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01
Television producer David Levy met Addams at the Palace Hotel lobby in New York and proposed a series based on the Addams Family cartoons. Since the characters had no names or personalities, Addams named each one and fleshed them out for the actors. This led to the creation of The Addams Family 1964.
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02
He died from a heart attack behind the wheel of his Audi 4000 outside his Manhattan apartment.
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03
His second wife Barbara convinced him to take out a $100,000 insurance policy. Addams secretly consulted a lawyer, who joked that the last time he heard of such a move was in the film Double Indemnity 1944, in which Barbara Stanwyck’s character plotted her husband’s murder. No one accused Barbara of trying the same.
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04
He married his third wife, Marilyn Matthews Miller, in a pet cemetery.
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05
His first wife, Barbara Jean Day, reportedly resembled Morticia Addams from his cartoons.
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06
He attended the University of Pennsylvania during 1930-1931. A fine-arts building named after him stands on campus, fronted by a sculpture of Addams Family silhouettes.
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07
A friend described his sense of humor as a little different from everybody else’s.
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08
A biographer noted he was artistically inclined, drawing with a happy vengeance, a trait encouraged by his father.
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09
Alfred Hitchcock owned two pieces of original Addams art. In Hitchcock’s North by Northwest 1959, a character remarks that a scene looks like a picture only Charles Addams could draw.
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10
In 1946, Addams met sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury at Mademoiselle magazine. Addams had illustrated Bradbury’s short story Homecoming about the Elliott vampire family. They planned to collaborate on a book about the Elliotts, but it never materialized. Bradbury’s 2001 anthology From the Dust Returned finally used Addams’s 1946 illustration on its cover.
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11
He was distantly related to Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, and was a first cousin twice removed to social reformer Jane Addams.
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12
In 1961, he received a Special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his body of work.
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13
New Yorker editor William Shawn banned Addams’s cartoons from the magazine after The Addams Family TV show aired in 1964, thinking it clashed with the sophisticated readership. The ban ended after Shawn retired in 1987.
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14
He served as an escort for celebrities like Greta Garbo, Joan Fontaine, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
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15
He drew more than 1,300 cartoons during his lifetime.
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16
The Addams Family first appeared as a comic in The New Yorker in 1938, but characters had no names until the 1964 TV series. Addams personally named each character: Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday, Pugsley, Fester, Grandmama, Lurch, and Thing.
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17
He served at the Signal Corps Photographic Center in New York during World War II, producing animated training films for the Army.
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18
After his death, he was cremated and his ashes were interred in the family pet cemetery at his estate in Sagaponack, New York.
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19
His first New Yorker cartoon, a sketch of a window washer, ran on February 6, 1932.
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20
His cartoons regularly appeared in The New Yorker, Colliers Weekly, and TV Guide.
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21
From 1985, he lived in Sagaponack, New York, on an estate nicknamed The Swamp.
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22
He began publishing cartoons in The New Yorker at age 21 and was extremely prolific. After his death, many unpublished cartoons remained, taking The New Yorker five years to publish them all.
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23
He had a long relationship with actress Joan Fontaine between his marriages, but they never wed.
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24
His childhood nickname was Chill.
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25
In his divorce from second wife Barbara Estella Barb Lady Colyton, she was awarded copyright to some of his work.
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26
He is mentioned in Edward Eager’s fantasy novel Knight’s Castle as Chas Addams, the way he signed his cartoons.
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27
The Charles Addams Art Scholarship was founded in his name in 1991.
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28
The musical The Addams Family by Terrence Mann and Andrew Lippa received the 2015 Joseph Jefferson Equity Award for Midsize Musical Production.
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29
He enjoyed visiting the Presbyterian Cemetery on Mountain Avenue in New Jersey.
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30
Childhood friends remembered him as a rascal around the neighborhood, always with a group of boys at his house.
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31
He was nominated for the New Jersey Hall of Fame in the General Category in 2012 and again in 2017 in the Arts and Letters category.
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32
He was a member of Theta Chi Fraternity at Colgate University.
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33
He enjoyed the works of novelist John O’Hara.
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34
He studied at the Grand Central School of Art in New York City during 1931-1932.
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35
He attended Colgate University in 1929-1930.
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36
He drew cartoons for the Westfield High School student magazine Weathervane.
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37
His first marriage lasted eight years.
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38
His biography appears in The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Volume 2, 1986-1990.
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39
His father, Charles Huy Addams, was a piano-company executive who had studied architecture.
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40
He was posthumously inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in the Arts and Letters category for the 2019-2020 class.
