the addams family

  the addams family

  So get a witch's shawl on... A broomstick you can crawl on... We're going to pay a call on...

The Addams family was, originally, created by Charles Addams, who first published one-panel cartoon gags about a collection of highly bizarre people (and creatutures) in The New Yorker in 1933 (he was 21 at the time). Charles Addams' morbid and sometimes grotesque - yet delightful - sense of humour made his characters extremely popular in the 1930s, especially one branch of the huge family, which later became what we now know as The Addams Family. However, none of the characters had been given names or the characteristics we have learned to love - these were only developed for the TV series.


The Addams family we know and love consists of Gomez and Morticia, their children Pugsley and Wednesday, as well as Morticia's Uncle Fester (later Gomez' brother in the movies) and Gomez' mother, Grandmama (Morticia's mother in the movies). The family is attended to by their unnaturally tall butler, Lurch, and the disembodied hand known as Thing. They live in an old Second Empire house at 0001, Cemetery Ridge, next to a cemetery and a swamp. Apparently, Charles Addams was inspired by the town of Westfield in New Jersey (his hometown).

All of the inhabitants do not only share a love for the macabre, but also seem to have supernatural characteristics - such as Morticia's ability to literally smoke, or Fester's electrical and magnetical properties.


The TV series The Addams Family consists of two seasons of 64 30 minute episodes, shot in black and white and first aired on ABC from September 18, 1964 to September 2, 1966 on Fridays at 8:30 pm. The series was produced by Filmways, Inc at General Service Studios in Hollywood and later inspired the movies The Addams Family (1991) and The Addams Family Values (1993), starring Raul Julia and Angelica Huston.

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