 He looked like the most ordinary of men: 6'1", silver-haired,
and normally well-dressed (that is, when he wasn’t attending parties in
flaming red pajamas, a Knights Templar outfit, or attired as Abe Lincoln). But inside his head were some of the most gruesomely funny cartoons, images, and ideas ever drawn for The New Yorker
or any other magazine. He was Charles Addams (or "Chas Addams," as his work was signed. "Just a matter
of design," he explained. "It looks better than writing out
'Charles'").
Addams was born on January 7, 1912 in a middle-class town in the heart of New Jersey,
of all places (one expects that he was birthed in a brooding Gothic mansion).
His childhood was relatively normal, though his somewhat forbidding home
(it's been compared to the Bates home in Psycho) was eventually decorated with crossbows,
suits of armor, and a coffee table made from a little girl’s tombstone.
The first of his 1,300 New Yorker cartoons was published in 1932, and from
then until his death in 1988, it was the rare issue of the magazine that
didn’t offer either a cover or other illustration by him. His
drawings usually featured a cast of regulars -- a ghoulish man with a mustache, a gaunt woman
in black, an older man
and woman, two grotesque
children,
and a butler
assembled from spare parts. They became known as "The Addams Family." In 1964, the Family achieved immortality with a
weekly television series that ran two years before inspiring two
movies,
animated series, a revival of the sitcom, and a Broadway musical. (Coincidentally, January 9 marks the birthday of Vic Mizzy, the man
who composed the television theme song
that's familiar even to those who never saw it.)
Addams was sitting in his car, parked in front of his New York apartment
building when he suffered a fatal heart attack. His wife, no stranger to his macabre sense of humor,
took it all in stride: "He's always been a car buff, so it was a nice
way to go." We should all be so lucky.
Suggested Sites...
- Charles Addams.com
- his official site, with images, biography, and information.
- The Father of the Addams Family - 2006 NPR profile of Addams, with an excerpt from
Linda Davis's biography.
- Unofficial Addams Family site - load
ed with information on Gomez, Morticia, Uncle
Fester, Pugsley, Wednesday, Grandmama, and Lurch. - Wikipedia: The Addams Family - biographies of the whole clan.
- Hulu: The Addams Family
- watch episodes of the classic sitcom.
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