You don’t have to be a fan of the macabre to enjoy The Addams Family. They were a dark and twisted family but interesting enough to draw anyone in. The show was inspired by the cartoons of one Charles Addams. A single strip about a vacuum salesman going up to a haunted house became a cultural phenomenon. The characters that the world grew to love didn’t even originally have names. It was the show that inspired him to give them all identifiers. The cast brilliantly brought them off the page. John Astin as Gomez and Carolyn Jones as Morticia sizzled together. Ted Cassidy pulled double-duty as Lurch and Thing. The child actors were also exceptional, if not more so. Lisa Loring learned lines before she could even read. Child star Jackie Coogan, who eventually played Fester, helped pass a law to protect other child actors. The show aired at an unfortunate time, right next to The Munsters. It got called a rip-off, but the shows couldn’t have been more different. One was about physically odd creatures trying to be normal. The other was about physically normal humans reveling in their eccentricities. Getting into their costumes was difficult enough for the actors. Consider Cousin Itt’s suit of hair, Morticia’s dress that took 20 minutes to get off, or Gomez’s asbestos-lined suits. That only proves the dedication the actors went through to bring the beloved series to life. The crew was just as dedicated, but a few interesting bloopers slipped through.
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