1 9 6 4 – 1 9 6 6 (USA)
64 x 30 minute episodes
The adventures of the seriously spooky and altogether ooky Addams family who live at number 0001 Cemetery Lane in suburban New York – right next door to an overgrown cemetery.
The extended family include Gomez Addams, an eccentric cigar-smoking millionaire lawyer; his slender wife, Morticia; their obese son Pugsley; their sombre little girl Wednesday Friday Addams; Grandmamma Addams (a witch); bald Uncle Fester Frump; hairy Cousin Itt; and Lurch, the family’s towering seven-foot-tall zombie butler.
Other “residents” include Thing (a disembodied hand), Kit Kat (a cowardly lion) and Cleopatra (an African strangling plant).
As the theme song announces, they are ”creepy and kooky”. Yet on the other hand, the mother and father are utterly smitten with one another, they dote on their children and the kids are respectful of their elders and both the grandmother and uncle are loved and respected.
Extended family members are admired and Lurch shows great devotion to his employers, Thing is appreciated for his helpfulness, and visitors are always welcome and treated with generosity and courtesy. If that’s creepy and kooky let’s have more of it . . .
The Addams Family – developed from Charles Addams’ famous New Yorker cartoon strip – was basically a one-joke show – The running gag of outsiders trying to cope with the Addams’ ghoulish world; Fester’s headache cures in the torture chamber; Pugsley’s spectacular train set wrecks; Morticia’s taste for the macabre and bizarre.
Morticia calls Gomez “Bubala”, “cara mia” and “querido” (sweetheart) while he lovingly refers to her as “querida” (darling), “Tish” and “cara bella”.
In 1973-74 Hanna Barbera/NBC broadcast a cartoon version of the show with Ted Cassidy and Jackie Coogan voicing their roles as per the series.
In this cartoon series, Pugsley was voiced by the then 8-year-old Jodie Foster.
There was also a made for TV movie, Halloween with the New Addams Family which was broadcast in 1977. The movie reunited most of the original cast.
The characters were revived in 1991 and 1993 with the movies The Addams Family and Addams Family Values. Both films starred Raul Julia and Angelica Huston.
In 1992 Hanna-Barbera produced another cartoon version to tie-in with the pair of big-budget films made by Paramount. 65 episodes of a new half-hour series, called The New Addams Family, were made for the Family Channel in 1998.
Glenn Taranto starred as Gomez, with Ellie Harvie as Morticia, John De Santis as Lurch, Michael Robards as Uncle Fester, Nicole Marie Fugere as Wednesday and Betty Phillips as Granny Addams.
Charles Addams, the creator of The Addams Family characters was fascinated with medieval paraphernalia and his Manhattan apartment was filled with instruments of torture, a collection of crossbows and armour, as well as human skulls, a collection of brass lizards, fragments of tombstones, and 18th century embalming table which he converted into a coffee table.
Diminutive actor Felix Silla played the hirsute Cousin Itt. Years later, he was Twiki on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and also played one of the countless Ewoks in Return of the Jedi (1983).
Carolyn Jones died of colon cancer on 3 August 1983.
Gomez Addams
John Astin
Morticia Frump Addams
Carolyn Jones
Lurch
Ted Cassidy
Uncle Fester Frump
Jackie Coogan
Grandmamma Addams
Blossom Rock
Wednesday Addams
Lisa Loring
Pugsley Addams
Ken Weatherwax
Cousin Itt
Felix Silla
Cousin Itt (voice)
Tony Magro
Thing
The hand of Ted Cassidy
