"The Addams Family" Series
The Addams Family
| The Addams Family | |
|---|---|
One of Charles Addams' original cartoons, An Addams Family Holiday, showing (from left to right) Pugsley, Wednesday, Gomez, Aristotle the octopus, Fester, and Morticia Addams.
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| Created by | Charles Addams |
| Original work | The New Yorker cartoons |
| Owned by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Print publications | |
| Comics | See below |
| Films and television | |
| Film(s) |
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| Short film(s) | The Addams Family Fun-House (1973) |
| Television series |
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| Television special(s) | |
| Theatrical presentations | |
| Musical(s) |
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| Games | |
| Video game(s) | List of video games |
| Audio | |
| Soundtrack(s) | The Addams Family |
The Addams Family is a fictional household created by American cartoonist Charles Addams. The Addams Family has traditionally included Gomez and Morticia Addams, their children Wednesday and Pugsley, close family members Uncle Fester and Grandmama,[a] their butler Lurch, the disembodied hand Thing, and Gomez's Cousin Itt.[b]
The Addamses are a satirical inversion of the ideal 20th-century American family: an odd wealthy aristocratic clan who delight in the macabre and are seemingly unaware, or do not care, that other people find them bizarre or frightening. They originally appeared as an unrelated group of 150 single-panel cartoons, about half of which were originally published in The New Yorker between their debut in 1938 and Charles Addams' death in 1988. They have since been adapted to other media. In 1964, a live-action television series, starring John Astin and Carolyn Jones, premiered on ABC and subsequently inspired a 1977 television film and cameos from the cast in other shows. An unrelated animated series aired in 1973. The franchise was revived in the 1990s with a feature film series consisting of The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993). Both received nominations for Academy Awards, BAFTA Awards, and Hugo Awards. For her role as Morticia, Anjelica Huston was twice nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, and Raul Julia (as Gomez), Christina Ricci (Wednesday), Christopher Lloyd (Fester), and Joan Cusack (Fester's wife, Debbie Jellinsky, in the sequel) received multiple Saturn Award and American Comedy Award nominations for their portrayals. The films inspired a second animated series (1992–1993) set in the same fictional universe but with Astin reprising his role as the voice of Gomez. It was nominated for four Daytime Emmy Awards, including one for Astin. Following Julia's death, the series was rebooted with a 1998 direct-to-video film starring Tim Curry and Daryl Hannah, and a spin-off live-action television series (1998–1999). A decade later, a live musical adaptation featuring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth opened on Broadway and was nominated for two Tony Awards and eight Drama Desk Awards. The franchise has become a staple of popular culture and has also spawned a video game series, academic books, and soundtracks based around its Grammy-nominated theme song.
The family has had a profound influence on American comics, cinema and television,[1][2][3] and has been seen as an inspiration for the goth subculture and its fashion.[4][5] According to The Telegraph, the Addamses "are one of the most iconic families in American history, up there with the Kennedys".[6] Similarly, Time has compared "the relevance and the cultural reach" of the family with those of the Kennedys and Roosevelts, "so much a part of the American landscape that it's difficult to discuss the country's history [...] without mentioning them".[7] For TV Guide, which listed the characters in the top ten of The 60 Greatest TV Families of All Time, the Addamses "provid[ed] the design for cartoonish clans to come, like the Flintstones and the Simpsons".[8] Owing to their popularity, the first feature-length adaption has been identified as a "cult film",[9] while Addams Family Values was listed one of The 50 Best family films by The Guardian[10] and nominated for the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Laughs at the turn of the century.[11] Ricci's portrayal of Wednesday in the film series was ranked one of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters by Empire,[12] and in 2011 AOL named Morticia one of The 100 Most Memorable Female TV Characters.[13]
Premise and background[edit]
The New Yorker cartoons[edit]
Addams' original cartoons were one-panel gags. The characters were undeveloped and unnamed until the television series production.
The family appears to be a single surviving branch of the Addams clan. Many other "Addams families" exist all over the world. According to the film version, the family credo is, Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc (pseudo-Latin: "We gladly feast on those who would subdue us"). Charles Addams was first inspired by his hometown of Westfield, New Jersey, an area full of ornate Victorian mansions and archaic graveyards.[15] In the original comics series they live in a gothic house on Cemetery Ridge. According to the television series, they live in a gloomy mansion adjacent to a cemetery and a swamp. In The Addams Family musical (first shown in Chicago in 2009), the house is located in Central Park.[16]
Although most of the humor derives from the fact that they share macabre interests, the Addamses are not evil. They are a close-knit extended family. Morticia is an exemplary mother, and she and Gomez remain passionate towards each other. Created by the television series writers, she calls him "bubbeleh",[17] to which he responds by kissing her arms, behavior Morticia can also provoke by speaking a few words in French (the meaning is not important; any French will do). The parents are supportive of their children. The family is friendly and hospitable to visitors, in some cases willing to donate large sums of money to causes (television series and films), despite the visitors' horror at the Addamses' peculiar lifestyle.
Charles Addams began as a cartoonist in The New Yorker with a sketch of a window washer that ran on February 6, 1932.[18] His cartoons ran regularly in the magazine from 1938, when he drew the first instance of what came to be called The Addams Family, until his death in 1988.[18]
In 1946, Addams met science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury after having drawn an illustration for Bradbury's short story "Homecoming" in Mademoiselle magazine, the first in a series of tales chronicling a family of Illinois monsters, the Elliotts. Bradbury and Addams became friends and planned to collaborate on a book of the Elliott Family's complete history, with Bradbury writing and Addams providing the illustrations; but it never materialized. Bradbury's Elliott Family stories were anthologized in From the Dust Returned (2001), with a connecting narrative, an explanation of his work with Addams, and Addams's 1946 Mademoiselle illustration used for the book's cover jacket. Although Addams's own characters were well established by the time of their initial encounter, in a 2001 interview, Bradbury states that Addams "went his way and created the Addams Family and I went my own way and created my family in this book."[19]
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