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[[Gomez Addams|Gomez Alonzo Addams]] is the Addams [[patriarch]]. He is the husband of [[Morticia Addams|Morticia]] and the father of [[Wednesday Addams|Wednesday]] and [[Pugsley Addams|Pugsley]]. Originally Grandmama's son, this was [[retcon]]ned later on to make him Grandmama's son-in-law. His brother (originally uncle-in-law) is Uncle Fester.
[[Gomez Addams|Gomez Alonzo Addams]] is the Addams [[patriarch]]. He is the husband of [[Morticia Addams|Morticia]] and the father of [[Wednesday Addams|Wednesday]] and [[Pugsley Addams|Pugsley]]. Originally Grandmama's son, this was [[retcon]]ned later on to make him Grandmama's son-in-law. His brother (originally uncle-in-law) is Uncle Fester.


Gomez is portrayed as a charming, handsome, and successful man, although he takes a childlike, eccentric enthusiasm to everything he does. For instance, his personal portrait depicts him as standing gleefully on his head. Generally he dresses in a dark [[pinstripe]]d suit with short, slicked-back hair and sports a pencil-thin mustache. Though a peaceful man, he is known to be well-versed in many types of combat. He and Morticia fence with foils sometimes.
Gomez is portrayed as a charming, handsome, and successful man, although he takes a childlike, eccentric enthusiasm to everything he does. For instance, his personal portrait depicts him as standing gleefully on his head. Though a peaceful man, he is known to be well-versed in many types of combat. He and Morticia fence with foils sometimes.


Gomez has an endless love for Morticia.[[French language|French]] (a quirk that first appeared in the eleventh episode, "The Addams Family Meet the [[Very Important Person|V.I.P.]]s"). He studied to be a lawyer, but rarely practices, while taking absurd pride in losing his cases. Gomez is also quite proud of the fact that his law class voted him "Least Likely to Pass the Bar."
Gomez has an endless love for Morticia. [[French language|French]] (a quirk that first appeared in the eleventh episode, "The Addams Family Meet the [[Very Important Person|V.I.P.]]s"). He studied to be a lawyer, but rarely practices, while taking absurd pride in losing his cases. Gomez is also quite proud of the fact that his law class voted him "Least Likely to Pass the Bar."


Gomez is extensively wealthy from inheritance and extensive investments, but he seems to have little regard for money. Although Gomez invests in the [[stock market]], to the point where there is a [[ticker tape]] machine in their living area, he seems to play the market primarily to lose.
Gomez is extensively wealthy from inheritance and extensive investments, but he seems to have little regard for money. Although Gomez invests in the [[stock market]], to the point where there is a [[ticker tape]] machine in their living area, he seems to play the market primarily to lose.

Revision as of 21:50, 2 July 2007

This article primarily deals with the famous magazine cartoons. For the TV series, see The Addams Family (TV series). For other, similarly-named families, see Adams family.

The Addams Family is a creation of American cartoonist Charles Addams that appears in print cartoons, television shows, movies and video games. A satirical inversion of the ideal American nuclear family, the Addamses are an eccentric, wealthy family who delight in everything grotesque and macabre and are unaware that people find them bizarre or frightening.

Addams's cartoons in The New Yorker magazine originally gained popularity in the 1930s. He was noted for his morbid sense of humor, and over the years various bizarre people and creatures who lived in a huge decaying Second Empire house became recurring characters.

Premise

The Addamses are the descendants of a very long line of witches, freaks, ghouls, and other assorted social outcasts. The family that the cartoons, movies, and television shows are based on is apparently only one surviving branch of the Addams clan. Many other "Addams families" exist all over the world. Their family credo, according to the film version, is Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc (pseudo-Latin: "We gladly feast on those who would subdue us").

They reside next to a cemetery and a swamp at 0001 Cemetery Ridge, in a gloomy mansion. (Charles Addams was first inspired by his home town of Westfield, New Jersey, an area full of ornate Victorian mansions and archaic graveyards.)[1]

Although they all share macabre interests, the Addamses cannot be considered evil people. They are a close-knit extended family, regularly attending events involving the children and loudly cheering their accomplishments (despite the two usually doing very poorly at whatever is being attempted). Morticia and Gomez remain passionate toward one another. She sometimes calls him "Bubbele" (a Yiddish term of endearment), to which he responds by kissing up and down her arms. Also, in several of the TV episodes, the family is unwittingly friendly to their visitors (who are often horrified at the Addams' lifestyle).

Addams Family characters

Family members and servants

The Addams family consists of Gomez, Morticia, Pugsley, Wednesday, Uncle Fester, and Grandmama. The family is attended to by their butler, Lurch and their servant, Thing, a disembodied hand in a box.

Gomez

Gomez Alonzo Addams is the Addams patriarch. He is the husband of Morticia and the father of Wednesday and Pugsley. Originally Grandmama's son, this was retconned later on to make him Grandmama's son-in-law. His brother (originally uncle-in-law) is Uncle Fester.

Gomez is portrayed as a charming, handsome, and successful man, although he takes a childlike, eccentric enthusiasm to everything he does. For instance, his personal portrait depicts him as standing gleefully on his head. Though a peaceful man, he is known to be well-versed in many types of combat. He and Morticia fence with foils sometimes.

Gomez has an endless love for Morticia. French (a quirk that first appeared in the eleventh episode, "The Addams Family Meet the V.I.P.s"). He studied to be a lawyer, but rarely practices, while taking absurd pride in losing his cases. Gomez is also quite proud of the fact that his law class voted him "Least Likely to Pass the Bar."

Gomez is extensively wealthy from inheritance and extensive investments, but he seems to have little regard for money. Although Gomez invests in the stock market, to the point where there is a ticker tape machine in their living area, he seems to play the market primarily to lose.

Gomez is of Castilian origin and loves to smoke cigars and play destructively with his model trains. Despite his macabre sense of humor, he is extremely generous and known for going out of his way to help those he considers friends.

The original Gomez, John Astin, made a cameo on the second TV series as "Grandpapa Addams", father to Gomez.

Morticia

Morticia A. Addams (née Frump) is the matriarch of the Addams Family. Her original mother was Hester Frump, but her origins were later retconned and she became Grandmama's daughter. (Grandmama subsequently became known as Esmerelda Frump.)

Morticia has an older sister named Ophelia.

In the sitcom, her marriage brought her uncle Fester into the family. She is a vampish woman with pale skin and a Gothic appearance, clad in a Vampira-esque, skin-tight black gown with octopus-like tendrils at the bottom.

Morticia is portrayed as elegant, artistic, and musically inclined (opera singing, tango dancing, and playing numerous instruments). She also knits strange items of clothing for various members of the family.

The original drawing of Morticia in The New Yorker was said to be the inspiration for Maila Nurmi's Vampira character, the forerunner of Elvira.

Pugsley and Wednesday

Gomez and Morticia have two children, Pugsley and Wednesday. Wednesday, whose middle name is Friday, was originally — as her name suggests — a quiet, somewhat pathetic child, full of woe. Her name appears to have been a satirical reference to contemporary actress Tuesday Weld. In the TV show she is a sweet-natured, innocent, happy child, largely concerned with her pet spiders. A favorite toy is her Marie Antoinette doll, which she had guillotined. The movies gave Wednesday a much more serious and mature personality with a deadpan wit and a morbid fascination with trying to physically harm or possibly murder her brother (she was seen strapping him into an electric chair, for example, and preparing to pull the switch); she is apparently often successful, but Pugsley never dies. Like most members of the family he seems to live in a semi-immortal state.

For his part, Pugsley is largely either oblivious of the harm his sister tries to inflict on him, or an enthusiastic supporter of it. In his first incarnation, Pugsley (originally to be called Pubert, a name that would be given to the Addams baby in the live action movies) was depicted as a diabolical, malevolent child next door. In the TV series, he is a devoted older brother and an inventive and mechanical genius, although his brilliance is lost in the movies, in which he appears to be of below-average intelligence. In the films, he loses his independence and becomes Wednesday's sidekick, leaving it up to her to do the evil deeds with him cheerfully helping in any way possible.

In the most recent animated series, Pugsley's and Wednesday's personalities seem to be a mix of their previous ones, with Wednesday a happy and somewhat optimistic child, while retaining her sophisticated manner from the movies and Pugsley having regained some of his genius when it comes to chemistry and machines, but his intelligence still seems to be rather underdeveloped at times.

Pubert

In the 1993 film Addams Family Values, Gomez and Morticia have a third child, a son named Pubert (voiced by Cheryl Chase), a mustachioed and seemingly indestructible baby with the ability to shoot flaming arrows. (Charles Addams first created the name Pubert for the '60s TV series, but it was rejected and so he changed it to Pugsley.)

Uncle Fester and Grandmama

Other members of the family who live with Gomez and Morticia include Uncle Fester and Grandmama.

Fester is a bald, barrel-shaped man with dark, sunken eyes and a devilish grin. He seems to carry an electrical charge and can illuminate a light bulb by sticking it in his mouth. In the original television series, Fester was Morticia's uncle, and therefore technically not an Addams, although at times he claims the family name as his own. In all other animated and filmed content, Fester became Gomez's older brother, and therefore the uncle of Wednesday and Pugsley.

Grandmama is Gomez's mother in the 1960s live-action TV series, where she is given the name "Eudora Addams". In both the movies and the animated TV series, she is Morticia's mother and her surname is sometimes mentioned as "Frump". Grandmama is a witch who deals in potions, spells and hexes of all kinds. She even dabbles in fortune-telling. Her trademarks are her shawl and frizzy hair. In the original TV series, Mother Frump exists as a separate character from Grandmama. In the animated series, Grandmama is only referred to as "Granny".

Thing, Lurch, and Cousin Itt

The family has a servant in the form of a disembodied hand named "Thing". Thing has been Gomez's friend since childhood. He (it is implied that he is male) often performs common, everyday tasks such as retrieving the mail, writing a letter or just giving a friendly pat on shoulder, appearing out of ubiquitous boxes or other convenient containers throughout the house. He communicates with Addamses with a Morse-like alphabet, knocking on wood. In the movies and in The New Addams Family, Thing is an entirely mobile hand severed at the wrist.

The Addamses also have a tall, ghoulish manservant named Lurch. Lurch is a shambling, groaning Frankenstein's Monster-like butler. He tries to help around the house, although occasionally he botches tasks due to his great size and strength. Surprisingly, he is often seen playing the harpsichord and organ with a great degree of skill. In Addams Family Reunion, Gomez states that Lurch is not really an Addams, and Morticia replies that Lurch has parts of many families, and that he has the heart of an Addams.

Gomez also has a cousin, known as Cousin Itt, who often visits the family. He is short-statured and has long hair which covers his entire body from scalp to floor. Although in the series he is shown wearing opera gloves, it is unclear what, if anything, is beneath the hair. He speaks in a squeaky, high-pitched, gibberish language that only the family seems to understand. In the second animated series, Itt is a super-spy for the U.S. Government. In the movies he falls in love with a human woman, Margaret, and marries her after her first husband, Tully the lawyer, is disposed of by the Addams children. He and Margaret go on to have a child in Addams Family Values (nicknamed 'What').

Houseguests

Guests include Morticia's older sister Ophelia (also played by Carolyn Jones in the sitcom), Morticia's cousin Melancholia and Morticia's mother (and Fester's sister), Hester Frump (played in the sitcom by Margaret Hamilton, best known for her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz). The Addamses have many other eccentric relatives who, in the sitcom, are described but never shown.

Neighbors

Most of the Addamses' neighbors are less than understanding of the family's eccentricities. Within the larger community, the Addamses are viewed as eccentric, dangerous, or worse. Both the TV shows and movies deal with outsiders attempting to understand and "correct" the behavior of the family, and remain frustrated and horrified by the things that the Addamses find amusing. The Addamses, for their part, are just the opposite, and are often shocked and horrified at the actions of conventional society.

The second animated series introduced three new regular characters: the Normanmeyers (Norman, Normina, and N.J.), a family of "normal" people living across the street from the Addamses. While Norman and Normina are constantly appalled and shocked at the Addams' macabre behavior, their son N.J. counts Wednesday and Pugsley as his best friends. Norman owns and works at an underwear factory and is utterly obsessed with underwear, decorating the entire Normanmeyer house with an underwear motif, which arguably makes him less "normal" than the Addamses themselves.

The paranormal nature of the Addamses

Unlike The Munsters, which explicitly stated its characters' supernatural identities, the exact nature of the Addamses is never established. They all seem to share a bond with the occult and supernatural. Uncle Fester is often portrayed as something of a mad scientist, and Grandmama as a fortune-teller, but these activities don't really explain the Addamses' seemingly immortal state. The food they live on is inedible or outright deadly for normal humans to eat, and there is also the family's interest in painful activities like walking across minefields and having a sharp pendulum cut them in half.

In the 1960s television series, virtually every member of the family demonstrates some uniquely "non-human" trait. Morticia is able to light candles with the touch of a fingertip and relaxes by literally "smoking", curls of smoke emitting from her body. Gomez is remarkably athletic, his cigar lights the instant he draws it out of his breast pocket, and extinguishes when replaced, and he can perform complicated calculations in his head, making a mechanical sound as he does so. Fester can generate both electricity and magnetism, while Grandmama, in addition to being able to whip up potions of varying effects, can fly on a broom.

Pugsley is able to hang from tree branches by his teeth (although this trait is only referred to and not seen), while six-year-old Wednesday is strong enough to bring her father down with a judo hold. Lurch is superhumanly strong, and Thing (whose paranormal nature speaks for itself) can apparently teleport from box to box almost instantaneously. None of these traits are considered unusual by any others in the family but treated simply as individual talents that anyone might possess. All are capable of enduring such experiences as lying on a bed of nails, being stretched on a rack, and so on without pain and, indeed, derive pleasure from such experiences.

Occasionally, the 1960s series features guest characters who share the Addamses' tastes, which, along with the fact that the family obviously purchases its yak meat, explosives, etc. from somewhere, implies an entire subculture of people who share the family's tastes (as seen in several Charles Addams cartoons). In contrast, the Addamses themselves consider such things as daisies, chocolate fudge, the Boy Scouts, and other such traditionally "wholesome" things—as well as any distaste for such things as swamps, octopoda, and hanging upside-down from the ceiling—to be odd, if not outright disturbing. Fester once cited a neighbor family's meticulous petunia patches as evidence that they were "nothing but riff-raff." Although the Addamses usually greet "normal" visitors with enthusiasm, these attitudes establish the family as more of an eccentric, old money family that looks down upon the nouveaux riche or bourgeois habits of the outside world.

Television, film, games and musical

Live-action

In 1964, the ABC-TV network created a television series based on Addams' cartoon characters. The series was shot in black-and-white and aired for two seasons in 64 half-hour episodes (September 18, 1964 – September 2, 1966). During the original television run of The Addams Family television series, The New Yorker editor William Shawn refused to publish any Addams Family cartoons, though he continued to publish other Charles Addams cartoons. Shawn regarded his magazine as targeting a more refined readership, and did not want it associated with characters who could be seen on television by just anybody. After the television series was canceled, Shawn ended his boycott and The Addams Family was welcomed back.[citation needed]

A TV reunion movie, Halloween With The New Addams Family, aired on CBS in October 1977. It featured most of the original cast, except Blossom Rock, who had played Grandmama but was very ill at the time; she was replaced by Jane Rose.

In the 1990s, Orion Pictures (which by then had inherited the rights to the series) developed a film version, The Addams Family. Due to the studio's financial troubles at the time, Orion sold the US rights to the film to Paramount Pictures. Upon the film's initial success, a sequel followed: Addams Family Values (1993, with worldwide distribution by Paramount). Later came Addams Family Reunion (1998). Loosened content restrictions allowed the films to use far more grotesque humor that strove to keep the original spirit of the Addams cartoons. The second film's title is a piece of word play on "family values". On the surface, the Addamses seem to represent values the polar opposite from the term's usual meaning.

The third film was released direct-to-video, this time by Warner Bros. through its video division. The movie has no relation to the Paramount movies. It is in fact a full-length pilot for a second live-action television version, The New Addams Family, produced and shot in Canada, which ran during the 1998–1999 season on Fox Family. The third movie's Gomez, played by Tim Curry, follows the style of Raul Julia's, while the new sitcom's Gomez is John Astin's style. Most episodes were remakes of the original series' episodes, although some re-scripting was done to account for the new relations between characters, and the more macabre versions of Wednesday and Pugsley, to try and fit the episodes into the movies' universe. John Astin returned to the franchise in specific episodes of this series, albeit as Grandpa Addams (Gomez's grandfather, a character introduced in Addams Family Reunion). Pubert's absence in the new series was explained in an early episode when Wednesday mentioned that there used to be a third, but they ate it.

Animation

File:AddamsFamily1973.gif
The Addams family in the first animated series. From left to right: Pugsley (with pet octopus Ocho), Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday, Lurch (with Thing), Fester, Cousin Itt and Grandmama. Also shown: Pet vulture Mr. B and pet lion Kitty.

Two animated television spin-offs and an animated guest appearance have also been produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions.

The Addams Family's first animated appearance was on the third episode of Hanna-Barbera's The New Scooby-Doo Movies, "Scooby-Doo Meets the Addams Family" (a.k.a. "Wednesday is Missing"), which first aired on CBS Saturday morning September 23, 1972. Four of the original cast (John Astin, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan, and Ted Cassidy) returned for the special which involved the Addamses in a mystery with the Scooby-Doo gang. The Addams Family characters were drawn to the specifications of the original Charles Addams comics. After the episode aired, fans wanted more animated adventures featuring the Addamses, and Hanna-Barbera responded in kind.

File:AddamsFamily1992.jpg
The Addams family in the second animated series. From left to right: Lurch, Pugsley, Fester, Morticia, Gomez (with Thing on his shoulder), Wednesday, Granny and Cousin Itt.

The first animated series ran on Saturday mornings from 1973–1975 on NBC. In a departure from the original series, this series took the Addamses on the road in a Victorian-style RV. This series also marked the point where the relations between characters were retconned so that Fester was now Gomez' brother, and Grandmama was now Morticia's mother (though the old relations would be revisited in the 1977 TV-movie, to keep continuous with the original sitcom). Although Coogan and Cassidy reprised their roles, Astin and Jones did not, their parts being re-cast with Hanna-Barbera voice talents Lennie Weinrib as Gomez and Janet Waldo as Morticia, while none other than an eight-year-old Jodie Foster provided the voice of Pugsley. Again, the characters were drawn to the specifications of the original Charles Addams comics. One season was produced, with the season rerunning the following year.

The second animated series ran on Saturday mornings from 1992–1995 on ABC after producers realized the success of the 1991 Addams Family movie. This series returned to the familiar format of the original series, with the Addams Family facing their sitcom situations at home. John Astin returned to the role of Gomez, and celebrities Rip Taylor and Carol Channing took over the roles of Fester and Grandmama, respectively, while veteran voice actors Jim Cummings, Debi Derryberry, Jeannie Elias and Pat Fraley did the voices of Lurch, Wednesday, Pugsley and Cousin Itt. New artistic models of the characters were used for this series, though still having a passing resemblance to the original comics. Two seasons were produced, with the third year containing reruns. Oddly in this series, Wednesday maintained her macabre, brooding attitude from the Addams Family movies, but her facial expressions and body language conveyed the happy-go-lucky, fun attitude of her portrayal in the original television show.

Games

Six video games released from 1989 to 1994 were based on The Addams Family. Fester's Quest (1989) was a top-down shooter that featured Uncle Fester. The Addams Family platformer was released for Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy, with later ports for Sega Genesis (based on the Super NES version), Master System and Game Gear (both based on the NES version but with different graphics), TurboGrafx-CD (developed separately) and ZX Spectrum; these games, released by Ocean Software (Flying Edge in the case of the Sega consoles ports) (ICOM Simulations for the TurboGrafx-CD version), these were based on the first movie rather than the TV series or cartoons. The games' sequel, The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt (1993), also by Ocean Software was based on the ABC animated series, and was released for Super NES, NES and Game Boy (although the latter two were just 8-bit remakes of the first SNES game, swapping Pugsley and Gomez's roles). Addams Family Values (1994) by Ocean was based on the movie's sequel and returned to the style of gameplay seen in the original Fester's Quest.

A Game Boy Color game was released in the 1990s for promotion of "The New Addams Family." The game was simply titled, "The New Addams Family Series."

A pinball game by Midway (under the Bally label) was released in 1992 shortly after the movie. It broke previous sales records by selling over 20,000 units.

Musical

In May, 2007 it was announced that a musical was being produced for the Broadway stage featuring an adaptation of the Addams Family. Broadway veterans Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice are writing the book while Andrew Lippa was writing the score. Julian Crouch and Phelim McDermott have been hired to direct the production.[2]

Cast

File:Addamsfamilyvalues.jpg
Addams Family Values DVD cover
Gomez Addams is portrayed by
Morticia Addams is portrayed by
Pugsley Addams is portrayed by
Wednesday Addams is portrayed by
Uncle Fester is portrayed by
Grandmama is portrayed by
Lurch is portrayed by
Thing is portrayed by
Cousin Itt is portrayed by

Trivia

File:HisteriaAddams.gif
The cast of Histeria! spoofs the opening to The Addams Family.
  • The Histeria! episode "The Know-It-Alls" opens with a parody of the introduction to the 1964 live-action Addams Family series. Also, at the beginning of the episode "The American Civil War", Pepper Mills mistakes Abraham Lincoln for Lurch.
  • Of the names Addams suggested for the family members, "Gomez" was the only one that was not "ghoulish" (in the manner of Morticia or Fester). When asked why he suggested the name Gomez for the character, Addams replied that he "thought he [the character] had a bit of Spanish blood in him." However, Addams had trouble deciding whether the father character was Spanish or Italian. He decided that if he were Spanish, he would be called "Gomez", if Italian, he would be "Repelli".[citation needed]
  • When Lurch is shown in the TV series playing the harpsichord, the music is actually played by Addams Family composer Vic Mizzy.
  • The name of the show is parodied in the pornographic film The Maddams Family, starring Ron Jeremy as Uncle Pester.
  • The Addams Family "mansion" was inspired by College Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Charles Addams attended the University of Pennsylvania.[citation needed]
  • In April 18, 2007, Mars aired an M&M's commercial parody of the old Addams Family show to promote the new dark chocolate variety of the candy. The M&M's mascots were even designed like the Addams members for the commercial, which is a (nearly) shot-for-shot remake of the original opening sequence, complete with the original theme.[3]
  • MC Hammer wrote and performed rap song(s) for The Addams Family movie, with a video and single.

External links

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