EDNOTE.  In the interest of Nabokovian scholarship, it should be noted that VN DOES have a character named ITT---or was it IT. Name the work?
----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2003 5:28 PM
Subject: Re: Addam's Family and another family

Dear Mr Kevbur (?),

Thanks for the kindly and definitely minority opinion.  You didn't note my omissions of Wednesday and Friday, Lurch (basso profundo butler) and most shockingly of all, enigmatic Cousin Itt (the latter two of whom I don't believe were invented by Charles Addams).

I  had always wondered about Itt's voice and thanks to the Internet I found this which I hope you will enjoy as I did:

    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.

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.

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 makes perfect sense." Surprisingly, Itt had an IQ of 320... with his shoes on.

Remind you of anybody? (and maybe Lurch was Itt's son?)

Carolyn

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