbird Lane on The Addams Family, but his young TV fans laughed every time he boomed, “You rang?” 

As for Bewitched, Elizabeth Montgomery’s suburban housewife Samantha Stephens was as sweet as any TV mom that season – although her meddling mother, Endora (Agnes Moorehead) tried to make her mortal son-in-law Darrin’s life a living hell. 

Together, these three slightly spooky sitcoms helped scare a few cowboys off of TV schedules that, for years, had been jammed with westerns. Only Bewitched proved a “monster” hit at the time, lasting eight seasons, while the Munster and Addams families respectively were both gone after two. Yet they were part of a landscape of escapist situation comedies that flooded into prime time in the ‘60s. 

Escapist TV

It is important to remember that there was plenty to escape from that tumultuous decade. On Nov. 22, 1963, the cast of Bewitched gathered in Los Angeles to rehearse the pilot episode of the series. That task was cut short when news broke that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.

The death of the young president sent shock waves around the world and the subsequent shooting death of his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, while in police custody, was captured live on television two days later. Kennedy’s funeral followed a week of sad and relentless news reports.

In their grief, North American audiences turned to an unlikely source: The Beverly Hillbillies.

The CBS sitcom about Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen), Grannie (Irene Ryan), and their kin striking oil, loading up the truck and movin’ to Beverly, shot to the top of the ratings. Episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies that 1963-64 season remain, to this day, the most-watched scripted episodes of any North American series ever.

Imitation being, as noted radio wit Red Allen once said, the sincerest form of television, networks gave a green light to anything that might help America escape and distract. My Favourite Martian, starring Ray Walston and Bill Bixby, blasted off during the ‘63 season thanks in part to the real rocket launches in the early days of the space race. Other rural-based sitcoms, such as Petticoat Junction and The Andy Griffith Show, followed the Clampetts to the top of the ratings.

By the fall of 1964, they were joined by Gilligan’s Island, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and others shows whose premises could be described in a sentence or a theme song. A year later, I Dream of Jeannie starring Barbara Eden – now 93 – would start granting wishes as part of NBC’s schedule. That same year, Get Smart mocked James Bond and other movie spies. One year later, those shows would be joined by The Monkees and Star Trek.

Beyond the Kennedy assassination, the high concept military, spy and outer space spoofs were in sharp contrast to the grim nightly newscast reports of casualties and setbacks during the Vietnam War. If America could laugh at Hogan’s Heroes (1965-71), a prisoner-of-war sitcom set during the Second World War, then why not larky military comedies such as McHale’s Navy or Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C.?

Why All the Monsters and Witches?

Still, what’s with the sudden influx of witches, vampires and monsters? By the early 1960s, “weird” and “creepy” were suddenly in vogue. Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers had a No. 1 hit in ‘62 with The Monster Mash.

On the big screen, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) packed cinemas. Kustom Kar ace Ed “Big Daddy” Roth sold plenty of Rat Fink decals to Hot Rod enthusiasts while old horror movies were a staple of local late-night TV, inspiring curious kids to save up their nickels and dimes for copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazines. The pop culture moment was ripe for sitcoms about monster families and a man married to a witch.

High concept TV series’, however, didn’t always equal high ratings. After two seasons, both The Munsters and The Addams Family were chased off network schedules. Comic book heroes such as Batman and The Green Hornet briefly became more the rage.

Bewitched, however, cast a longer spell over viewers. That first season, 1964-65, it was No. 2 in America behind only Bonanza. For years it was by far ABC’s biggest hit.

The daughter of movie star Robert Montgomery, Elizabeth Montgomery began her career in the 1950s but did not hit her stride until Bewitched. For a lot of young Baby Boomers, she was an early crush.

The rest of the cast was equally winning, especially original “Darrin” Dick York, who had the unenviable task of being the hard-ass mortal who was crazy about his witch wife but didn’t want her to use her powers. As witch-in-law Endora, Moorehead delivered plenty of backbone and snark, while David White as Darrin’s ad agency boss Larry Tate provided all the Mad Men archetypes Matthew Weiner would ever need to emulate decades later.

There was also a large bench of terrific character actors in supporting roles. In her brief two seasons on the show, Alice Pearce was the defining nosy neighbour Gladys Kravitz, winning a posthumous Emmy after dying of cancer in 1966 at only 48. Veteran actor George Tobias as her long-suffering husband Abner brought much comic relief to his role.

Paul Lynde stood out so much as Uncle Arthur that he seemed to be on every other episode instead of just his actual 10. Maurice Evans (as Samantha’s warlock dad), Marion Lorne (another Emmy winner as befuddled Aunt Clara), Alice Ghostley (Tabitha’s babysitter Esmeralda) and Bernard Fox (“Paging Doctor Bombay!”) all added to the fun.

The show, meanwhile, was very of the ’60s. At ad agency McMann & Tate,  cocktails and cufflinks were de rigueur. And Darrin was fixated on being head of the household even though he could be turned into a frog at any moment.

Unfortunately, not even Samantha’s witch powers could keep Bewitched on TV forever. The series signed off in 1972 and, just last year, the exterior facade of the house where the Stephens’ resided was torn down in Los Angeles to make way for a parking lot and more studio space.

Still, for a period in the ‘60s, Bewitched, The Munsters and The Addams Family allowed us to enjoy the idea of having monsters for neighbours – even if it meant seeing a disembodied hand named Thing running around the yard every so often.  

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