Every year, of the dozens of pilot episodes that are made for TV, some don’t get picked up, while others are changed significantly or even remade when they become a full series. Our series Pilot Error! takes a look at some of them, including the ones that got away.
The 1950s saw something of a shift in the balance of power within the American entertainment industry. Cinema’s grip on the public interest had seemed unassailable, but with the introduction of television, there was some real competition for the first time which was a threat to Tinseltown. In 1946, there were 6,000 television sets in use in the United States, but by 1955, half of all homes in America had one.
During roughly the same period of time, the dominance of Hollywood took a pummelling. In 1946, some two-thirds of the US population visited the cinema at least once per week, leading to profits reaching an all-time high. However, there was to be a significant cultural and demographic shift in the post-war years, as people were seeking to find some kind of normalcy and start families out in the suburbs. This sudden ‘baby boom’ meant childminding costs would now need to be a consideration when planning a night out, as well as the additional expense of travelling from suburbia to the movie theatres, which were in predominantly urban areas.
Another factor in play was the move by other countries to try and revive their own movie industries after the end of World War II with implementing protectionist policies and quotas, a move which limited Hollywood’s market share overseas. In addition, the power of the studio system was under assault, culminating in the landmark 1948 federal antitrust lawsuit, U.S. v. Paramount Pictures, inc., which broke the monopoly held by movie studios over cinema chains, resulting in them having to then divest themselves of their interests in movie theatres. The Hollywood machine was also under scrutiny by the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, resulting in the McCarthy ‘witch hunts’ and ‘Reds under the bed’ Cold War paranoia.
One of the big studios, Universal, had faced difficulties in 1946, the year when the industry as a whole seemed to be booming. Having reported profits of just $4.6 million, the studio started to cut loose many of its expensive contract players, and also underwent a merger to become Universal International Pictures. The increased rivalry from a growing television market would not help its position, so by 1957 the studio struck a deal with the Screen Gems arm of Columbia Pictures to distribute 550 Universal films made up to 1948 on television for a period of ten years, making use of Screen Gems’ established TV production and distribution facilities, which had been running since 1948.
Screen Gems’ initial endeavour was to gather together some 52 of Universal’s pre-1948 features into a package known as Shock!, which would include the ‘Universal Classic Monsters’ flicks, such as 1931’s Dracula and Frankenstein, 1932’s The Mummy, and 1933’s The Invisible Man. Universal had been exploiting its catalogue of monsters in the meantime, with films like 1948’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, so they were already a well-known property. However, with the originals being initially sold by Screen Gems to 78 television stations across America, they were set to all take on a whole new life, sparking a wave of ‘monster mania’, which would go on well into the following decade.
Many of the local TV stations who had picked up the Shock! package named their programming as Shock Theater, and used hosts to introduce the broadcasts, patterned after the likes of Vampira (AKA actress Maila Nurmi), who fronted The Vampira Show at a local Los Angeles-based station between 1954 and 1955. Acknowledged as being the first ever ‘horror host’, Nurmi’s Vampira would go on to appear in the 1959 Ed Wood cult classic Plan 9 from Outer Space. A monster craze sprang up in the wake of the Shock Theater broadcasts, and led to the launch of Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine in 1958, as well as Aurora’s early ‘60s range of Movie Monster Models plastic kits, and the novelty 1962 record ‘Monster Mash’ by Bobby “Boris” Pickett & The Crypt Kickers.
With the runaway success of the Shock Theater broadcasts all over the country, and the rise in popularity of everything monster-related, it was almost inevitable television would look to try and capitalise upon that trend. In mid-1963, the writers Allan Burns and Chris Hayward would come up with the concept for a possible new TV show. The pair met while working for Jay Ward Productions, the company responsible for the animated series Rocky & Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right. After a number of years working on cartoons, the two men decided it was time to try going freelance, for the fear of being pigeonholed and getting stuck working on nothing but animated shows.
The duo came up with the notion of a series which was based around what Burns would later go on to describe as a family of “weird, offbeat characters”, loosely patterned after Charles Addams’ horror-themed single panel comics as published in The New Yorker magazine, first appearing in 1938. The idea which Burns and Hayward had devised was called ‘Meet The Munsters’, and the pair took this to an agent at the Ashley-Famous (now ICM Partners) talent agency. After some initial interest, contact with the agent dried up, and it transpired he had left. A month or so later, Burns and Hayward got a phone call from the erstwhile agent, explaining to them he was now working in comedy development at Universal.
He asked them to see if they would be able to do something with ‘Meet The Munsters’, and it led to a series of meetings off the Universal lot, with the writers pitching ideas as well as showing the pages of script which they had been working on. When the script was finished, it was handed over to the agent-turned-exec, but then the trail went cold once more, and they were not to hear anything further. Although it may have appeared to Burns and Hayward ‘Meet The Munsters’ was not moving forward, they were unaware wheels were in motion at the studio, and moves were afoot to develop their idea into a sitcom, only without their involvement.
The ‘Meet The Munsters’ concept was handed on to writing team Norm Liebmann and Ed Haas, who had penned scripts for sitcoms Father of the Bride, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Donna Reed Show. It appears Universal was keen to capitalise on their familiar movie monsters, so the concept was retooled in order to make use of Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula, moving it further away from Charles Addams’ comic strip ‘family’. However, Universal had missed out on an earlier attempt to make use of their IP, after the Looney Tunes animator Bob Clampett had pitched an idea around two decades earlier which was based around a very similar notion to what would ultimately become The Munsters.
Clampett worked between 1943 and 1945 on what he called ‘The Monster Family’, which he intended to be an animated cartoon series, with the father named Frankie Monster, and his wife being a vampire. However, after submitting the idea to Universal, he was never to hear anything back from them, much like Burns and Hayward in 1963. Liebmann and Haas produced a pilot script for The Munsters, entitled ‘Love Thy Monster’, which would later be renamed ‘My Fair Munster’. There was some debate internally between studio execs as to whether the series should be animated, before deciding that it should be made as live action. Work then set about turning this into a ‘proof of concept’ presentation.
For the role of patriarch Herman Munster, revered character actor John Carradine was reportedly considered, and while the part went to Fred Gwynne, Carradine would end up in the show as Herman’s boss Mr. Gateman, as well as appearing as a different character in the 1966 movie spinoff Munster, Go Home!. Bert Lahr – best known as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard Of Oz – was under consideration to portray Grandpa, but it was ultimately to go to Gwynne’s former co-star from sitcom Car 54, Where Are You?, Al Lewis. Gwynne and Lewis were apparently the first to be cast, based on the contents of a New York Times article published on Saturday February 15th 1964.
The piece – which announced The Munsters would debut on the CBS network in Fall 1964 – said that the programme had been under development for nine months, also announcing Liebmann and Haas as the series’ head writers, with Joseph Connolly and Bob Mosher producing. Connolly and Mosher had co-created the popular sitcom Leave It To Beaver, which had ended the previous year, and had for its last two seasons been made by Kayro-Vue Productions, who would also be in charge of making The Munsters. The article also mentioned that at that point in time, the role of Herman’s wife – named Phoebe – had not yet been cast.
For the filming of the presentation piece, the part would go to Joan Marshall, who had been a guest star in a range of US television series, like Have Gun – Will Travel and Maverick. Another of the ensemble of characters was the werewolf son Edward Wolfgang Munster (or ‘Eddie’). The child actor Bill Mumy – who would later appear as Will Robinson in Lost In Space – was reportedly offered the role, but his parents are said to have had reservations about the makeup required to play the part. Mumy would appear during the Munsters first season episode ‘Come Back, Little Googie’ as guest star, and for the network presentation, Nate ‘Happy’ Derman was to be Eddie. Completing the Munster family line up as Marilyn – fashioned after Marilyn Monroe – was Beverley Owen (who would be misspelled as ‘Beverly’ in the short film’s credits).
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Filming on the mini-pilot – which would be approximately half of the script which would be tweaked and later become the first season episode ‘My Fair Munster’ – was directed by Norman Abbott, nephew of screen comedian Lou Abbott (of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein). For the opening credits, instead of what would be used as the now-familiar theme to The Munsters composed by Jack Marshall, some incidental music from the soundtrack of the 1963 Doris Day romantic comedy The Thrill of It All was picked, very likely to save on costs, as that movie had been produced by Universal as well, so the studio would hold the rights to the score.
In the meantime, Burns and Hayward had signed up with an agent, who called the duo up to inform them that ‘Meet The Munsters’ was being made into a TV series by Universal, and filming was due to begin imminently. The agent likely saw either the original newspaper article, or something similar in the trade press, which had alerted him to his clients’ original concept having been used. As he also knew director Norman Abbott, the agent asked Burns and Hayward if they wanted to visit the studios for the filming. On arrival, he introduced Abbott to Burns and Hayward, saying they were the writers, but Abbott said it had been written by Norm Liebmann and Ed Haas, and produced a copy of the script with those names on it.
While they were on the set, Burns and Hayward encountered the agent-turned-exec with whom they had been in contact originally, but he seemed unfazed by this, and he even went and introduced them to Liebmann and Haas. It became clear to Burns and Hayward that their former studio contact there had been passing their concept across to Liebmann and Haas for them to develop, without any knowledge or involvement on their part. At the end of the finished presentation piece, rather than having any conventional credits, the following message would instead appear over an image of the exterior of the Munsters’ home at 1313 Mockingbird Lane: “The distinguished ghouls in our presentation were modernised by Messrs. Liebmann and Haas from the classic characters of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and his Bride, and their charming little offspring. Any resemblance to anything living is purely a coincidence.”
Believing that they had been cheated by Universal, Burns and Hayward took up the matter with the Writers Guild of America, leading to a meeting with Mike Franklin, the top exec of WGA West. The WGA then went and raised the issue with Universal, and managed to secure payment to both of the writers, plus a partial credit on the show when it went to series. As well as saying “Developed by NORM LIEBMANN and ED HAAS”, the end credits would also state “From a format by AL BURNS and CHRIS HAYWARD”. And so, a contentious issue of exactly who had created The Munsters was settled once and for all. Or perhaps not, it would seem.
Somewhat less well documented are claims that the series was devised by Gene L. Coon and / or Lester Colodny. In one of the more detailed accounts, Colodny was working as the head of production for TV pilots at Universal, and the studio head Lew Wasserman had tasked him with finding a way to be able to exploit the classic monsters which they held the rights to. Colodny claims to have come up with the idea for The Munsters, as well as being instrumental in persuading Gwynne to play Herman. However, he says that the project was then taken off him, and then handed over to two “more seasoned” producers (presumably either Liebmann and Haas or Connolly and Mosher).
Colodny has claimed that they “got into a tremendous fight and they let me go”. However, there are other versions of the story in circulation which say that Gene L. Coon – who would go on to work closely with Gene Roddenberry on production of the first and part of the second season of Star Trek – had worked with Colodny on devising the idea of The Munsters, and then pitched it to Wasserman. With so many of the key players no longer being around to ask further about this, it means finding out more information about these claims will be difficult. There is, at least, documented evidence of Burns and Hayward’s original ‘Meet The Munsters’ proposal, which strengthens their claim to receive at least partial credit.
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Universal are reported to have screened the pre-production presentation – which had been made in colour – to network TV affiliates at an industry convention, but the studio had received little support for the concept as it stood to become an ongoing weekly series. The producers struck black-and-white distribution prints of the presentation film, and this would appear to have led to the main reason why the series was made in monochrome rather than colour. It seems that by making the show in colour, it would add around $10,000 to the budget per episode, a cost for which neither CBS nor Universal were willing to foot the bill. As a result, the look of The Munsters was ultimately all down to economics, rather than aesthetics.
Changes would need to be made before committing to a full series pilot, which appear to have come down from CBS. As part of this overhaul, some of the cast would be replaced by new actors, with those characters being revised as well. The look of Herman’s wife Phoebe was felt to be too close to that of Charles Addams’ Morticia in his comic strips, meaning the look was revised, as well as the character’s name. Replacing Marshall as Herman’s spouse – now called Lily – was movie actress Yvonne De Carlo. The move was not well received by Gwynne and Lewis, who had feared that she may prove to be a diva, given her Hollywood background.
However, their concerns were quickly assuaged, as De Carlo proved herself to be not only a true professional, but also a good ensemble player, without showing any primadonna-ish behaviour. De Carlo’s initial reason for taking up the role of Lily was due to her being in debt, as a result of having to be sole breadwinner, with her husband, stuntman Bob Morgan, having become involved in an horrific accident while filming 1962’s How the West Was Won. MGM refused to accept any liability for the accident, which caused Morgan to lose a leg, as well as sustaining other injuries, and De Carlo had ended up remortgaging the family home to help with paying all of the mounting medical and legal bills.
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It had also been felt that the character of Eddie was too nasty and feral, and Derman was surely not ‘Happy’ and finding he was being replaced by Butch Patrick, who was selected from hundreds of other child actors that had also tried out for the part. Patrick played the role much more like a typical sitcom kid, one who just happened to be a werewolf, rather than as Derman’s rather angry, snarling rendition. Eddie’s look was also revised, with less reliance on the fangs which Derman had sported. Patrick’s Eddie lacked the distinctive ‘widow’s peak’ hairline and thicker eyebrows which he would later go on to don in the series proper.
Herman’s appearance would also be tweaked, not only with the makeup which was used to achieve the ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’ look, but also with more padding being added to Gwynne, bulking him out significantly. In addition, Herman would also become much goofier in this pilot version of the full ‘My Fair Munster’ script by Liebmann and Haas. For the pilot, a version of Jack Marshall‘s The Munsters theme was used. Author Jon Burlingame would describe the theme as having a “Bernard-Herrmann-meets-Duane-Eddy sound”, but for the unaired pilot episode, it would have much more of an electric guitar-led ‘surf rock’ sound, lacking the ‘Oompah’ brass of the transmitted version.
With some of the further minor tweaks as mentioned above being made after production of the pilot, chiefly to Eddie’s makeup, his scenes were reshot so they would all fit in with the final look which had been decided upon for the character for the full series. These were then edited into the pilot, and the revised ‘My Fair Munster’ would end up being the second transmitted episode of The Munsters. When the series made its debut on Thursday September 24th 1964, however, some of its thunder was stolen by CBS’ rival network ABC, after its premiere on Friday September 18th of its very own ghoulish-themed sitcom, The Addams Family.
The day before that, ABC had also aired the first episode of supernatural-themed sitcom Bewitched, providing further competition for the Munster clan. In an ironic twist of fate, Bewitched was produced for ABC by Screen Gems, who had given the Universal Monsters new life on TV, and led to the monster boom which had given rise to the creation of The Munsters, in an effort to jump onto the bandwagon. Both The Addams Family and The Munsters would have a run of two seasons, and would also end within a short time of each other, with the former wrapping up on Friday April 8th 1966, and the latter airing its final episode on Thursday May 12th 1966.
It has been said one of the nails in the coffin – if not the final one – of The Munsters was the appearance on the scene on the night of Wednesday January 12th 1966 of Batman. ABC’s bright, colourful and camp superhero romp would split each story across two consecutive evenings, ending Wednesday’s instalment on a cliff-hanger, and then resuming on Thursday, scheduled directly opposite The Munsters. With the viewers tuning in to see how the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder would extricate themselves from the latest diabolical peril, it meant that ratings for The Munsters took a huge hit, leading to its cancellation by CBS, finishing just five short months on from Batman’s premiere.
Perhaps the decision to shoot the series in monochrome and not colour hurt it, compared to those neon hues of Batman. However, audiences would soon have the chance to see the Munster family in glorious Technicolor, with the release on Wednesday June 15th 1966 of Munster, Go Home!, a movie spinoff which was intended by Universal to be a way for the overseas markets to be introduced to the characters before the show went into international syndication. Most of the original cast – Gwynne, Lewis and De Carlo – would end up reprising their roles once again in the made-for-TV reunion film The Munsters’ Revenge, which aired on NBC on Friday February 27th 1981.
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For decades, the short presentation film of ‘My Fair Munster’ would remain unseen by the public, leading to the inclusion of some excerpts from a badly faded film print – thought at the time to be the only surviving copy of the pre-production short – in 1991 documentary The Munsters’ Lost Episodes. However, a pristine copy – taken from the Universal archives – would be included in the extras of the 2004 DVD release of Season One of The Munsters. The only sighting of material that originated from the black-and-white full pilot version of ‘My Fair Munster’ through legitimate means was as a 31-second clip which was included in A&E’s 2003 documentary The Munsters: America’s First Family of Fright. However, as is sometimes the way with these things, bootleg copies have made their way into circulation, containing the full unaired and unreleased pilot.
Despite the original series ending in 1966, it seems that you can’t keep a good Munster down, and various attempts have been made over the years to resurrect it, including the 1988 sequel The Munsters Today (which actually ran for twice as long as its predecessor), and the 2012 pilot for a modernised version of the show called Mockingbird Lane. However, that is a tale (from the crypt) for another time…