Charles Addams Totally Explained

Everything about Charles Addams totally explained

Charles Samuel Addams (7 January, 1912 - 29 September, 1988) was an American cartoonist known for his particularly black humor and macabre characters. Some of the recurring characters, who became known as The Addams Family, became the basis for two live-action television series, two cartoon series, and three motion pictures.

Cartoons

His cartoons regularly appeared in The New Yorker, and he also created a syndicated comic strip, Out of This World, which ran in 1956. There are many collections of his work, including Drawn and Quartered (1942) and Dear Dead Days (1959). Typical of his work, one cartoon shows two men standing in a room labeled "Patent Attorney." One is pointing a bizarre gun out the window toward the street and saying, "Death ray, fiddlesticks! It doesn't even slow them up!"
   He drew more than 1,300 cartoons over the course of his life. Those that didn't appear in The New Yorker were often in Collier's and TV Guide. In 1961, Addams received, from the Mystery Writers of America, a Special Edgar Award for his body of work. His cartoons appeared in books, calendars and other merchandising. Singer-guitarist Dean Gitter's 1957 recording, Ghost Ballads (Riverside, RLP 12-636), folk songs with supernatural themes, was packaged with album art by Addams showing a haunted house.
   The "Family" beloved of New Yorker readers was originally created in collaboration with Addams' close friend Ray Bradbury. The two had planned to create a book of the Family's complete history with Addams illustrations, but it never materialized. Bradbury's stories about the "Elliott Family" were finally anthologized in From The Dust Returned in October 2001, with a connecting narrative and an explanation of his work with Addams, and an intricately drawn Addams wraparound cover.
   Addams collected crossbows and used a little girl's tombstone for a coffee table, but Janet Maslin, in a review of an Addams biography for The New York Times, wrote, "Addams persona sounds cooked up for the benefit of feature writers ... was at least partly a character contrived for the public eye", noting that one outré publicity photo showed the humorist wearing a suit of armor at home, "but the shelves behind him hold books about painting and antiques, as well as a novel by John Updike."

Life

Addams was born in Westfield, New Jersey, the son of Grace M. (née Spears) and Charles Huy Addams. He had a happy, sociable, perhaps somewhat bland childhood there, providing few clues as to the macabre character of his humor. He was "known as something of a rascal around the neighborhood" and "there was always a little group of boys at his house, doing things," as childhood friends recalled.
The Addams Family television series began after David Levy, a television producer, approached Addams with an offer to create it with a little help from the humorist. All Addams had to do was give his characters names and more characteristics for the actors to use in portrayals. The series ran on ABC for two seasons, from 1964 to 1966.

Trivia

A cartoon of his was (allegedly) used to gauge incipient lunacy in an asylum, depending on how long it took the subject to see why it's funny. You can see it here. The same cartoon was referenced in the Frazz cartoon published on the 27th January, 2008.
Addams was distantly related to John Adams and John Quincy Adams, despite the different spellings of their last names,
He was a member of Theta Chi fraternity.
In Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, Cary Grant references Charles Addams in the auction scene. Upon discovering Eve with Mr. Vandamm and Leonard, he says "The three of you together. Now that's a picture only Charles Addams could draw."
The Addams family mansion is rumored to be modeled after College Hall at the University of Pennsylvania, where Charles Addams studied.

Books

By Addams

Books of Addams' drawings or illustrated by him (Kobler's anthology):

Drawn and Quartered (1942), first anthology of drawings (Random House)

Addams and Evil (1947), second anthology of drawings (Random House)

(illustrations) Afternoon in the Attic (1950), John Kobler’s anthology of short stories

Monster Rally (1950) his third anthology of drawings (Simon & Schuster)

Homebodies (1954) fourth anthology of drawings (Simon & Schuster)

Nightcrawlers (1957), fifth anthology of drawings (Simon & Schuster)

Dear Dead Days (1959) compilations book

Black Maria (1960), sixth anthology of drawings (Simon & Schuster)

Drawn and Quartered (1962) re-released (Simon & Schuster)

The Groaning Board (1964) seventh anthology of drawings

The Chas Addams Mother Goose (1967) Windmill Books

My Crowd (1970), eighth anthology of drawings (Simon & Schuster)

Favorite Haunts (1976), ninth anthology of drawings (Simon & Schuster)

Creature Comforts, (1981), drawings

The World of Charles Addams, by Charles Addams (1991), posthumously compiled from works with the copyright owned by his second wife, later named Lady Barbara Cloyton (Knopf) ISBN 0-394-58822-3

About Addams

Davis, Linda H., Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life, (2006), Random House, 382 pagesFurther Information

Get more info on 'Charles Addams'.

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