SUNDAY JOINT: 7-13-2025: MONSTERS TO THE RESCUE!

Hey All,

Wallace Dickson of Largo, Florida, a Gulf Coast bedroom community 25 miles west of Tampa that over the past few years has been attracting supercharged weather events like there's a bullseye on the City Hall lawn, sent me an amazing photo of pre-fame Ted Cassidy. If you are a current or soon-to-be pensioner and loved TV sitcoms as a kid, like me, you know Cassidy as Lurch, the gigantic shovel-jawed aesthete from the Addams Family.

Turns out that Cassidy, from 1952 to 1955, during his early 20s, was a lifeguard at Ormond Beach, Florida, home to four-time world champion Lisa Anderson. Look closely and see if you can guess which among this group of rescuers is the Hollywood star-to-be. Hint: Cassidy is the one who could roll the other seven guys in a beach blanket and hammer-throw it to the end of Ormond Pier.

I watched both Addams Family and Munsters reruns during the late '60s and early '70s without preference or discrimination. How odd it now seems, looking back, that we got two network-made monster-themed family TV shows at the same time—it almost seemed like a package deal. They debuted just eight days apart, Munsters ran at 7:30 on Thursdays on CBS, Addams Family at 8:30 on Fridays on ABC; both were cancelled after two seasons. (Blame Batman: it was funnier and campier, and where Munsters and Addams Family were both black-and-white, Batman lit up the screen in full smash-pow Day-Glo.)

Because this was happening at the peak of the 1960s surf craze, we're never more than a step or two removed from a surf-related tie-in. Start with the music. You've maybe seen the original and totally charming clip of Wednesday Addams teaching Lurch to dance. Now here's the remix, which I lucked into this week, cut to the Trashmen's pre-punk hyperdrive classic "Surfin' Bird."

The Addams Family theme song itself, meanwhile, with the synchronized finger-snapping, is as hooky as Joe Frazier with a noseful of smelling salts. But stylewise it is a throwback, built on harpsichord and clarinet. The Munsters theme, on the other hand, apart from some Henry Mancini-style horn blasts, is straight-ahead surf rock, and if you're not hearing it in the original, try the Los Straitjackets version. The Munsters Theme was nominated for Best Instrumental at the '65 Grammies, losing to Mancini's Pink Panther Theme—which can also cosplay as a surf tune. (Capital Records producer-composer-guitarist Jack Marshall wrote the Munsters theme and basically did a little of everything, music-wise, in Los Angeles during his short life. My Son the Surf Nut, a 1963 comedy LP, was a Marshall side project, and if the humor has not aged especially well, the Rick Griffin cover should bring a smile to your dial.)

Finally, and I may throw my back out reaching for the surf angle here, but the Munsters' car (below) is a '64 George Barris Kustom, and just a year later Barris unveiled the Surf Woody (and one year after that, of course, he went peak Barris with the Batmobile). Now, my own first ride was a beige four-cylinder VW squareback that went zero to 60 with the same enthusiasm as me riding the elevator up 16 floors for a urology appointment, and while maybe I had some cars in years to come that I liked more than others, really they were all just ways to get to the beach with a board or two, nothing more, nothing less. The definition of a means to an end. That said, I get a kick out of the handful of beach-themed customs that rolled out of SoCal area garages in the 1960s. I'd put the Surf Woody at #2, ahead of the Fun Buggy (below) but behind Surfite—just because Surfite (click here, scroll to 3:22) is a Big Daddy Roth creation, and I'll always go with Roth.

Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

Matt

PS: Palos Verdes Surf Club member Calvin "Tulie" Clark (below) hit the jackpot in post-World War II real estate—he made so much money that in 1964 he singlehandedly bankrolled International Surfing magazine and commissioned George Barris to build him the Calico Surfer custom (further below). I had lunch with Tulie Clark, I think it was in the early '00s (he died in 2010 at age 93), and he was a quiet and fascinating man. Deep surf history roots. Clark drove a Model A in his teens and learned to surf on his mom's discarded ironing board. He offered this advice on longevity: "No smoking, not much drinking, get the exercise. Swimming, surfing, walking. To this day, I've never been in the hospital, never had a broken bone, never had an operation. I've got everything I came into this world with. Surfing has a lot to do with that." Good, solid stuff. But I won't lie, the man had Mar-a-Lago taste when it came to hot cars, the Calico Surfer for my money is the worst of the surf-rod customs, plenty of reasons, but for sure the pincer-hook front end is not working. 

PPS: One more thought on Batman. The thing I just realized about the famous episode with the Gotham Point surf-off between the Caped Crusader and the Joker is that different bits are funny or eye-catching at different points of your life. I used to laugh, mockingly, at the green-screen surfing and the landlubber lingo ("Joker's shuffling! Now he's cutting back to meet the curl!"), but today I laugh, with pure admiration, at the way Batman fends off a killer shark with just the daintiest little spritz of shark repellent, and especially how Joker runs up the beach after the big contest, waving his arms and yelling, "I won! I won! Batman came in second!"—and if Jordy Smith does the same later this week after stomping all comers at Jeffreys Bay, I will apologize for every mean thing I've ever said about Smith and the WSL. Also, getting back to today's vehicle theme, this Gotham Point episode is a three-banger, with the Batmobile, Batcopter, and Jokermobile all featured.

PPPS: Sorry, just a quick correction before signing off. Cars were actually a huge part of my childhood. Dragsters and hot rods, mainly. I built models, drew funny cars, read Don Garlits' biography, and told anybody who'd listen that I was going to, not in order, play drums in a band, surf, and race dragsters. My interest in cars ended full-stop a year or so after the photo you see below (my brother and me at a 1968 Los Angeles car show), when my dad took us to Lions Drag Strip in Long Beach and the noise was so earsplitting that I burst into tears. So I surfed and drummed, which turned out to be plenty. 

[Photo grid, clockwise from top left: Los Straitjackets; an early cover of Tulie Clarke-funded Surfing magazine, photo by LeRoy Grannis; Big Daddy Roth beach cruising in his Surfite; Tulie Clark riding tandem, photo by Doc Ball; 1950s photo of the Sun Deck Motel in Ormond Beach; Ted Cassidy as Lurch. Cassidy and fellow Ormond lifeguards. Wednesday Addams dancing with Lurch. Detail from 1964 Swedish-released single of "Surfin' Bird." Rick Griffin cover art for "My Son the Surf Nut." The Munsters in the Munsters Koach, built by George Barris. Big Daddy Roth on the box for the "Surfink" model. George Barris-built Fun Buggy. Tulie Clark at Hermosa Pier, around 1940, photo by Doc Ball. The Calico Surfer, owned by Clark. Me and my brother Chris with the Silhouette, designed and built by Bill Cushenbery]