SYNOPSIS
The
strange, macabre, but somehow amusing cartoon characters created by Charles Addams for
The New Yorker
magazine made its live-action debut in the fall of 1964 - one of two almost identical
"ghoul comedies" to premier that year - the other was The
Munsters.
Morticia
was the beautiful but somber lady of the house. Her husband Gomez had strange
eyes and rather destructive instincts, as did Uncle Fester. Lurch, the butler,
was a seven-foot-tall warmed-over Frankenstein monster whose dialogue usually
consisted of the two words, "You rang?" The children also had a
ghoulish quality about them. Grandmama, although a witch, was the most
normal-looking one of the bunch. They all lived in a musty, castle-like home full of strange
objects - such as a disembodied hand called "Thing," which
kept popping out of a black box - and they scared almost everyone - except
viewers - half to death.
An
animated version of
The Addams Family aired Saturday mornings on NBC from
September 1973 to August 1975, with Jackie Coogan and Ted Cassidy providing the
voices of their characters. A second animated
Addams Family ran on Saturday mornings on
ABC from September 1992 to January 1995, with John Astin providing the voice of
Gomez.
Astin was back again in a
recurring role in The New
Addams Family, which
premiered on the Fox Family Channel in 1998.
