The Addams Family

Lurch, Morticia, Gomez . . . just a few of our favorite characters from the Addams family, the creation of cartoonist Charles Addams, and later a TV series that ran for two years in the mid-1960's. To celebrate Halloween, Morning Edition ran this piece on the cartoonist, Father of the Addams Family (10/31 - 7:19).

Addams, who died in 1988, is the subject of a new biography by Linda Davis, who is interviewed in this segment.

Musings

• At the NPR site you can view a slide show of 8 Addams cartoons, with biographer Davis offering a detailed annotations for each. Here we can see the contrast between the economy, even perfection of a cartoon versus that of the explanation.
  
  
• You read about the Addams Family TV series at Wikipedia. How would you describe the difference and similarity between the original cartoons and the popular TV series.