whether you're a lifelong fan who's
enjoyed every version
of the addams family or you're just
starting out on your journey
we're here to entertain you with an
assortment of little-known trivia and
behind-the-scenes information
that's creepy kooky mysterious spooky
and all together ooky in 1938 eccentric
cartoonist charles adams started sending
his work to the new yorker which then as
it still does
featured notable original and witty
comic art adam's recurring strip
featured a family of gothic spooks
seemingly trapped in the victorian era
dressed in black and obsessed with death
from its origin until adam's death in
1988 the strip
never had a name but the characters were
noticeable enough
that adams earned a following for his
weird family
not only was charles adams strip unnamed
but so are the characters
writer and producer david levy developed
television's adams family series
and asked adams to come up with some
options to call each of the adams family
members and he contributed to the
process
as did levy for the tall black-clad
mother character
they came up with morticia an obvious
play on mortician
acting on a suggestion from his friend
poet joan blake
adams named the menacing headless
doll-loving daughter
wednesday after the old line of poetry
wednesday's child is full of woe
and for the mischievous father adam
suggested two options
gomez and repelli and left it up to the
people working on the show to make the
final
decision they went with gomez naming the
character throughout the future adams
canon
for the other adam's child adams almost
approved pubert
but they changed it to pugsley because
pubert sounded too suggestive and
inappropriate for 60s television
the name pubert was ultimately used in
the adams universe however
that's the name of the new baby in the
1993 movie adam's family values
[Music]
father what is it it's an atoms the
1960s adams family tv show was one of
the most
memorable and unique sets in television
history with priceless and macabre
artifacts from around the world lining
the walls and monster plants living bear
skin rugs and other spooky things
filling in the gaps i'll never forget my
first night in this
lovely house we thought it was haunted
well you can't have everything luckily
it was a decent set
because rarely did the addams family
ever leave their house
preferring to spend their days fencing
knitting crashing trains
and playing with kitty cat their pet
lion these elements were underdeveloped
in the comics
all of this was created for the tv
series but based on the actual manhattan
apartment of adams himself
he even owned an embalming table he used
as a coffee table
another big influence on the look of the
show was whatever the production company
had lying around
the show's interior sets were reused and
redressed ones left over from the recent
production of parent company mgm's big
movie musical
the unsinkable molly brown also created
for the tv series
the color palette of the set while the
show was taped in black and white
like much of television at the time the
set itself was in color of course
but to get just the right tones of black
and gray set decorators painted in
various shades of pink
and red while the addams family tv
series is one of the most fondly
remembered and
frequently run shows of the 1960s it
didn't run for all that long
i've just realized if you wreck one
train you've wrecked them all
debuting in 1964 and canceled just two
years later
only 64 episodes of the adams family
were produced
nor was it a massive hit ranking in the
top 30 its first season
and falling out of that upper echelon
the next year the most
obvious competitor was the monsters
which looked a lot like the adams family
in that it concerned a misunderstood
family who lived in a spooky house
both shows even premiered within a week
of each other in september 1964.
the big differences were that the atoms
clan was based on well-known comic
characters and were
essentially human the monsters were made
just for tv
and based on old horror movie monsters
the monsters drew slightly more viewers
than the adams family throughout the
two-season standoff
and both would be cancelled for the same
reason the campy comical batman starring
adam
west became the new weird must-watch tv
show
john astin who played gomez explained to
the television academy foundation that
horror comedies just couldn't compete
batman came on with a big
rush it was a storm who was the breakout
star of the original adams family tv
show
vampy alluring carolyn jones who starred
as morticia
why is cracking in amiable john aston as
gomez
nope it was the hulking six foot five
inch deep voiced ted cassidy who played
the adam's butler
lurch he rarely spoke but when he did
it was an earthquakingly low
a line he improvised during his audition
it became a popular catchphrase and
lurch grew so popular that cassidy as
lurch
cut a pop record the lurch was a minor
hit
as was its accompanying dance craze in
1965.
cassidy even performed the song on the
teen music tv series shindig
but that's not all cassidy contributed
thing the adam's pet disembodied hand
who lived in a box
was also played by cassidy or at least
by his hand and occasionally arm
despite the tv series leaving the air
after two years the adam's brood has
never been away from the small screen
for long there have been
numerous revival attempts there was a
saturday morning cartoon version that
debuted in 1973
the 1977 tv movie reunion halloween with
the new adams family
a 1992 reboot of the animated series in
the wake of the success of the adams
family film
1998's the new adams family and adam's
family reunion
another tv movie released the same year
there was even a variety show version
a pilot for the addams family fun house
was made in 1973
but it didn't get picked up to a series
there were so many movies in the 90s
based on old tv shows
the flintstones maverick the beverly
hillbillies and lots
lots more but the trend was started by
the 1991 big screen version of the
addams family
it's a miserable night i know darling
say i'll sweather 20th century fox
executive scott rudin got the idea from
of all places a little kid who sang the
snap happy theme song from the addams
family series during a car ride
the kids started singing the song and
then everyone joined in
the next day rudin proposed to his
fellow executives the idea of an adams
family movie
according to the new york times that was
in 1986
and rudin had to seek out the approval
of charles adams the man who created the
adams universe
he received his blessing and tried to
recruit a director although
his first two choices terry gilliam and
tim burton said no
rudin then asked barry sonnenfeld a
veteran cinematographer looking for his
first directorial project
who only signed on after rudin promised
to change the film's initial screenplay
which
sonnenfeld saws to jokey the plot of the
first adams family movie concerns the
long disappearance and sudden return of
uncle fester
or a man pretending to be uncle fester
the original script ended on a note of
ambiguity the audience would never know
if the man really was
fester or an imposter i would speak with
fester if that were fester
but that is not that's an impostor
as rehearsal commenced and filming
approached the main cast felt
increasingly uncomfortable about that
bummer of an ending
and decided to do something about it
they enlisted one of the youngest and
cutest cast members
christina ricci to approach director
barry sonnenfeld about their concerns
rigi asked him to please give the movie
a happy ending and the change was made
the adams family and adam's family
values were two
massive hits at the box office any plans
for a third movie were put to rest with
the 1994 death of raul julia
who portrayed adam's patriarch gomez a
completely unrelated crew and cast
produced a direct
video movie in 1998 called adams family
reunion which starred tim curry
and daryl hannah as gomez and morticia
but in 2010
talks of a third big screen adams family
outing were back on
as a stop-motion animated feature
illumination entertainment the studio
behind despicable me and minions
acquired the film rights and hired tim
burton to direct
he was the perfect choice having
overseen spooky stop animated movies
already like
the nightmare before christmas and the
corpse pride by 2013 no progress on the
movie had been made
and illumination quietly pulled the plug
and the rights passed over to mgm
with the project seemingly as dead as a
resident of the adam's backyard
graveyard
mgm announced that an animated franchise
reboot was in the works with sausage
party director conrad vernon in charge
he also voiced lurch joining oscar isaac
and charlize theron is gomez and
morticia respectively
[Music]
the computer animated adams family
earned more than 200 million at the box
office
making it the highest grossing entry in
the franchise a sequel is scheduled to
hit theaters in late 2021.
gomez adam's habit of chain-smoking
cigars came mostly from actor john aston
who played the character in the 1960s
television series
the actor told smoke magazine i smoked
cigars at the time and thought it would
be right for the character like
growing a mustache from that character
trait came a quirk
wherein gomez could be frequently seen
lighting up a new ucigar as if the
absent-minded goofball kept misplacing
the one he had already half-smoked
this was all in the name of continuity
and appearances aston explained
we never wanted gomez to use a short
cigar it wasn't elegant
if we got to take two three four and the
cigar ash was getting too long
i would have to light up another cigar
so what would aston do with those lit
cigars
they went into a suit pocket which
costumers had lined with toxic
but flame killing asbestos fortunately
for producers
aston could waste all the cigars he
wanted to because dutch masters cigars
sponsored and supplied the show
songwriter vic mizzy specialized in
music for television
and he composed many tv theme songs
including two of the all-time
most memorable the ones for greenacres
and
the addams family now here's my idea
[Music]
the latter with its lightly menacing
organ riff and fun finger snaps
debuted with the 1964 television sitcom
iteration of the addams family
and the song or its motifs were used in
most every subsequent atoms project
as it became so associated with
franchise
the lyrics of the theme like a lot of
musical intros to high concept
60 sitcoms thoroughly explains the show
particularly how the atoms are creepy
kooky mysterious and spooky which mizzy
said he understood because he'd been
around for the show's development
i went with david levy to pick out the
props for the set
so i already knew what it was the creepy
and the cougar
when mizzy played the melody and did the
finger snaps which he says just
came to him it delighted levi and
network executives
the composer had such a handle on how
the song should represent the show
that the director hired to shoot the
opening sequence let mizzy take over
he directed the actor's finger snaps and
gave one direction
to actors john astin and carolyn jones
be
lackadaisical the 1991 movie the adams
family
pulled from the charles adams old new
yorker cartoons as well as the 1964-66
tv series
for example it had a gothic look and
macabre feel like the comics
and incorporated the famous theme song
and characters introduced on the
television series
the latter was a big problem for adam's
family tv
show rights holder david levy two months
after the film began its successful
theatrical run
levy sued paramount studios and orion
productions
for 50 million dollars according to the
orlando sentinel
levy's attorney said he named the
characters he put the concept together
he invented the character's thing and it
completely
levy the credited creator of the adams
family television series
also asserted that he invented the
notions of gomes loving to fence and
obsessively fawning over
his wife and how lurch liked to play the
organ none of which was terribly present
in adam's comics
paramount quickly settled out of court
with levy so as to avoid any production
or release delays for the film sequel
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