The Addams Family (1964 TV series)
The Addams Family is an American macabre/black comedy sitcom based on the characters from Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons. The 30-minute television series was created by David Levy and Donald Saltzman and shot in black-and-white, airing for two seasons on ABC from September 18, 1964, to April 8, 1966, for a total of 64 episodes. The show is also notable for its opening theme, which was composed and sung by Vic Mizzy.
The show was originally produced by head writer Nat Perrin for Filmways, Inc., at General Service Studios in Hollywood, California. Successor company MGM Television now owns the rights to the show.
Plot
The Addams Family are a close-knit extended family with decidedly macabre interests and supernatural abilities, though no explanation for their powers is explicitly given in the series. The wealthy, endlessly enthusiastic Gomez Addams is madly in love with his refined wife, Morticia. Along with their daughter Wednesday, their son Pugsley, Uncle Fester, and Grandmama, they reside at 0001 Cemetery Lane in an ornate, gloomy, Second Empire-style mansion, which is portrayed by the house at 21 Chester Place in Los Angeles. The theme song contains the lyric, "Their house is a museum" which is borne out by the variety of objects in the interior scenes, some of which are objects that collectors might seek and others which are only bizarre. Somebody stole these props after the show was canceled. There are always lighted candles in every room.The family is attended by their servants: Lurch, the towering butler, and Thing, a
disembodied hand that appears from within wooden boxes and other places. Other relatives who made recurring appearances included Cousin Itt, Morticia's older sister Ophelia, and Morticia's mother Grandma Frump. Many guest stars who were mainly famous during the era came in the show playing a cameo part as the script permitted
Much of the humor derives from the Addamses' culture clash with the rest of the world. They invariably treat normal visitors with great warmth and courtesy, even when the guests express confusion, fear and dismay at the decor of the house and the sight of Lurch and Thing. Some visitors have bad intentions, which the family generally ignore and suffer no harm. The Addamses are puzzled by the horrified reactions to their own good-natured and normal behavior. Accordingly, they view "conventional" tastes with generally tolerant suspicion. Almost invariably, as a result of their visit to the Addamses, a visitor only wants to leave and never come back.
Characters
Addams family
- Morticia Addams – A cultivated and beautiful woman who knits, dabbles in art, plays the shamisen, raises a carnivorous plant and trims roses by clipping off the buds and arranging the thorny stems in a vase. With long, straight ebony-black hair, she is always attired in a long, floor-length tight black dress that ends, apparently, in a full set of tentacles. With her aristocratic bearing and detachment, she is often the calm center of the chaotic events of the household, but she performs magical feats effortlessly; for instance, in "Winning of Morticia Addams" she bounces a basketball through three baskets.
- Gomez Addams – A retired lawyer of Castilian descent, who is passionately in love with his wife, often referring to her in Spanish pet names such as "" and "Cara Mía". His ardor is greatly intensified when she speaks French. Gomez is very wealthy as a result of owning numerous companies and stocks, and is often following the tape from a stock ticker that is installed in the living room. Gomez squanders money in a cavalier manner and loses it on stocks, but remains wealthy. His hobby, which he shares with his son Pugsley, is gleefully crashing and detonating model trains. He refers to Spain as his "ancestral home". He sometimes stands on his head as he reads the newspaper or plays solitaire. Regularly dressed in a double-breasted and chalk-pinstriped suit with a black tie, Gomez is almost always seen smoking a cigar. The cigar may be already lit when he pulls it from his coat's breast pocket or from the cigar store Indian prop, although sometimes he is seen lighting one, and after that he may put the burning match into his breast pocket. Astin added this trait to the character as he had already been a cigar smoker prior to the show's debut, but then quit after the series ended.
- Uncle Fester Addams – Morticia's exuberant uncle who is completely bald and dressed in a floor-length fur-collared coat. Fester is quite fond of dynamite and blasting caps. He often relaxes on a bed of nails, by inserting his head into a book press or by being stretched on a wooden torture rack. He powers light bulbs by placing them into his mouth.
- Lurch – The Addams' loyal butler, who mainly speaks in grunts or groans. Morticia and Gomez summon him with a hangman's-noose bell pull, to which he immediately appears on screen and replies, "You rang?" He is physically imposing and plays the harpsichord that was originally in Cousin Crimp's family for 400 years. After Lurch answers the door he removes the hats of male visitors, usually crushing them in the process. He is frequently seen with a feather duster. Cassidy made a cameo appearance as Lurch on an episode of the Batman TV series, and on TV music shows while promoting the pop song of the era "The Lurch".
- Grandmama Addams – Gomez's mother, a witch who conjures potions and spells and dabbles in fortune telling and knife throwing. Sometimes she is carrying a battle-axe or sharpening it on a grinding-wheel in the middle of the living room.
- Wednesday Addams – Gomez's and Morticia's daughter and the youngest member of the family, Wednesday is a strange yet sweet-natured little girl who enjoys keeping bizarre pets such as a black widow spider named Homer and a lizard named Lucifer, in addition to playing with a beheaded doll named Marie Antoinette.
- Pugsley Addams – Gomez's and Morticia's son and Wednesday's older brother. Kind-hearted and smart, he occasionally conforms to conventional standards contrary to his family, such as joining the Boy Scouts. He also enjoys engineering various machines, playing with blasting caps, and playing with his pet octopus Aristotle.
- Thing – A disembodied hand that appears out of boxes and other conveniently placed containers. Thing also appears from a knothole in a tree in the front yard, and in The Addams Family in Court, Thing reaches out of Gomez's briefcase to hand him a legal paper in court. Gomez's constant "companion" since childhood, Thing is always ready to assist family members with minor daily services and diversions, such as lifting the receiver on telephones, retrieving the mail, lighting cigars, pouring tea and playing chess. The tagline is, "Thank you, Thing." Thing apparently has the ability to teleport from container to container, almost instantly: Thing sometimes appears from different containers at opposite ends of the room within seconds of each other. Though Ted Cassidy would often portray Thing, assistant director Jack Voglin would sometimes portray Thing in scenes where Lurch and Thing appear together. Thing was billed as "Itself" in the closing credits.
Recurring characters
Addams Family relatives
The following relatives made appearances on the show, but members of the family mentioned other relatives in each of the episodes:- Cousin Itt – Gomez's cousin, Itt is a diminutive character composed entirely of floor-length hair accompanied by a bowler hat and sunglasses. He speaks in rapid, unintelligible gibberish that only the family can understand. The character was created specifically for the television series.
- Ophelia Frump – Morticia's flighty flower-child older sister who is the "white sheep of the family". In the two-part second-season episode "Morticia's Romance", Gomez is originally engaged to Ophelia in an arranged marriage, but when he sees the then-22-year-old Morticia, they fall in love with each other. The flowers entwined in Ophelia's hair actually have roots that travel down into her foot, and the foot raises when one of the flowers are tugged on. She sings in three-part harmony and has a love of judo that enables her to flip men onto their backs. Ophelia was played by Carolyn Jones in a blonde wig, and, along with Cousin Itt, was created specifically for the television series, appearing in family portrait artwork by Charles Addams after the show's debut.
- Hester Frump – The mother of Morticia and Ophelia. She is a witch and an old friend of Grandmama Addams.
Minor characters
- Arthur J. Henson – An insurance executive and politician in the town where the family resides.
- Joe Digby portrayed by Eddie Quillan – An insurance clerk who works for Arthur Henson. Eddie Quillan also played Clyde Arbogast, Mayor Arthur Henson's assistant in "Gomez, the People's Choice."
- Sam L. Hilliard – A truant officer who is scared to death of the family. In one episode, his middle name is given as "Lucifer", much to the family's delight.
- Mr. Briggs – The neighborhood mailman who delivers the mail to the Addams house.
- Sam Picasso – A scheming Spanish artist upon whom family members rely for artistic advice.
Production
Writing
Series creator David Levy explained the premise of the show to syndicated columnist Erskine Johnson in August 1964: "We have made full-bodied people, not monsters... They are not grotesque and hideous manifestations. At the same time we are protecting the images of Addams' 'children', as he refers to them. We are living up to the spirit of his cartoons. He is more than just a cartoonist. He's a social commentator and a great wit." The tone was set by series producer Nat Perrin, who was a close friend of Groucho Marx and writer of several Marx Brothers films. Perrin created story ideas, directed one episode and rewrote every script. The series often employed the same type of zany satire and screwball humor seen in the Marx Brothers films, in addition to wordplay, physical comedy, and occasionally slapstick. There was a running gag that labeled people who were not members of the family "strange" or complained of their behavior. Another one was members of the family trading objects when they collided; in "Cousin Itt and the Vocational Counselor" Gomez ends up with Morticia's knitting and Morticia has his cigar. Other running jokes were about strange food and drink, e.g. toadstools and hemlock; bats, the dungeon, the cemetery and other "creepy" things; and Gomez's glee at losing money on the stock market. It lampooned politics ; modern art ; Shakespeare and other literature ; the legal system ; royalty ; rock n' roll and Beatlemania.Opening theme
The show's memorable theme, written and arranged by longtime Hollywood composer Vic Mizzy, was dominated by a harpsichord with finger snaps as percussive accompaniment. Ted Cassidy punctuated the lyrics with the words "neat", "sweet" and "petite". Mizzy's theme was popular enough to enjoy a release as a 45-rpm single, though it failed to make the U.S. charts. The song was revived for the 1992 animated series, as well as in 2007 for a series of Addams Family television commercials for M&M's chocolates. It was also revisited in the dance scene in Addams Family Values.The closing theme was similar, but was instrumental only and featured such instruments as a triangle, a wood block, a siren whistle and a duck call replacing some of the finger snaps.
Episodes
For both seasons, episodes aired Friday nights at 8:30 p.m.Syndication
The show has been aired worldwide. In the United Kingdom, it first aired on ITV in 1965–1966, and then it appeared on Sky 1 in 1991 and ran until 1992. It was then aired on BBC Two from 6 p.m. on Monday nights starting in February 1992 until the end of 1993 and then moved to Saturdays in 1994 and later in school summer holidays before it vanished at the end of August 1996.In October 2011, the series was picked up by Cartoon Network's sister channel Boomerang and ran through the entire month of October that year for Halloween alongside The Munsters. It vanished from Boomerang after Halloween 2013.
The series airs on select local stations, and as of November 2013 airs weekends on the national movie/classic TV network Antenna TV
Reunions, sequels and adaptations
A reunion TV film, Halloween with the New Addams Family, aired on NBC in October 1977 and starred most of the original cast, except for Blossom Rock, who was very ill at the time and was replaced as Grandmama by Phyllis actress Jane Rose. Elvia Allman portrayed Mother Frump, whom Margaret Hamilton had played in the original series. Veteran character actors Parley Baer and Vito Scotti, who both had recurring roles in the original series, also appeared in the movie. The film also included extended family members created specifically for this production, such as Gomez's brother Pancho and two additional children, Wednesday Jr. and Pugsley Jr. The latter two were portrayed as near copies of the original children, now known as Wednesday Sr. and Pugsley Sr., who were once again played respectively by Lisa Loring and Ken Weatherwax, the original Wednesday and Pugsley in the series. Vic Mizzy rewrote and conducted the series theme as an instrumental.Astin reprised his role as Gomez Addams for the 1992 animated adaptation of the series. Weatherwax and Loring, the only other original cast members still living at the time, did not participate.
In 1998, a standalone film, Addams Family Reunion, aired on the Fox Family Channel, followed by the series The New Addams Family that ran from 1998 to 2000. Astin appeared in the series as Grandpapa Addams.
Home media
has released The Addams Family on DVD in Region 1, 2 and 4 in three-volume sets.| DVD Name | Episodes | Release date | Additional information |
| Volume 1 | 22 | August 10, 2006 |
|
| Volume 2 | 21 | March 27, 2007 | |
| Volume 3 | 21 | September 11, 2007 | |
| The Complete Series | 64 | November 13, 2007 |
Streaming
As of April 2019, the series can be purchased on iTunes, and can be streamed in the United States via Amazon Video and IMDb. The minisodes are available on Crackle and Vudu.As of October 1, 2019, the series is also being aired on its own channel on the ViacomCBS-owned free streaming service Pluto TV.