The Addams Family

For years, beginning in the 1930s, cartoonist Charles Addams delighted readers of the New Yorker with his macabre graphic fantasies. Among his most memorable creations was a ghoulish brood known as the Addams Family. On television and film, the creepy, kooky clan has seemed determined to live on in popular culture long after its patriarch departed the earthly plane in 1988.

Like all of Addams's work, the Addams Family feature played off the identification the audience made with the characters. In many ways, the Addams clan—father, mother, two children, and assorted relatives (all unnamed)—were like a typical American family. But their delight in their own fiendishness tickled the inner ghoul in everyone. In one of Addams's most famous cartoons, the family gleefully prepared to pour a vat of boiling liquid from the roof of their Gothic mansion onto Christmas carolers singing below. No doubt millions of harried New Yorker readers harbored secret desires to follow suit.

To the surprise of many, the "sick humor" of the Addams Family found life beyond the printed page. In September 1964, a situation comedy based on the cartoons debuted on ABC. Producers initially sought input from Addams (who suggested that the husband be called Repelli and the son Pubert) but eventually opted for a more conventional sitcom approach. The show was marred by a hyperactive laugh track but otherwise managed to adapt Addams's twisted sense of humor for mainstream consumption.

Veteran character actor John Astin played the man of the house, now dubbed Gomez. Carolyn Jones lent a touch of Hollywood glamour to the role of his wife, Morticia. Ted Cassidy, a heavy-lidded giant of a man, was perfectly cast as Lurch, the butler. The scene-stealing role of Uncle Fester went to Jackie Coogan, a child star of silent films now reincarnated as a keening, bald grotesquerie. Blossom Rock played the haggard Grandmama, with little person Felix Silla as the hirsute Cousin Itt. Lisa Loring and Ken Weatherwax rounded out the cast as deceptively innocent-looking children Wednesday and Pugsley, respectively.

The Addams Family lasted just two seasons on the network. Often compared to the contemporaneous horror comedy The Munsters, The Addams Family was by far the more sophisticated and well-written show. Plots were sometimes taken directly from the cartoons, though few seemed to notice. Whatever zeitgeist network executives thought they were tapping into when they programmed two supernatural sitcoms at the same time fizzled out quickly. The Addams Family was canceled in 1966 and languished in reruns for eleven years, at which point a Halloween TV movie was produced featuring most of the original cast. Loring did manage to capture a few headlines when she married porno actor Paul Siedermann. But the series was all but forgotten until the 1990s, when it was introduced to a new generation via the Nick at Nite cable channel.

The mid-1990s saw a craze for adapting old-school sitcom chestnuts into feature-length movies. On the leading edge of this trend was a movie version of The Addams Family released in 1991. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, the film boasted a top-rate cast, with Raul Julia as Gomez, Anjelica Huston as Morticia, and Christopher Lloyd as Uncle Fester. It was widely hailed as closer to Addams's original vision than the television series but derided for its woefully thin plot. A sequel, Addams Family Values, followed in 1993. In 1999, there was talk of yet another feature adaptation of Addams's clan of ghouls, this time with an entirely new cast.

Anjelica Huston (left) with Raul Julia in the film Addams Family Values.

Cox, Stephen, and John Astin. The Addams Chronicles: An Altogether Ooky Look at the Addams Family. New York, Cumberland House, 1998.