The New Yorker Cartoons of Charles Addams
Addams Family Creator Best Known for Subtle Wit and Macabre Art
May 25, 2009
Charles Samuel Addams was born in Westfield, New Jersey, in 1912. After stints at Colgate University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Grand Central School of Art in New York City in the early 1930s, Addams sold his first sketch to The New Yorker magazine in 1932.
The New Yorker published Charles Addams' first cartoon the following year, when he was only twenty-one. For the next sixty-five years, Addams would contribute over a thousand cartoons to The New Yorker. His atmospheric style and surreal wit would make them among the magazine's most famous.
Charles Addams' Distinctive Style
Addams' early cartoons for The New Yorker were pen-and-ink line drawings executed in a simple style. Within a few years he would develop his distinctive wash-based technique, giving his cartoon settings a three-dimensional, and often moody, look.
Blending cartoon renderings with technical sophistication made Addams' mature style seem both realistic and surrealistic. That juxtaposition, it turned out, perfectly matched his sense of humor.
The Surreal Wit of Charles Addams
In a typical Charles Addams cartoon, one macabre or bizarre detail intrudes on an otherwise banal scene. For instance, one cartoon set in a patent attorney's office shows two men standing at the window, one holding a strange rifle and saying, "Death ray, fiddlesticks! Why, it doesn't even slow them up."
Or, in one captionless cartoon, Addams depicts a practical-joking prison guard who snickers at a thumbtack placed on the electric chair. In another, a boy (the model for Pugsley Addams) sets a model nuclear submarine after the model sailboats of other children; decades later, Addams updated the premise with a model tanker leaking oil.
Charles Addams came up with all these jokes himself. Not relying on gag writers set Addams apart from his contemporaries, and earned him the respect of The New Yorker's other iconoclastic writer-cartoonists, such as Saul Steinberg.
The Addams Family Starts in The New Yorker
By the late 1930s, some odd-looking characters began recurring in Charles Addams' cartoons. Originally a disparate group appearing in a few dozen cartoons, what would become known as "The Addams Family" would only be fully developed in the 1960s, with the creation of the famous ABC television show.
Though Addams was responsible for developing the characters of Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Wednesday, Pugsley, Grandmama, Cousin Itt, and Lurch, the scripts of The Addams Family (1964-1966) lacked the much of the dark humor and irony that made Addams' New Yorker work so original.
However, the big-screen versions of Charles Addams' "Family" – The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993) – are truer to the original cartoons. More than a few gags in the films, such as the Addamses pouring boiling oil on Christmas carolers, or Pugsley and Wednesday being sent off to summer camp, are anticipated in the work Addams published in The New Yorker.
Charles Addams' Legacy Beyond The New Yorker
Addams died peacefully outside his New York apartment building in 1988, sitting in one of the vintage cars he enjoyed collecting. Though linked to The New Yorker his entire career, Addams enjoyed recognition in gallery exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his works can be found in the collections of The New York City Public Library and the Library of Congress.
The Charles & Tee Addams Foundation, formed by Addams' widow in 2000, now administers Charles Addams' vast output and promotes his legacy. An Addams Family Broadway musical is even set to premiere in 2010, from the writers of Jersey Boys and starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth.
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