Victor Mizzy

If you're not a soundtrack aficionado, you may not know who Vic Mizzy is, but you almost certainly know his two most-famous compositions: the theme songs to the TV sitcoms The Addams Family and Green Acres. While none of Mizzy's other work ever achieved quite the same notoriety, his melodic sensibility and good-humored playfulness earned him steady work in the TV and film world during the '60s, most notably scoring a raft of film comedies starring Don Knotts. Victor Mizzy was born January 9, 1922, in Brooklyn, NY, where he grew up. Mizzy began his musical education early on, starting piano lessons at age four; despite his exclusively classical training, Mizzy was more attracted to popular songs, and tried his hand at composing them as a teenager. Eventually, Mizzy met lyricist (and future comedy writer) Irving Taylor, and the pair began collaborating on songs. Their big break came with a successful audition for the radio contest show Major Bowes' Amateur Hour, and their victory on the program led to a week-long engagement at the Roxy Theater, plus a bevy of interest in their compositions. The duo landed a major number one hit with "My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time," but their promising career was interrupted by World War II. Fortunately for Mizzy, he ended up with an assignment as an organist at a training center for Navy chaplains, which allowed him to continue to writing songs. After the war, Mizzy married singer Mary Small and returned to the New York songwriting market, but it proved to be far less lucrative than before the war. However, through a stroke of good fortune, Mizzy landed a gig working on the Hollywood musical Easy to Love with Johnny Green. That project led to several other Hollywood assignments, but for the time being, Mizzy found the majority...