Tangentially, I believe Charles Addams never named his characters. The names Gomez, Morticia, Fester, Wednesday & Pugsley were creations of the TV writers.
I think.
Right you are, I must be getting old.
The characters were unnamed in the original cartoons, but Charles Addams named them for the show.
I think a lot of people feel that they are at heart free-spirited eccentrics who are misunderstood by the bland normals. The Addams Family exaggerates and celebrates the eccentric.
Only if you ask nicely.
As a child, I wanted to be Gomez, but I was Pugsly. Now that I’m grown, I want to be Gomez, but I’m Uncle Fester, though not as cool.
I believe there’s one other (former?) Doper who may challenge you. She even goes by Wednesday on another board in which you participate.
Cool! A Wednesday duel!
We can sell tickets.
Will there be mud?
Huh! Learn something every day. I always thought the Addams Family were an update/copy based on the Munsters.
What was the deal with Lurch? Was he a zombie, a Dr. Frankenstein creation of Gomez?
He’s Lurch.
and the best butler in the world. i love lurch.
and what about thing?
no house is complete without thing and lurch.
also the addams are very polite… hhhhmmmm, perhaps they originated in canada.
i know who the cool people in work are when, they say “mail’s here” or “thank you, thing” when i reproduce the “mail’s here” sound.
Give! Give!
It’s actually “Mail’s In”.
http://www.ilovewavs.com/Events/GotMail/Mail21.wav
I loved the show as a kid, although I thought it went downhill rapidly when they added Cousin Itt. It must have been Ted McGinley’s first role.
Cool.
Thanks!
One of the triter shows had them pretending to work for Lurch, since he told his mother he was rich. So Lurch is just Lurch.
I still remember “You Rang?”
I still use it occasionally though I look more a middle-aged version of Gomez.
And, yes, Morticia was hot.
As to the original TV show, what made it interesting to a lot of people was that the standard TV family sitcom before that was really, really bland. To actually show a family that was clearly “off” in major ways was refreshing. (But also scared off people who don’t like refreshing. Hence the show didn’t last long. Everybody Loves Raymond type shows still win.) Within the limits of the time, I don’t think they could have pushed things much further.
All in the Family was still 7 years away.
The cartoons and the first 2 movies were very different. And quite good in their own way. I think people might like only one of the forms and not the others due to these differences.
At one point we had on our answering machine my husband saying “You rang?” in his best Lurch voice. Very few people left any messages after that.
Sadly, he deleted it and all the telemarketers came back.