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Cousin Itt - Short, very hairy man seen on the
bizarre comedy THE ADDAMS FAMILY/ABC/1964-66. Cousin Itt (Felix Silla/Roger
Arravo) stood three-feet tall, wore a brown derby hat, sunglasses, and was
covered from head-to-toe with long locks of light brown hair that obscured his
face and body. He often visited his relatives, the Addams, who lived at 001
Cemetery Lane. Gomez Addams (John Astin) once said of Itt, "Inside all heart,
outside all hair."
Is he coming or going?
Itt communicated with high speed gibberish that only members of the Addams
family seemed to understand. Because Itt was extremely hard to understand,
Gomez said his hairy cousin could "become a rock and roll singer. However, if you can
get past his accent, he made perfect sense." Surprisingly, Itt had an IQ of
320...with his shoes on. While visiting the Addams, Itt liked to hang out in
their chimney or in some cozy closet.
Cousin Itt appeared on episodes: "My Fair Cousin Itt" (1 January 1964) ;
"Cousin Itt Visits" (5 February 1965); "The Addams Family and the Spacemen" (2
April 1965); "Cousin Itt's Problem" (22 October 1965); "Morticia's Dilemma" (17
December 1965); "The Great Treasure Hunt" (21 January 1966); "Cousin Itt' and
Lurch's Grand Romance" (1 April 1966).
In the Paramount motion picture remake The Addams Family (1991), actor John
Franklin played the hairy Cousin Itt - this time standing a bit taller at
five-feet.
The Cousin Itt character returned on the revival series THE NEW ADDAMS FAMILY
that premiered on the Fox Family Channel in the fall of 1998. David Mylrea
played Cousin Itt; Paul Dobson provided his voice.
TRIVIA NOTE: Cousin Itt's voice was provided by
sound-effects engineer Anthony "Tony" Magro, who created Itt's garbled responses by
mouthing gibberish into a tape recorder, with a "ppffft and a thhhhhttt" added
for good measure, and then accelerating the tape's recording speed. Some sources
erroneously report that producer Nat Perrin performed Cousin Itt's voice. But in
the book The Addams Chronicles by Stephen Cox, Magro stated, "I never got
screen credit, but they paid me for it...Everyone in town knew it was me. Even
my daughter still introduces me to her friends as Cousin Itt."\
Felix Silla revealed in an cast reunion interview that the hair "was real human
hair. It was very heavy and very hot" He had to stay in costume for about a half
an hour at a time.
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