As viewers tune in to watch the season finale of “American
Idol” tonight, composer Vic Mizzy will be reminiscing about
singers past. Mizzy and partner Irving Taylor appeared on a similar
show called “Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour” almost 60
years ago. Whereas “Idol” discovered Kelly Clarkson,
“Amateur Hour” was the launching pad for Frank
Sinatra.
“In my time, there was a man called Major Bowes, and he
had the No. 1 amateur hour,” Mizzy said. “It’s
the same thing as “˜American Idol,’ but I want to give
you the difference in talent: It was the show that not only
discovered me and Irving Taylor, but also Frank Sinatra, Jack
Carter, Morey Amsterdam, a lot of stars.”
Mizzy may have won “Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour”
soon after entering New York University, but he is best known as
the composer of “The Addams Family” and “Green
Acres” theme songs. He recently donated his collection of
scores to the UCLA Music Library’s Special Collections
department.
Mizzy originally planned to donate his collection to the
Smithsonian Institute, but soon realized that colleges, which had
music departments and students eager to learn about music, would be
a more ideal place to house his scores.
“The guy in charge (at the Smithsonian) called me and
said, “˜Look, you’re better off going with a college,
because sure, we’ll take your stuff, but we’ll put it
in the basement. At least a college has a music department, and
they can utilize your music,'” Mizzy said.
He first received a phone call from USC, but chose to donate to
UCLA because of the school’s efficiency in working with
him.
“I got a call from USC and they really wanted to meet up
with me, but they never followed through,” Mizzy said.
“In the meantime, I got a call from Peggy Alexander at the
Music Library at UCLA. We started a conversation, and very, very
quickly, we got to a place where they came over, packed all my
scores and cleaned up my house.”
Alexander, librarian at the Performing Arts Special Collections
at UCLA, is excited to add Mizzy’s scores to the vast catalog
of film and television scores already there.
“The majority of (his) collection consists of scores for
“˜The Addams Family’ and for “˜Green Acres’
and those are such well-known television series and the music is so
well known that it’s a wonderful addition for us to add to
our collections,” Alexander said.
Students will be able to access Mizzy’s music by putting
in a request at Performing Arts Special Collections in the Music
Library, which will retrieve the materials from their new home at
Southern Regional Library Facility.
Mizzy, who grew up in Brooklyn, initially became interested in
music at the age of 2, when one of his aunts gave him a toy
accordion for his birthday. He began piano lessons at age 4 at the
behest of his mother.
“In Brooklyn, when you had a son or a daughter, the son
had to be given either piano lessons or violin lessons, and the
daughter was trained to be a bookkeeper,” Mizzy said.
“If there was a son that didn’t want the piano or the
violin, they trained him in the lowest form of career, which was
becoming a dentist.”
He grew up practicing solely classical pieces and was never
permitted to play anything popular that he heard on the radio. All
of that changed when he became a Boy Scout at age 12.
“That changed everything for me, because it gave me more
freedom,” Mizzy said. “I also had a larger accordion,
and I was playing all these great little songs around the campfire.
I was getting there, so by the time I was 13 and a half, I was
starting to compose little melodies.”
Mizzy graduated from high school at 16, and soon entered NYU to
pursue his music career. It was there that he met Irving Taylor,
his future music partner.
“NYU was a really important part of my life, because at
that time, there were around four or five universities putting on
what we call varsity shows,” Mizzy said. “(We) wound up
writing the varsity show. Irving and I not only wrote the songs,
but we wrote the sketches as well.”
After winning the “Major Bowes” contest, Mizzy and
Taylor performed one of their varsity show tunes on the huge radio
star Fred Allen’s “Amateur Hour.” Not only did
the duo win the contest, but they received $100 and scored the
chance to perform at the Roxy Theater in Manhattan for a week.
“Winning that was more important for us because we were
able to play at the Roxy Theater,” Mizzy said. “After
that, one thing led to another, and we became very important. We
started writing songs and made a lot of hits.”
In addition to writing theme songs for “The Addams
Family” and “Green Acres,” Mizzy went on to
compose music for the classic Don Knotts movies and “Abbott
and Costello in Society,” among others.
Mizzy’s work continues into the present. He wrote the
theme for “Spider-Man 2″ and recently released a CD of
his own tunes, “Songs for the Jogging Crowd.”
Whatever works he composes in the future, however, nobody can
debate the major contributions Mizzy has made to film and
television music.
“If you go to a baseball game, a football game, basketball
game, somewhere along the line, the organist is going to play ba ba
ba bum, ba ba ba bum, ba ba ba bum, ba ba ba bum, ba ba ba
bum,” Mizzy said. “”˜Addams Family’ and
“˜Green Acres’ wound up being, internationally, the two
biggest themes of all time.”
UCLA profiles run every Tuesday in A&E.