*Snap, snap* Before they crept on to the small screen, the Addamses were ink and paper spooks, appearing as creepy cartoons in the pages of the New Yorker. The children of creator Charles Addams, the Addams family made its live-action debut in 1964. A similar show, The Munsters, also appeared that year. The Addams Family featured husband and wife, Gomez and Morticia, played by John Astin and Carolyn Jones, who enjoyed a wealthy, eccentric lifestyle with their family members. The show exhibited a morbid sense of humor and macabre visuals, with the Addams’ Victorian mansion resembling a haunted castle and pastimes including cultivating poisonous plants and enjoying a candlelit graveyard meal. Morticia was beautiful yet somber, Gomez- passionate and destructive, and their children, Wednesday and Pugsley ( Lisa Loring and Ken Weatherwax), downright ghoulish. Their well-mannered seven-foot tall Frankenstein-monster butler, Lurch (Ted Cassidy), was joined by bald, bulgy-eyed Uncle Fester (Jackie Cougan) and Thing, a disembodied hand that lived in a box. They were occasionally visited by Cousin Itt (Felix Silla), who more-or-less was a wig with feet (we presume), sunglasses, and a dapper hat. The most normal of the bunch was Grandmamma Addams, played by Marie Blake. This eerie series died in 1966 but still haunts network TV from time to time.
