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." Itt communicated via a high speed gibberish that only members of the Addams family seemed to understand. Cousin Itt's voice was provided by sound-effects engineer 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." Because Itt was extremely hard to understand Gomez remarked that he 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 No. 20 "Cousin Itt Visits the Addams Family" (2-5-65); No. 32 "Cousin Itt and the Vocational Counselor" (5-7-65); No.35 "My Fair Cousin Itt" (9-17-65); and No. 40 "Cousin Itt's Problem" (10-22-65). 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. 

     

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