The rest of the family got their names when ABC picked up the concept for television. Producer David Levy spent more than two years developing the project and worked directly with Addams to flesh out a wife-and-mother named Morticia, a husband named Gomez, a bachelor uncle named Fester, a butler named Lurch and two kids, Wednesday and Pugsley.
The show premiered September 18, 1964, with Carolyn Jones and John Astin as Morticia and Gomez, and it landed in the unusual position of competing head to head with a nearly identical concept. CBS launched The Munsters six days later, and the two spooky-family sitcoms spent two seasons trading punches in the ratings.
The Addams Family leaned on wordplay and a genuinely strange kind of domestic contentment rather than the monster-movie makeup that defined the CBS show. Gomez chomped cigars and fenced with himself for fun. Morticia pruned carnivorous plants and spoke fluent French to her husband. Vic Mizzy’s theme song, with its finger snaps and the word “ooky,” became one of the most recognizable pieces of television music from the decade.
None of it saved the show. ABC canceled The Addams Family after 64 episodes, and its final broadcast aired April 8, 1966, just a month before The Munsters also wrapped. Both shows had respectable ratings, and the usual explanation points to the networks’ looming, costly switch to color broadcasting the following season rather than any real loss of audience.
Cancellation turned out to be a pause rather than an ending. Hanna-Barbera picked up the property for a Saturday morning cartoon in 1973, and a 1977 TV movie, Halloween with the New Addams Family, reunited much of the original cast. The bigger leap came in 1991, when director Barry Sonnenfeld cast Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia as Morticia and Gomez for a big-budget film that leaned into the family’s gothic glamour, followed two years later by Addams Family Values.
Both movies introduced the family to a generation that had never seen the original black-and-white episodes, and they cemented Wednesday Addams, played by a young Christina Ricci, as arguably the franchise’s breakout character.
- Amazon Prime Video (Video on Demand)
That shift toward Wednesday paid off decades later. Netflix’s 2022 series Wednesday, starring Jenna Ortega and directed by Tim Burton, pulled in 341 million hours of viewing in its first week, a record for an English-language series on the platform at the time. The show topped Netflix’s charts in 83 countries and introduced Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán as a new Morticia and Gomez, proving that a joke Charles Addams started at his drawing table in 1938 still had plenty of life left in it nearly a century later.
Here, we’ve collected photos and clippings collected capturing the family as most people first met them, through the ABC series and its snappy, finger-snapping theme song that introduced Morticia, Gomez, Fester, Lurch, Grandmama, Wednesday and Pugsley to American living rooms in the fall of 1964.
That happy ghoullucky Addams clan
When The Addams Family series was in preparation, an ABC televite gleefully described the show as “happy-ghoullucky.” This brought forth an immediate response from David Levy, the creator and executive producer of the series, seen Friday evenings over the ABC-TV network.
“Let us keep the record straight. The Addamses are not ghouls, monsters or outer space types. The Addams Family may seem unique by YOUR standards of living, but this is merely because you may not conform to THEIR concepts of culture and customs.”
Levy says, “We may assume that at one time the entire world was populated by Addams-type people. Our characters are the last remaining members of this once-proud clan. Their traditions will be handed down and sustained through “The Addams Family” and their offspring.
“They are a happy family, full of love and sentiment; a glowing example of good living and togetherness seldom matched in modern society.
Based on a cartoon
“They are financially secure. As Charles Addams expresses it, a distant forbear apparently made a substantial ‘killing’ and the family has since used the fruits of this windfall to its best advantage.”
Levy, a long-time admirer of Addams himself, spent more than two years working on the television project before it developed into the 12-minute “presentation” film that sold ABC executives on optioning the projected series.
After Levy got Addams’ consent to base a video series on the cartoon characters, he then prevailed on him to give them names.
So for the first time, the wife and mother was given identity as Morticia; the father, Gomez. Morticia’s uncle was dubbed Fester; the little girl, Wednesday; the boy, Pugsley, and the butler, Lurch. Granny became Grandmama so she wouldn’t be confused with Granny of “The Beverly Hillbillies,” another Filmways production.
The cartoonist is also giving names to assorted relatives as they are written into the scripts — such as Morticia’s homely cousin Melancholia, and a sister named Pyromania.
Charles Addams reserved the right of cast approval and has, without exception, registered his delight in the performances of Carolyn Jones as Morticia, John Astin’s Gomez; Jackie Coogan as Uncle Fester; Lisa Loring, Wednesday; Ken Weatherwax, Pugsley; Ted Cassidy, Lurch; and Blossom Rock, Grandmama.
The family home
The Addams home, gabled and turreted, is a gingerbread mountain of mid-Victorian splendor occupying a plot of considerable acreage. It is one of a kind… impressively Addams in every detail.
The contemporary suburban neighborhood offers a striking contrast to the Addams abode. There is every evidence that the family is making a great effort to create a natural way of life. They are extremely devoted to their home and to one another.
The landscaping is Addams right down to the bed of quicksand. The weeds are always full-blown and bushy to prevent growth of unsightly grass, and the roses are renowned for an abundance of long thorns and a minimum of buds.
The spikes atop the wrought iron fences are kept manicured by Gomez to sharp, well-honed points… because that’s the way he likes them.
Actress Carolyn Jones as Morticia Addams
Carolyn Jones had the Morticia role sewed up from the outset. The dark-haired actress bears quite a resemblance to the character she interprets; chic, elegant and haughty — until her sense of humor overcomes her.
“I suppose I had an unfair advantage over anyone who might have been considered for the role,” she says, “because I had known Charles Addams for some years. He is a delightful and forgiving man. ‘Forgiving’ because, on one occasion, my poodle, Contessa, chomped Charles right where cartoonists picture dogs biting people.
“Yet when he heard I had signed for the television series, he wired me: ‘I know you will make a darling Morticia. But please leave Contessa home!’
“I had my misgivings taking on a series — especially in such an offbeat role.
“I even argued with myself that I was not yet ready to play a mother. Strangely enough, I was talked out of that objection by Aaron Spelling. I trust Aaron’s judgment implicitly in business matters. I finally settled for the series. It was a happy decision. Every facet of Morticia’s character and the surprising subtleties in thought process fascinates me.”
Actor John Astin as Gomez Addams
John Astin, who costars with Miss Jones, says that the character of Gomez grew over a year’s time in deep conversations with David Levy.
“At one point,” he declares, “I was the only Addams in the projected series, and this helped me to shape the character as I worked in the some 77 tests made in one day for the other roles.”
Astin has played such a variety of roles on television and in the movies, it cannot be said that any one of them suggested his Gomez to Levy.
“From thin cigar and pinstripe suit to the sneering mustache, flashing teeth and heavy eyelids, Gomez struck me as a man composed of equal parts pixie and mystery, with a touch of fire and ice. What more could an actor ask for!”
Former child actor Jackie Coogan as Uncle Fester
Jackie Coogan, celebrating his 50th birthday and almost as many years of picture-making and television pioneering, said to friends at the outset of “The Addams Family, “If the series doesn’t click or I fail to score as spooky Uncle Fester, I’ll give up acting for good — and turn to directing.”
Happily for televiewers, “The Kid” is destined to play with his dynamite caps for some time to come. The series is a hit, and Jackie is registering strongly as Morticia’s incorrigible relative who is wired AC and DC under his monklike robe.
Other cast members, including Ted Cassidy & Lisa Loring
The series also marks a drastic turning point in the career of Ted Cassidy, 6 feet 9, the actor playing Lurch, the butler.
He uprooted himself and his family of three from a pleasant and profitable existence in Dallas, Texas, on the long chance that Lurch would establish him in the Hollywood television and/or movie business. At home, he was production director of ABC’s television affiliate WFAA.
Ted evidently is firmly entrenched in television, if for no other reason than his deep-throated “You rang?” has become a nationwide slogan. And he has shown a deft sense of comedy, as in the recent Addams segment, “Lurch Learns to Dance.”
The cast includes delicately beautiful Lisa Loring, whose “Wednesday” is a delight because she plays it with a detached, unconcerned unawareness that is deceiving. Her mother, Judith Callies, says Lisa knows what she’s doing all the time.
Then there is Ken Weatherwax (related to the Lassie Weatherwaxes) whose cherubic countenance makes his doings so funny to watch because of his complete lack of guile.
Then there’s The Thing, a functional, disembodied hand.
The “forgotten man” in this Addams operation apparently is the producer, Nat Perrin, a reticent man with large movie credits who quietly pulls the strings at General Service Studios, Hollywood, which, once upon a time, reverberated to the antics of Harold Lloyd.
The Addams Family opening credits, closing credits & snappy theme song
The Addams Family theme song lyrics
They’re creepy and they’re kooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They’re all together ooky,
The Addams Family.
Their house is a museum,
Where people come to see ’em.
They really are a scream,
The Addams Family.
Neat.
Sweet.
Petite.
So get a witches shawl on,
A broomstick you can crawl on,
We’re gonna pay a call on
The Addams Family.
