Happy Halloween to those who celebrate (i.e., everyone in Florida, to judge by the AI Data Center quantity of electricity that our neighbors are burning on lights and animatronics).
The somewhat spooky Addams Family was on TV from 1964-1966, the years in which President Lyndon Johnson was getting the U.S. into the temporary debacle of the Vietnam War and into long-term insolvency via Medicare, Medicaid, and other welfare state expansions (it’s not a “great society” if anyone has to work). The show was considered suitable for all ages, like pretty much everything else broadcast in prime time.
What about for today’s tender children? Sixty years after its original broadcast, the show is considered too challenging for children under 13. From Amazon Prime:
In researching this blog post, I discovered something remarkable: the Addams Family was originally a New Yorker magazine cartoon series (in the pre-all-Trump-hatred version of the magazine). From 1956:
Here’s something kids could learn from (Wikipedia):
The sudden cancellation in 1966 brought issues for Addams, as he faced a drop in income with the show no longer in development. His second wife Barbara Barb was a practicing lawyer who had engaged in “diabolical legal scheming” during their marriage, and had convinced Addams to sign over the rights to future television and film adaptations, as well as rights to some of his other cartoons. Following their divorce she remained in possession of these rights until 1991, when she sold them to allow development of the Sonnenfeld films. Addams could also no longer publish his comics in The New Yorker as Shawn’s ban remained in effect even after the television series concluded. Addams became bitter towards the magazine “for disowning his family”
(Charles Addams died childless. The above-cited marriage to the clever lawyer lasted two years.)
Loosely related, but I can’t help bragging about the Greenspun Family’s one brush with greatness… my father’s college classmate, Fred Gwynne, played Herman Munster. I don’t think that a scholarship student like my dad was invited to the same parties as the son of a Wall Street partner and a Fly Club member (“no Jews please”; the similar Porcellian Club’s first Jewish member was Jared Kushner, Harvard Class of 2003), but maybe they overlapped in a core class.
Morticia Adams was hot.