The Addams Family have delighted with their wholesomely macabre humor for over 80 years.
And of course, all great families are bound to have some skeletons in their closets.
These are the facts about America's favorite freaky family.
Born in Westfield, New Jersey, in 1912, Charles Addams had a childhood worthy of his namesake
creation. As detailed in the biography Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life, he claimed his
earliest memory was seeing a man get run over by a car. Nicknamed "Chilly" by his friends,
an 8-year-old Charles Addams and some neighborhood kids once broke into a crumbling Victorian house
that was under renovation. In a bit of morbid vandalism, Addams drew skeletons all over
the walls. Later, Addams and his chums were dragged into court to answer for their crimes.
The cartoonist would later base the Addams Family's home
in part on the old house that got him in trouble.
"Is this where the Addams Family lives?"
"Yeah."
According to friend Walker McKinney, Addams had an interest in the, quote,
"aberrations of life" that manifested in his off-kilter sense of humor. When a consignment
of soft-shelled crabs was delivered alive for a birthday dinner, Addams cheerfully suggested,
"Well, we'll stab them." However, when the hostess arrived at the more humane alternative
of gassing the crustaceans in the oven, the artist reportedly deadpanned, "What a pity."
As Addams became famous for his work in The New Yorker, his reputation as
an eccentric grew. He enjoyed picnicking in cemeteries and visiting snake farms.
Addams also reveled in telling reporters about the gifts he received from fans,
such as a gilded skull, a human thigh bone, and a frozen beef heart in a box.
By 1942, Charles Addams had earned a reputation as a skilled artist with a wicked wit
thanks to his New Yorker cartoons. Yet, his life was about to change forever.
Addams was drafted to serve in World War II, and around the same time, he fell in
love with a young woman who had more than a passing resemblance to one of his creations.
As detailed by biographer Linda H. Davis, Barbara Jean Day was a slender, pale-skinned beauty with
black hair. A dead-ringer for Addams' witch-woman character, who would later become Morticia,
Day was known for her sweet nature and willingness to "do anything on a dare." She and Addams married
in 1943, but their union ended eight years later, when Addams refused to adopt a child.
Heartbroken, Day left Addams for another man. Addams' second wife, Barbara Barb, also had
a striking resemblance to Morticia. A practicing lawyer with a fiery temper,
Barb was prone to fits of rage during which she would destroy Addams' possessions and clothing.
On occasion, she would become physically abusive, burning the cartoonist with lit
cigarettes and striking him over the head with a stiletto heel. Although their marriage
lasted only two years, the consequences haunted Addams for the rest of his life.
Barb convinced Addams to sign away the rights to much of his work and, as documented by
The New York Times, wound up in control of the Addams Family TV and movie franchises.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times, in 1963,
television producer David Levy was on 5th Avenue in New York with a friend when he
spotted a display of Charles Addams' books in a store window. Taken with the cover of Homebodies,
which featured a portrait of the entire Addams clan on the cover, Levy exclaimed,
"There's a hit series!"
Levy tracked Addams down and pitched the artist his idea for a situation comedy
based on the far-out family featured in his cartoons. Addams fleshed out the characters
with personalities and names, and Levy went about casting the series. After some legal wrangling
with Addams' ex-wife, Barbara Barb, The Addams Family finally premiered on September 18, 1964.
A ratings hit, The Addams Family touched a nerve with '60s viewers and opened up
a new audience to the world of Charles Addams. Although Addams enjoyed the show,
he was somewhat disappointed that TV had blunted his characters' sharper edges.
"Lurch!" "You rang."
In the creator's mind, the Addams Family had been transformed into, quote, "almost
a typical suburban family." He also said the TV version of his Addams Family characters were:
"Not half as evil as my original characters."
New Yorker editor William Shawn was much less impressed with the Addams Family's leap
to the small screen. Not wanting the prestigious publication to be associated with TV characters,
Shawn banned the Addams Family cartoons from the New Yorker.
The Addams brood finally returned to the magazine's pages in 1987, upon Shawn's retirement.
On September 24, 1964, just six days after The Addams Family's ABC premiere,
another creepy family moved into primetime TV on rival network NBC.
The Munsters, produced by TV power duo Bob Mosher and Joe Connolly,
domesticated Universal's classic movie monsters and brought them into a family sitcom setting.
"It's alive!"
While the Addamses reveled in their weirdness, the Munsters were more or less portrayed as
a typical American TV family in the mode of Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best. That
the Munsters were literal monsters was incidental to the show's generally broad, slapstick comedy.
The Addams Family, however, tended to take a more sophisticated approach in its humor,
peppering the laughs with sly sexual innuendo and a generally darker tone. Although both The Addams
Family and The Munsters ended in 1966, dedicated fans continue to debate which was the better show.
Two shows featuring macabre families premiering at virtually the same time was no coincidence.
As documented by horror historian David J. Skal in The Monster Show,
both The Addams Family and The Munsters were part of a wave of renewed interest in horror
that began in the late 1950s with the release of Universal Studios' classic horror films on TV.
The monster boom that would culminate with The Addams Family and The Munsters would
also usher in such cultural touchstones as Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine,
Aurora movie monster models, and Bobby "Boris" Pickett's hit song "The Monster Mash."
With the cancelation of The Addams Family in 1966, the all together ookie adventures
of TV's spookiest family seemed to be over for good. Yet, the Addamses would
return in animated form thanks to everyone's favorite Saturday morning mystery-solving gang.
The New Scooby-Doo Movies premiered in 1972 as a followup to 1969's wildly successful Scooby-Doo,
Where Are You? In addition to their usual hijinks, Scoob, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne,
and Fred took on mysteries that brought them together with a variety of celebrities and
guest stars ranging from Sonny and Cher to Batman. In the series' third episode,
Mystery Inc. helps Morticia and Gomez locate a kidnapped Wednesday. Original cast members
John Astin, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan, and Ted Cassidy returned to voice their roles.
"Now I know why this house looks so familiar — it belongs to the Addams Family."
This animated incarnation of the Addamses returned in 1973, minus Astin and Jones, with their own
Saturday morning cartoon. Simply titled The Addams Family, the show ran for 16 episodes
and featured the family traversing America in a mobile replica of their spooky mansion.
As documented in Jeff Lenburg's Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons,
the hit 1991 big screen adaptation of The Addams Family spawned yet another animated show in 1992.
This version found the Addamses coping with their "weird" neighbors in idyllic Happydale Heights,
and featured original cast member John Astin as the voice of Gomez. In 2019, the family returned
with an all new CG animated film, with Oscar Issac and Charlize Theron as Gomez and Morticia.
In 1977, most of the original cast of The Addams Family reunited for the NBC Halloween
special Halloween with the New Addams Family. John Astin, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan,
Ted Cassidy, Ken Weatherwax, and Lisa Loring all reprised their roles from the 1964 series.
Jane Rose, best known for her role as Cloris Leachman's mother-in-law on the Mary Tyler
Moore Show-spinoff Phyllis, would fill in for an ailing Blossom Rock as Grandmama.
The plot of the film centers on a group of crooks out to steal the Addams' fortune during the
family's annual masked Halloween celebration. To complicate matters, Gomez's brother Pancho,
played by Henry Darrow, has returned and may have romantic intentions towards Morticia.
Gomez, with the help of Fester and Lurch, foils the dastardly plot, and the brothers
patch up their frayed relationship just in time for the family to sing Halloween carols.
Halloween with the New Addams Family is definitely a product of its time.
Shot on video tape, the film lacks a gloomy, gothic atmosphere of the '60s TV show,
and the nostalgia of seeing the original cats back together is its main charm.
Two of the original members of The Addams Family cast died shortly after the 1977
Halloween special. Blossom Rock, who had suffered a debilitating stroke shortly after The Addams
Family ended, died on January 14, 1978 at the age of 82. Ted Cassidy died the following year,
at age 46, from complications following surgery to remove a tumor from his heart. On August 3,
1983, Carolyn Jones, just 50 years old, died of colon cancer. Jackie Coogan died of a heart
attack in March, 1984. A heart attack would also kill 59-year-old Ken Weatherwax in 2014.
With the 2019 death of veteran actor Felix Silla – the man under Cousin Itt's bowler hat — John
Astin and Lisa Loring are the last surviving members of the original The Addams Family cast.
Baltimore-born Astin, now in his 90s, remains active with occasional TV and voiceover work.
Currently, Astin teaches acting at Johns Hopkins University,
where he serves as Theatre Program Director and Homewood Professor of the Arts.
As detailed by People, Loring, who played little Wednesday Addams, went on to originate the role
of Cricket Montgomery on the soap As the World Turns. Following a failed marriage to adult film
star Paul Seiderman, Loring descended into drug abuse. She beat addiction in the 1990s,
and is now a popular guest at fan conventions and autograph shows.
The 1991 film The Addams Family was a huge box office success that brought Charles Addams'
cartoons to life for a new generation. Yet, the production proved nearly as tortuous as a night
in Fester's dungeon. As detailed in director Barry Sonnenfeld's book, Call Your Mother:
Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker, producer Scott Rudin turned to Sonnenfeld as a last
resort to get the film made after Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam passed on the project. Sonnenfeld
was the right fit for the job, but he had to surmount a terrible script. With the help of
writer Paul Rudnick, Sonnenfeld made countless revisions, which continued into filming.
As detailed in a 1991 Entertainment Weekly article, the film faced another potential
setback when debt-riddled Orion Pictures sold the project off to
Paramount. Last minute budget cuts threatened to stop the production.
Sonnenfeld, subsisting on a diet of cappuccinos and little sleep, collapsed under the stress of
production. Yet, he wasn't the only one to feel the strain. In her 2014 biography Watch Me:
A Memoir, Morticia actress Anjelica Huston recalls her time on the set as, quote, "long and arduous."
Laced into an impossibly tight corset, Huston found that she couldn't sit down and had to be
transported in the prone position in the back of a station wagon from location to location.
In the 80-plus years since the first Addams Family cartoon appeared in The New Yorker,
Charles Addams' macabre creation has become an iconic piece of the American pop culture
landscape. Despite trailing The Munsters in the ratings during its '60s TV incarnation, the Addams
Family has built a legacy that has outshined the rival franchise. To date, the Addams Family has
spawned four feature films, a Halloween special, a 1998 revival series that outlasted the original by
one episode, two animated series, a hit Broadway musical, and a wildly popular pinball machine.
The creepiest, kookiest family of all time continues to thrive into the 21st century.
After passing on the opportunity to direct the 1991 film, Tim Burton is finally getting his
shot at the long running franchise. As reported by Deadline, the Beetlejuice director is helming
an Addams Family spin-off titled Wednesday, which is set to launch on Netflix in 2022.
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