‘The Munsters’…Unaired Color Pilot And Some Surprises!
‘The Munsters’…Unaired Color Pilot And Some Surprises!
What do ‘The Musters’ and ‘Leave It To Beaver’ have in common?
The two men that produced ‘The Munsters’…Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher…that’s what. They created ‘Leave It To Beaver’ and before that, wrote over 1,500 episodes of ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy.
Here’s another surprise…the show only ran for two seasons! Seems much longer than that doesn’t it? Season one started September 24, 1964 with 38 episodes. Season two ended May 12, 1966 with the 32nd episode.
The link at the top takes you to the color pilot of the show which is in two parts. Yvonne DeCarlo as Lilly and Butch Patrick as Eddie were added after the pilot replacing Joan Marshal as Phoebe Munster. Patrick replaced Happy Derman as Eddie. The screen credits are a couple of minutes in. Enjoy and share!
Very few CBS shows were in color until 1966. The Dick Van Dyke Show was filmed in b&w for its entire run (1961-1966). The Ed Sullivan Show was one of the first shows to go color in 1965 except for The Red Skelton Show which was broadcast in color from Studio 33 (1955-1958) and then returned to b&w.
Poor Fred suffered terribly wearing that makeup under the hot lights.
Interesting that they went to the expense of filming it in color, but just used library music for the soundtrack. Was the decision to produce the show in black and white one of economy or aesthetics?
The houses were on the same street on the Universal back lot…. funny that June never told Beaver to stay away from that strange family up the street.
Connelly and Mosher never came close to writing 1500 episodes of Amos And Andy. They did not join the writing team until the 1940’s when Gosden and Correll were producing 39 shows each year and left the show during the television run in the early 1950’s
Former CBS programming chief Mike Dann has told the story that when CBS founder William Paley first previewed a finished episode of “The Munsters,” he was aghast. He felt it did not meet Tiffany Network standards and was not a CBS show. Mr. Paley instructed his lieutenant to institute numerous changes to the series. But given this was only weeks before the start of the new television season and “The Munsters” was a film show, Mr. Dann realized it simply was not possible to do what his boss desired. The Chairman was left to believe the changes would be made, though no action was taken.
Ken Osmond appeared in both shows.
The Munsters and Leave It To Beaver were created by the same team.
I had seen clips of this pilot but never the “complete” show. Keep posting. This is THE most interesting group I have joined. Thank you.