October 31, 2025 • 30 mins
We all know the famous family—but what about the man behind them, lurking in the shadows? Mango and Gabe decided to celebrate Halloween by unearthing some weird, delightful, and weirdly delightful stories about cartoonist Charles Addams, from his childhood love of creeping around vacant houses to the unexpected way his TV show made tech history.
Want an official, numbered, limited edition Part-Time Genius membership card? Of course you do. Get in touch and share a fun fact, your name, and your mailing address and we’ll send you one for free. Email higeniuses@gmail.com, DM us on our socials, or leave a message at (302) 405-5925. (We may share your fact on an upcoming episode, but don’t worry, your contact info is private.)
Follow us on Instagram @parttimegenius and Bluesky @parttimegenius.bsky.social!
Photo of Addams by Irving Penn, via Wikimedia Commons.
Learn more about your ad choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hey, everybody, it's Mango here and I have great news.
My friends Dana Zarin and Jason, people I really love,
are back with their show Very Special Episodes. There's a
brand new season, and if you aren't familiar with the show,
you need to get familiar because I'm a huge fan
and I know you're gonna love it too. Jason was
(00:32):
actually the editor in chief of Mental Floss, the vgazine
and I started, so I know him from forever ago.
Dana used to write for us, and Zaren we worked
on this amazing show called Black Cowboys together. They're really
sort of like this supergroup anyway. They bring you one
incredible true story, like the real crime that inspired two
young comic artists to create Superman, or the secret spy
(00:55):
operation that ran out of a doll shop in New
York City during World War Two, all sorts of insane
and incredible history like that. And if you've ever wondered
if the truth is stranger than fiction, this podcast is
absolutely your answer. So check out the new season right
now and subscribe to Very Special Episodes wherever you get
your podcasts. You're listening to part Time Genius, the production
(01:20):
of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Guess what gave? What's that mango? So?
Cartoonist Charles Adams is best known for creating the endearingly
morbid Adams Family, which I know you and I both
know about. It kicked off a whole new genre of
macabre humor in the US. But something I never realized
(01:43):
before this week is that the Adams Family didn't appear
that often in his work. In fact, out of the
more than thirteen hundred comic strips that Adams published in
his lifetime, only about one hundred and fifty of them
featured his famous family.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's a pretty impressive restraint on his part. Like for
a lot of creators, you know, it feels like once
in idea hits like that, the impulse is to go
back to the well, like over and over again to
really milk it.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, of course, but in this case it probably helped
the Adams never set out to create a big, enduring franchise, right, Like,
most of his work ran in the New Yorker, and
that meant it ran as like single panel strip, so
it was like a newspaper comic that came out every
day or every week. Right.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, there wasn't a dedicated Adams Family strip like Peanuts
or Garfielder.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, or Hagar the Horrible shout out to Hagar Well.
Adams was a regular contributor to The New Yorker for
the first thirty years or so of his career, and
the vast majority of his strips featured one off scenarios
and characters. The Adams Family proved the exception to that rule,
but their development did come out organically. Over the course
(02:51):
of eight years. The family members were invented one by
one based on the needs of each strip. So Martsha arrived,
first appearing in a nineteen thirty eight cartoon that saw
her as a mistress of a dirty old house. The
family butler Lurch, stood by her side in the strip,
sporting a beard for some reason, and they both looked
puzzled and kind of annoyed at this door to door
(03:11):
salesman who was trying to sell them a vacuum. Then
in nineteen foury two, Mortitia was joined by her husband Gomez.
His squat pig nosed appearance was actually based on New
York's then Governor Thomas Dewey, which is kind of amazing.
The couple's son Pugsley debuted the following year, he was
first seen building a coffin and shop class and their daughter, Wednesday,
(03:34):
arrived in nineteen forty four, and in her first strip,
Wednesday complains to her mother that Pugsley is trying to
poison her, and Mortitia says, well, don't come winding to me,
go tell him You'll poison him right back. That's perfect
A plus parenting for sure. Yeah. Well, how about Uncle Fester?
When did he turn up? In true weird uncle style,
(03:55):
He was the last to arrive. His appearance was in
a wordless one panel strip that ran in The New
Yorker in nineteen forty six. It shows an audience at
the movies and every single person is either crying or
on the verge of crying, except this one ghoulish, little
bald guy who is just laughing hysterically. So basically me.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Last week at the third Tron movie. Everyone around me
was just checking their watch wondering why they came, and
I'm just over.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
There lapping it up. So I was Uncle Fester. I
guess maybe don't sound so proud when you say that,
but seriously, that strip is a great example of what
makes Charles Adams work so special. Even though the humor
is morbid, it's a little off kilter. The strips are
grounded in everyday experiences like resolving family disputes or going
(04:47):
to the movies. And Adam's had a real talent for
finding unexpected intersections between the bizarre and the mundane. And
today we're celebrating all that spooky joy he brought the
world by counting down nine of our favorite fact about
his life and work. So snap twice for good luck
and let's dive in. Hey there, podcast listener, as welcome
(05:30):
to Part Time Genius. I'm Monga's Articular and today I
am joined by my fellow comics fan Gabe Luzier. Will
need a little more time to work on his Halloween costumes,
so Gabe is graciously filling in for him. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
You said it's one of those two person horse costumes, right,
that's what he's going with.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, I think so, but I'm not sure his wife
is going to participate, so he's got a monolize to
figure it out. That's smart.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, making it a one person horse costume is gonna
make it so much scarier.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And over there in the booth, wearing a bald cap
and clenching a light bulb in his teeth. That is
our friend and super producer, Dylan Fagan. I'm guessing this
has something to do with Uncle Festa, right.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, Yeah, that's a trick that he does in the
old TV show and actually in the movie from the
early nineties too. He puts a bulb in his mouth
and somehow lights it up with his own electricity. It
doesn't work if you do it bulb first, though, so
turn it around, Dylan, try that.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Try that way. So it is late October, where in
the heart of spooky season, and there's a new season
of Wednesday streaming on Netflix. It feels like the perfect
time to get into the Charles Adams spirit and get
to know this creator a little better. So, Gabe, one
of the things that's been funny for me is that,
you know, these franchises that I thought would disappear still
(06:51):
somehow are in existence. You know, Like my kids love Wednesday,
and I vaguely, vaguely remember watching reruns of Adam's Family
during the day as a kid. It used to come
on when when I was sick at home, and and
like either you could watch soap operas or kind of
these TV shows that were on the cusp of black
and white in color, you know, so like Gilligan's Island,
(07:13):
Leave It to Beaver and Adam's Family, you know, things
like that, And that's actually how I was exposed to
some of those shows. What was your experience with Adam's Family.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
My first introduction was definitely the movies from the nineteen nineties,
the ones with Christina Ricci is Wednesday and Christopher Lloyd
is Uncle Fester. I watched those, you know, all the
time as a kid, and I did watch some reruns
I think on TV Land or something like that, of
the old TV show Nick at Night. But somehow I
never picked up at the show, you know that they
(07:43):
were actually based on comic strips. I mean, you weren't
reading The New Yorker as like a six year old. Yeah,
to my eternal shame, I guess not. But you know,
that's probably a good thing, because some of Adam's cartoons
they would have seriously freaked me out as a little kid,
Like He's got this one strip that's just a pair
of unicorns standing on a rock in the middle of
(08:04):
the ocean and they're like watching Noah's Arc drift over
the horizon.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's so sad. I would have cried for days if
I saw that as a kid. But you know, I mean,
just get into your fact, because I know you've got one.
I mean the early Peanuts strips right like are actually
pretty dark too. Oh yeah, yeah, I know that.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
That's the very first strip is just a you know,
two kids watching Charlie Brown walk by and they're like,
good old Charlie Brown, How I hate him?
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So just like right off the bat, so much darker
than you'd expect.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, I guess it hits harder in a medium like
that because it's a little unexpected, right you think.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
About it completely, You think it's gonna be sweet.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, pulls the rail gua out from under you. But that, actually,
you know, sets up my first fact pretty well, which
is that the man behind these terrifying strips wasn't nearly
as creepy or as kooky as his work might suggest.
So people had assumed that Adam's home life was as
strange as that of the family that bore his name,
but by all accounts, he was a pretty down to
(09:07):
earth guy. He had a normal upbringing in Westfield, New Jersey,
as the only child of a piano salesman and he
was well liked by his teachers and his classmates. In fact,
Adams once told an interviewer quote, I know it would
be more interesting, perhaps if I had a ghastly childhood
chained to an iron beam and thrown a can of
(09:28):
alpo every day. But I'm one of those strange people
who actually had a happy childhood.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
You know, I'm obviously glad that his parents didn't making
me dog food. But it is kind of disappointing, right
You want like something dark to be inspiring him, or
him to be like, you know, kind of more of
a weirdo.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, definitely, And you know, I do have some good
news on that front, because while there isn't any truth
to the rumors that Charles Adams slept in a coffin
or garnished his martinis with eyeballs, he did have.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
A few quirk so.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
As a child, he liked to explore local graveyards, where
he tried to imagine what the people in the graves
looked like and then you know, bring them back to
life in his sketchbook. And as an adult he had
a let's say, peculiar taste in home decor. He displayed
his collection of antique crossbows over the living room sofa.
His coffee table was a Civil War era embalming table,
(10:24):
and he used the maybe creepiest of all, he used
the salvaged tombstone of a child, Little Sarah, aged three,
as a cocktail table.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
I mean that is so dark, but you know, I
like how it plays to type, right, Yeah, absolutely kind
of amazing. So my next fact is about Adam's early
art career and his big break at The New Yorker.
He had contributed cartoons to his high school newspaper, and
(10:56):
by the time he graduated nineteen twenty nine, he knew
he wanted to be a professional artist. For the next
few years, he drifted through multiple colleges in search of
a decent arts program, and he ended up at Grand
Central School of Art in New York City. He was
still a student when he sold his first cartoon to
The New Yorker. It was an unsigned sketch of a
(11:16):
window washer on the side of a tall building, and
it ran in the February sixth, nineteen thirty two issue
of The New Yorker. But while it did give him
his first paycheck, it wasn't for that much. It was
a whopping seven dollars and fifty cents.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
I'm sure that went a lot further back in those days, right,
but still not enough to live on I wouldn't think.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, definitely, not, especially like on a freelance basis. And
that's why Adams decided to try a different kind of gig.
Just a few months later, he started retouching these gory
crime scene photos for True Detective magazine. So for the
next few years he spent most of his days painting
the bloodstains out of murder scenes. It sounds kind of creepy.
It wasn't as glamorous as drawing for The New Yorker,
(11:59):
but it did pay the bills, and it gave him
a chance to hone that delicate ink wash technique that
kind of becomes his signature style. Plus he was still
able to draw cartoons in his free time, including five
strips that he sold to The New Yorker in nineteen
thirty three for about thirty dollars a piece, which was
twice his weekly salary at True Detective. These bigger paydays
(12:23):
soon allowed him to quit True Detective and focus on
cartooning full time, and then in nineteen forty Adams drew
his first breakout hit for The New Yorker. It was
a strip called The Skier. You've probably seen this. It
shows a downhill skier who's just left a single track
on either side of a tree, suggesting that, you know,
he somehow went through it rather than around it. And
(12:44):
this baffling image that he'd created received more requests for
reprints than any other cartoon that year, and that actually
cemented adams Place as one of the magazines most popular
and seemed to be highest paid contributors. But to his fans,
he was Charles Adams. He was actually Chaz Adams, because
that's how we signed his pieces.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Chaz has got to be one of the coolest abbreviations
for a common name. I think, like, remember Chucky's dad
on Rugrats Chaz Finster.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I do not, But if you say it's cool, I've
gotta trust you. He was so cool.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
But okay, speaking of names, most of the Adams family
didn't have any until the nineteen sixties. Before that, they
were never billed as the Adams family or even given
individual names, and that finally changed in nineteen sixty three,
when Adams was approached by a TV producer to adapt
the strips into a live action show, it was a
(13:41):
no brainer to use his own surname for the family,
but coming up with first names for each of the
members was a little bit tougher, so Adams worked with
producers to find just the right monikers, with Mortsha and
Fester being instant approvals, but he had a little harder
time with the others. So Adams thought that the head
of the family should be called Repelle rather than Gomez,
(14:03):
and he wanted to name their son Pubert, before the
siding at the last minute that that was a little
too gross for television, and at which point he changed.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
It to Pugsley, which is still weird. But Pugsy is
so much cuter than Pubert.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Right, agreed, And you know, the really funny thing is
the name did find a second life much later on
when Mortitia and Gomez have a second son in the
nineteen ninety three movie Adam's Family Values, they decide to
call him Pubert.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
So what about Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, that was one of the few names that Charles
Adams didn't come up with himself. It was chosen by
a toy company that was making dolls to coincide with
the launch of the show. They picked the name based
on this old British nursery rhyme called Monday's Child, you
know the one. Yeah, Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Full of grace.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
But when Wednesday's child is full of woe.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
That's so sad. I know what happened on Wednesday? I
have no idea.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, the poem doesn't say. But here are two quick
bonus facts for you about Wednesday. The first is that,
according to the original show, her middle name is Friday,
So kind of a scandal there, uh. And second, there's
a nod to that old nursery rhyme in the Wednesday
series on Netflix. The episode titles are puns that all
include the word whoe, like woe is the loneliest number
(15:31):
and you reap what you woe, So Wednesday's titles are
also full of woe.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
You know. It's interesting because from what I've read, suggesting
names was one of the few contributions that Charles Adams
actually made to that original TV show, or really to
any adaptation of his work. He was pretty hands off otherwise,
but you can still find his influence here and there.
And after we take a quick break, we'll tell you
more about that, including how young Charles developed a taste
(15:59):
for spooky mannss, and of course, the story of that
famous theme song, Don't Go Anywhere. Welcome back to Part
(16:19):
Time Genius, where we're celebrating Halloween by counting down nine
facts about Charles Adams. If you're enjoying the show, be
sure to subscribe and leave us a nice rating and review.
You can also share this episode with a member of
your own spooky family. I'm sure you have a cousin
it who's dying to hear from you. But we have
talked a bit about the Adams characters, but now I
(16:42):
want to tell you about the eerie house they called home.
So as a child, Charles Adams had briefly considered becoming
an architect because he was fascinated by this Rundown Victorian
house in his neighborhood. I think his neighborhood was actually
full of these houses, and in fact, when he was eight,
Adams was caught passing it one of the houses down
the street. And he later told People magazine that when
(17:04):
it came time to design the Adams family abode, he
based it on that very house. His friend and the
fellow writer, Wilfrid shed remarked that quote, it's nice to
think of the eight year old Charlie Adams solemnly inspecting
the house for its future tenants, which is so yeah, No,
I love that.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah, that's the perfect blend of creepy and sweet.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Very very creepy. And the house used for the Adams
Family TV shows stuck close to that design as well,
except that there was one notable exception. The walls were pink. Luckily,
the show's viewers were none the wiser because even though
the transition to full color TV had begun when the
show premiered in nineteen sixty four, it was filmed in
(17:47):
black and white to match that gothic gray scale of
the original comics.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Okay, definitely the right call. But while we're on the
subject of details pulled straight from the comics, I want
to mention the Adams Family move from nineteen ninety one now. Sadly,
Charles Adams never got to see the film himself because
he died three years before it was released, but his
influence can be felt from the very first scene, and
(18:11):
that's because it was lifted directly from one of his strips.
So if you've seen the movie, you know what I'm
talking about Christmas carollers are singing on the family's front porch,
and the camera pans up to reveal the Adams clan
standing on the roof, preparing to dump a cauldron of
boiling oil on.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Those Yeah, I remember that in So Dark.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I know it is a very dark start to a film,
you know, marketed to children, but it was also an
homage to one of Adams's most famous cartoons. The uncaptioned
strip showed the exact same scene, and it first ran
in The New Yorker back in nineteen forty six, and
readers liked it so much that the magazine actually released
the image on Christmas cards.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I mean, it is so wild that a joke that
dark could go mainstream, especially like you're about the nineteen
forties and for a Christmas card, people must have been
really fed off with krolers coming to their doorsteps.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, I know, But that's not the film's only strip
to screen. Example, in another scene, Wednesday and Pugsley are
shown decapitating dolls with a miniature guillotine, and that's a
gag repeated from a nineteen forties New Yorker strip. There's
another scene where Gomez is playing with a model train
set and we see a tiny commuter inside looking out
(19:29):
the window at him. That's borrowed directly from a nineteen
fifty four strip. Lastly, in the film's final scene, Mortisia
reveals that she's pregnant with Pubert, and she does this
by showing Gomez a freshly knitted onesie with three legs,
And that's actually a callback to a nineteen fifty cartoon,
with the only difference being that the sweater in the
comic has four legs. Of course, all of that's a
(19:52):
red herring because when Pubert shows up in the next movie,
he has only two legs, but he does have a
pencil mustache just like his dad, and that's arguably even creepier.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, I feel like baby facial hair is always unnerving,
especially when it's like fully styled and groomed. Yeah, fully styled.
So I mentioned earlier that Mortitia was one of the
first Adams family members to appear in Prince. She was
the first and fact way back in nineteen thirty eight,
And I think the reason he drew her first is
(20:22):
that Martitia was actually his dream girl.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
You mean, he based the character on someone he.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Knew that's the thing. Adams married three different women in
his lifetime, and all of them resembled Martitia. They were
tall and skinny, with dark hair and pale skin. He
definitely had a type. His final wedding even took place
in a pet cemetery, with both the groom and the
bride dressed in all black. But the really interesting part
(20:51):
is that he had been drawing early versions of the
character a full decade before his first marriage.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Oh okay, so it's more like he based his why
on more Titia then.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah, And he actually was not shy about this. He
once told People magazine quote, I married women who looked
like Martitia. She is my ideal. So even though Adams
also said he related more to Uncle Fester than the Gomez,
they definitely had the same taste in women. Another thing
I just learned this week is that it was actually
actor John Aston's idea to make Gomez and over the
(21:25):
top romantic. It's one of the sweetest parts of the show,
I think, for this family. And after being cast in
the role for the nineteen sixty four TV show, he
reportedly told producers that quote, their romance should be unceasing
and the slightest look or keyword should send Gomez into raptures.
And this character beat worked so well that it's actually
(21:46):
been carried forward in every incarnation of the family ever since.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, and you know, looking back, that feels like a
pretty progressive move for the time, Like early TV shows
were notoriously prudish about that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
I know, read couples.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
You know, they were shown sleeping in separate beds pretty
often until the mid nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah. I wonder if it's because they were so creepy
and so other that they were allowed to get away
with that romance factor too.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
You know, that's kind of sad between spouses only if
you're really weird.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
This is a random bonus fact. But that's not the
only thing that Adams Family was head of the curve on.
They were also the first TV family to have a
home computer, which I only learned in this research. But
in the nineteen sixty five episode of The Adams Family Splurges,
viewers were introduced to Wizzo, a clunky home computer built
by Gomez and Pugsley. It was portrayed by a real
(22:44):
life UNIVAC or Universal Automatic computer, and the family used
it to predict the horse race winners as a way
to pad their vacation budgets.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
It is still the best use of a home computer
by bar It's really cool.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Though.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I know that Adam West Batman show that debuted in
sixty six, so that means that Adams computer beat the
bat computer by like a full year.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Not bad, but you.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Know, the sad thing to me is that despite the
show's merits and milestones, Charles Adams wasn't a fan of it.
He famously complained that the family members were quote about
half his evil is his originals, and if you compare
them yourself, it's hard to argue with him.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah. I mean, using a computer named Wizzo to predict
horse races is definitely more silly than evil, right right.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah, it doesn't have quite the same bite as dumping
hot oil on Christmas carollers. But it's maybe no surprise
then that the show only lasted two seasons and was
never a huge ratings hit, though it did have a
successful afterlife and reruns and helped introduce the family to
a much wider audience. Also, despite being watered down for television,
(23:57):
there was one thing that Adams liked about the adaptation,
and that of course, was the theme song. The tune
was written and arranged by film composer Victor Mizzi, who
also went on to write the theme for Green Acres,
so really a bit of a departure there. And the
song Spooky Melody was created with only harpsichord percussion and
(24:18):
some well placed finger snapping. Missy even sang the theme
song himself and then over dubbed it three times to
make it sound.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Like multiple people. And while you might assume he did that.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
For eerie effect, it was actually a cost saving measure
because the production studio refused to pay for backup singers.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Oh that's really interesting, And since that is the only
thing that Adams liked about the show, let's play a
little bit in his honor right now. Mysterious and spooky.
They're all together, the ad family. The house is a
(24:58):
muse yep when they come to see yup really arms Breham.
The Adams family. That is obviously going to be stuck
in my head all day, and I do not mind.
But all right, since you brought up the backlash to
the old TV show, I do want to close out
by talking about the most brutal setback and comeback that
(25:20):
Charles Adams faced in his career, so you might imagine
that having his comic strip adapted for primetime television would
improve Adam's standing at The New Yorker, but it actually
did just the opposite. During the show's brief run, the
Adams Family disappeared from the magazine's pages, and that's because
it's new editor, William Sewan, thought the strip had grown
(25:41):
too commercial for the New Yorker brand, and not only
did Sean ban Adam's most popular characters, he also turned
away many of the artists' other strips, believing that jokes
about death were in bad taste.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
What about when the show went off the air, was
the band lifted weirdly?
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Sean considered the damage done, so the moratorium continued all
the way until his retirement in nineteen eighty seven. In
the meantime, Adams kept the family alive through advertising and
by occasionally sneaking them into his other cartoons. And while
he never burned bridges with The New Yorker during the
Shawn years, according to those close to him, he never
(26:20):
fully forgave them for disowning the family after such a
strong start together.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yeah that's rough, all right, Mango I think I'm ready
for the comeback part now. So how'd Adams get his revenge?
And did it involve boiling oil?
Speaker 1 (26:34):
No? Definitely, no oil. And I'd say it was more
like vindication than vengeance. So after Sean stepped down, Robert
Gottlieb took over as editor, and he was much more
receptive to Adam's graveyard sense of humor. Gottlieb welcomed the
Adams family back with open arms, and for the rest
of his life, Charles got to draw whatever he wanted
for The New Yorker, just like in the old days.
(26:54):
But this is the creator of the Adams Family we're
talking about, So of course the story ends with a
bittersweet twist, and here it is the reunion that Adams
had waited more than two decades for lasted only about
a year and a half. He died in September of
nineteen eighty eight at the age of seventy six, after
suffering a heart attack.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
All right, bear with me, but is it weird to
say I wish he had been strangled by an octopus instead.
I don't want to be insensitive. It just feels like
he deserved a weirder death.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yeah, I'm sure he'd appreciate that. But if it's any causolation,
his ashes were interred in that pet cemetery that I mentioned,
the one where he married his third wife. Yeah, yeah, okay,
that is pretty weird definitely. And speaking of his last wife,
her name was Tea, and she offered one last punchline
as a parting gift to Adams. He was a lifelong
(27:48):
fan of auto racing and was found dead behind the
wheel of his parked car, So Tea told a press
He's always been a car buff, so it was a
nice way to go.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Wow, that really does sound like a caption for one
of his cartoons, like someone just seeing someone dead at
the wheel and being like, well, he.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Would have liked that.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
So yeah, I think maybe a fitting death after all.
And because you took us out on that perfect sour
note for a Halloween episode, I think you deserve today's trophy, Mango.
Just be careful not to spill it, okay, because it
is full of boiling oil.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, of course it is. Well, that is going to
do it for today's episode. If you have a spooky
story you want to share with us, we are all ears.
Give us a call at three o two four oh
five five nine two five. That is the part Time
Genius hotline that we have set up again. That's three
oh two, four oh five five nine two five. You
can also drop us a line at high Geniuses at
(28:44):
gmail dot com. That's Hi Geniuses at gmail dot com.
We will be back next week with another brand new
episode and in the meantime from Will, Dylan, Gabe, Mary,
and myself, thank you so much for listening, and Happy Halloween.
(29:12):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongage
Heartikler and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social
(29:35):
media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shoring.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's Mango here and I have great news.
My friends Dana Zarin and Jason, people I really love,
are back with their show Very Special Episodes. There's a
brand new season, and if you aren't familiar with the show,
you need to get familiar because I'm a huge fan
and I know you're gonna love it too. Jason was
(00:32):
actually the editor in chief of Mental Floss, the vgazine
and I started, so I know him from forever ago.
Dana used to write for us, and Zaren we worked
on this amazing show called Black Cowboys together. They're really
sort of like this supergroup anyway. They bring you one
incredible true story, like the real crime that inspired two
young comic artists to create Superman, or the secret spy
(00:55):
operation that ran out of a doll shop in New
York City during World War Two, all sorts of insane
and incredible history like that. And if you've ever wondered
if the truth is stranger than fiction, this podcast is
absolutely your answer. So check out the new season right
now and subscribe to Very Special Episodes wherever you get
your podcasts. You're listening to part Time Genius, the production
(01:20):
of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Guess what gave? What's that mango? So?
Cartoonist Charles Adams is best known for creating the endearingly
morbid Adams Family, which I know you and I both
know about. It kicked off a whole new genre of
macabre humor in the US. But something I never realized
(01:43):
before this week is that the Adams Family didn't appear
that often in his work. In fact, out of the
more than thirteen hundred comic strips that Adams published in
his lifetime, only about one hundred and fifty of them
featured his famous family.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's a pretty impressive restraint on his part. Like for
a lot of creators, you know, it feels like once
in idea hits like that, the impulse is to go
back to the well, like over and over again to
really milk it.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, of course, but in this case it probably helped
the Adams never set out to create a big, enduring franchise, right, Like,
most of his work ran in the New Yorker, and
that meant it ran as like single panel strip, so
it was like a newspaper comic that came out every
day or every week. Right.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, there wasn't a dedicated Adams Family strip like Peanuts
or Garfielder.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, or Hagar the Horrible shout out to Hagar Well.
Adams was a regular contributor to The New Yorker for
the first thirty years or so of his career, and
the vast majority of his strips featured one off scenarios
and characters. The Adams Family proved the exception to that rule,
but their development did come out organically. Over the course
(02:51):
of eight years. The family members were invented one by
one based on the needs of each strip. So Martsha arrived,
first appearing in a nineteen thirty eight cartoon that saw
her as a mistress of a dirty old house. The
family butler Lurch, stood by her side in the strip,
sporting a beard for some reason, and they both looked
puzzled and kind of annoyed at this door to door
(03:11):
salesman who was trying to sell them a vacuum. Then
in nineteen foury two, Mortitia was joined by her husband Gomez.
His squat pig nosed appearance was actually based on New
York's then Governor Thomas Dewey, which is kind of amazing.
The couple's son Pugsley debuted the following year, he was
first seen building a coffin and shop class and their daughter, Wednesday,
(03:34):
arrived in nineteen forty four, and in her first strip,
Wednesday complains to her mother that Pugsley is trying to
poison her, and Mortitia says, well, don't come winding to me,
go tell him You'll poison him right back. That's perfect
A plus parenting for sure. Yeah. Well, how about Uncle Fester?
When did he turn up? In true weird uncle style,
(03:55):
He was the last to arrive. His appearance was in
a wordless one panel strip that ran in The New
Yorker in nineteen forty six. It shows an audience at
the movies and every single person is either crying or
on the verge of crying, except this one ghoulish, little
bald guy who is just laughing hysterically. So basically me.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Last week at the third Tron movie. Everyone around me
was just checking their watch wondering why they came, and
I'm just over.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
There lapping it up. So I was Uncle Fester. I
guess maybe don't sound so proud when you say that,
but seriously, that strip is a great example of what
makes Charles Adams work so special. Even though the humor
is morbid, it's a little off kilter. The strips are
grounded in everyday experiences like resolving family disputes or going
(04:47):
to the movies. And Adam's had a real talent for
finding unexpected intersections between the bizarre and the mundane. And
today we're celebrating all that spooky joy he brought the
world by counting down nine of our favorite fact about
his life and work. So snap twice for good luck
and let's dive in. Hey there, podcast listener, as welcome
(05:30):
to Part Time Genius. I'm Monga's Articular and today I
am joined by my fellow comics fan Gabe Luzier. Will
need a little more time to work on his Halloween costumes,
so Gabe is graciously filling in for him. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
You said it's one of those two person horse costumes, right,
that's what he's going with.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, I think so, but I'm not sure his wife
is going to participate, so he's got a monolize to
figure it out. That's smart.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, making it a one person horse costume is gonna
make it so much scarier.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And over there in the booth, wearing a bald cap
and clenching a light bulb in his teeth. That is
our friend and super producer, Dylan Fagan. I'm guessing this
has something to do with Uncle Festa, right.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, Yeah, that's a trick that he does in the
old TV show and actually in the movie from the
early nineties too. He puts a bulb in his mouth
and somehow lights it up with his own electricity. It
doesn't work if you do it bulb first, though, so
turn it around, Dylan, try that.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Try that way. So it is late October, where in
the heart of spooky season, and there's a new season
of Wednesday streaming on Netflix. It feels like the perfect
time to get into the Charles Adams spirit and get
to know this creator a little better. So, Gabe, one
of the things that's been funny for me is that,
you know, these franchises that I thought would disappear still
(06:51):
somehow are in existence. You know, Like my kids love Wednesday,
and I vaguely, vaguely remember watching reruns of Adam's Family
during the day as a kid. It used to come
on when when I was sick at home, and and
like either you could watch soap operas or kind of
these TV shows that were on the cusp of black
and white in color, you know, so like Gilligan's Island,
(07:13):
Leave It to Beaver and Adam's Family, you know, things
like that, And that's actually how I was exposed to
some of those shows. What was your experience with Adam's Family.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
My first introduction was definitely the movies from the nineteen nineties,
the ones with Christina Ricci is Wednesday and Christopher Lloyd
is Uncle Fester. I watched those, you know, all the
time as a kid, and I did watch some reruns
I think on TV Land or something like that, of
the old TV show Nick at Night. But somehow I
never picked up at the show, you know that they
(07:43):
were actually based on comic strips. I mean, you weren't
reading The New Yorker as like a six year old. Yeah,
to my eternal shame, I guess not. But you know,
that's probably a good thing, because some of Adam's cartoons
they would have seriously freaked me out as a little kid,
Like He's got this one strip that's just a pair
of unicorns standing on a rock in the middle of
(08:04):
the ocean and they're like watching Noah's Arc drift over
the horizon.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's so sad. I would have cried for days if
I saw that as a kid. But you know, I mean,
just get into your fact, because I know you've got one.
I mean the early Peanuts strips right like are actually
pretty dark too. Oh yeah, yeah, I know that.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
That's the very first strip is just a you know,
two kids watching Charlie Brown walk by and they're like,
good old Charlie Brown, How I hate him?
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So just like right off the bat, so much darker
than you'd expect.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, I guess it hits harder in a medium like
that because it's a little unexpected, right you think.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
About it completely, You think it's gonna be sweet.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, pulls the rail gua out from under you. But that, actually,
you know, sets up my first fact pretty well, which
is that the man behind these terrifying strips wasn't nearly
as creepy or as kooky as his work might suggest.
So people had assumed that Adam's home life was as
strange as that of the family that bore his name,
but by all accounts, he was a pretty down to
(09:07):
earth guy. He had a normal upbringing in Westfield, New Jersey,
as the only child of a piano salesman and he
was well liked by his teachers and his classmates. In fact,
Adams once told an interviewer quote, I know it would
be more interesting, perhaps if I had a ghastly childhood
chained to an iron beam and thrown a can of
(09:28):
alpo every day. But I'm one of those strange people
who actually had a happy childhood.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
You know, I'm obviously glad that his parents didn't making
me dog food. But it is kind of disappointing, right
You want like something dark to be inspiring him, or
him to be like, you know, kind of more of
a weirdo.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, definitely, And you know, I do have some good
news on that front, because while there isn't any truth
to the rumors that Charles Adams slept in a coffin
or garnished his martinis with eyeballs, he did have.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
A few quirk so.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
As a child, he liked to explore local graveyards, where
he tried to imagine what the people in the graves
looked like and then you know, bring them back to
life in his sketchbook. And as an adult he had
a let's say, peculiar taste in home decor. He displayed
his collection of antique crossbows over the living room sofa.
His coffee table was a Civil War era embalming table,
(10:24):
and he used the maybe creepiest of all, he used
the salvaged tombstone of a child, Little Sarah, aged three,
as a cocktail table.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
I mean that is so dark, but you know, I
like how it plays to type, right, Yeah, absolutely kind
of amazing. So my next fact is about Adam's early
art career and his big break at The New Yorker.
He had contributed cartoons to his high school newspaper, and
(10:56):
by the time he graduated nineteen twenty nine, he knew
he wanted to be a professional artist. For the next
few years, he drifted through multiple colleges in search of
a decent arts program, and he ended up at Grand
Central School of Art in New York City. He was
still a student when he sold his first cartoon to
The New Yorker. It was an unsigned sketch of a
(11:16):
window washer on the side of a tall building, and
it ran in the February sixth, nineteen thirty two issue
of The New Yorker. But while it did give him
his first paycheck, it wasn't for that much. It was
a whopping seven dollars and fifty cents.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
I'm sure that went a lot further back in those days, right,
but still not enough to live on I wouldn't think.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, definitely, not, especially like on a freelance basis. And
that's why Adams decided to try a different kind of gig.
Just a few months later, he started retouching these gory
crime scene photos for True Detective magazine. So for the
next few years he spent most of his days painting
the bloodstains out of murder scenes. It sounds kind of creepy.
It wasn't as glamorous as drawing for The New Yorker,
(11:59):
but it did pay the bills, and it gave him
a chance to hone that delicate ink wash technique that
kind of becomes his signature style. Plus he was still
able to draw cartoons in his free time, including five
strips that he sold to The New Yorker in nineteen
thirty three for about thirty dollars a piece, which was
twice his weekly salary at True Detective. These bigger paydays
(12:23):
soon allowed him to quit True Detective and focus on
cartooning full time, and then in nineteen forty Adams drew
his first breakout hit for The New Yorker. It was
a strip called The Skier. You've probably seen this. It
shows a downhill skier who's just left a single track
on either side of a tree, suggesting that, you know,
he somehow went through it rather than around it. And
(12:44):
this baffling image that he'd created received more requests for
reprints than any other cartoon that year, and that actually
cemented adams Place as one of the magazines most popular
and seemed to be highest paid contributors. But to his fans,
he was Charles Adams. He was actually Chaz Adams, because
that's how we signed his pieces.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Chaz has got to be one of the coolest abbreviations
for a common name. I think, like, remember Chucky's dad
on Rugrats Chaz Finster.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I do not, But if you say it's cool, I've
gotta trust you. He was so cool.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
But okay, speaking of names, most of the Adams family
didn't have any until the nineteen sixties. Before that, they
were never billed as the Adams family or even given
individual names, and that finally changed in nineteen sixty three,
when Adams was approached by a TV producer to adapt
the strips into a live action show, it was a
(13:41):
no brainer to use his own surname for the family,
but coming up with first names for each of the
members was a little bit tougher, so Adams worked with
producers to find just the right monikers, with Mortsha and
Fester being instant approvals, but he had a little harder
time with the others. So Adams thought that the head
of the family should be called Repelle rather than Gomez,
(14:03):
and he wanted to name their son Pubert, before the
siding at the last minute that that was a little
too gross for television, and at which point he changed.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
It to Pugsley, which is still weird. But Pugsy is
so much cuter than Pubert.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Right, agreed, And you know, the really funny thing is
the name did find a second life much later on
when Mortitia and Gomez have a second son in the
nineteen ninety three movie Adam's Family Values, they decide to
call him Pubert.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
So what about Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, that was one of the few names that Charles
Adams didn't come up with himself. It was chosen by
a toy company that was making dolls to coincide with
the launch of the show. They picked the name based
on this old British nursery rhyme called Monday's Child, you
know the one. Yeah, Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Full of grace.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
But when Wednesday's child is full of woe.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
That's so sad. I know what happened on Wednesday? I
have no idea.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, the poem doesn't say. But here are two quick
bonus facts for you about Wednesday. The first is that,
according to the original show, her middle name is Friday,
So kind of a scandal there, uh. And second, there's
a nod to that old nursery rhyme in the Wednesday
series on Netflix. The episode titles are puns that all
include the word whoe, like woe is the loneliest number
(15:31):
and you reap what you woe, So Wednesday's titles are
also full of woe.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
You know. It's interesting because from what I've read, suggesting
names was one of the few contributions that Charles Adams
actually made to that original TV show, or really to
any adaptation of his work. He was pretty hands off otherwise,
but you can still find his influence here and there.
And after we take a quick break, we'll tell you
more about that, including how young Charles developed a taste
(15:59):
for spooky mannss, and of course, the story of that
famous theme song, Don't Go Anywhere. Welcome back to Part
(16:19):
Time Genius, where we're celebrating Halloween by counting down nine
facts about Charles Adams. If you're enjoying the show, be
sure to subscribe and leave us a nice rating and review.
You can also share this episode with a member of
your own spooky family. I'm sure you have a cousin
it who's dying to hear from you. But we have
talked a bit about the Adams characters, but now I
(16:42):
want to tell you about the eerie house they called home.
So as a child, Charles Adams had briefly considered becoming
an architect because he was fascinated by this Rundown Victorian
house in his neighborhood. I think his neighborhood was actually
full of these houses, and in fact, when he was eight,
Adams was caught passing it one of the houses down
the street. And he later told People magazine that when
(17:04):
it came time to design the Adams family abode, he
based it on that very house. His friend and the
fellow writer, Wilfrid shed remarked that quote, it's nice to
think of the eight year old Charlie Adams solemnly inspecting
the house for its future tenants, which is so yeah, No,
I love that.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah, that's the perfect blend of creepy and sweet.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Very very creepy. And the house used for the Adams
Family TV shows stuck close to that design as well,
except that there was one notable exception. The walls were pink. Luckily,
the show's viewers were none the wiser because even though
the transition to full color TV had begun when the
show premiered in nineteen sixty four, it was filmed in
(17:47):
black and white to match that gothic gray scale of
the original comics.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Okay, definitely the right call. But while we're on the
subject of details pulled straight from the comics, I want
to mention the Adams Family move from nineteen ninety one now. Sadly,
Charles Adams never got to see the film himself because
he died three years before it was released, but his
influence can be felt from the very first scene, and
(18:11):
that's because it was lifted directly from one of his strips.
So if you've seen the movie, you know what I'm
talking about Christmas carollers are singing on the family's front porch,
and the camera pans up to reveal the Adams clan
standing on the roof, preparing to dump a cauldron of
boiling oil on.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Those Yeah, I remember that in So Dark.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I know it is a very dark start to a film,
you know, marketed to children, but it was also an
homage to one of Adams's most famous cartoons. The uncaptioned
strip showed the exact same scene, and it first ran
in The New Yorker back in nineteen forty six, and
readers liked it so much that the magazine actually released
the image on Christmas cards.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I mean, it is so wild that a joke that
dark could go mainstream, especially like you're about the nineteen
forties and for a Christmas card, people must have been
really fed off with krolers coming to their doorsteps.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, I know, But that's not the film's only strip
to screen. Example, in another scene, Wednesday and Pugsley are
shown decapitating dolls with a miniature guillotine, and that's a
gag repeated from a nineteen forties New Yorker strip. There's
another scene where Gomez is playing with a model train
set and we see a tiny commuter inside looking out
(19:29):
the window at him. That's borrowed directly from a nineteen
fifty four strip. Lastly, in the film's final scene, Mortisia
reveals that she's pregnant with Pubert, and she does this
by showing Gomez a freshly knitted onesie with three legs,
And that's actually a callback to a nineteen fifty cartoon,
with the only difference being that the sweater in the
comic has four legs. Of course, all of that's a
(19:52):
red herring because when Pubert shows up in the next movie,
he has only two legs, but he does have a
pencil mustache just like his dad, and that's arguably even creepier.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, I feel like baby facial hair is always unnerving,
especially when it's like fully styled and groomed. Yeah, fully styled.
So I mentioned earlier that Mortitia was one of the
first Adams family members to appear in Prince. She was
the first and fact way back in nineteen thirty eight,
And I think the reason he drew her first is
(20:22):
that Martitia was actually his dream girl.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
You mean, he based the character on someone he.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Knew that's the thing. Adams married three different women in
his lifetime, and all of them resembled Martitia. They were
tall and skinny, with dark hair and pale skin. He
definitely had a type. His final wedding even took place
in a pet cemetery, with both the groom and the
bride dressed in all black. But the really interesting part
(20:51):
is that he had been drawing early versions of the
character a full decade before his first marriage.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Oh okay, so it's more like he based his why
on more Titia then.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah, And he actually was not shy about this. He
once told People magazine quote, I married women who looked
like Martitia. She is my ideal. So even though Adams
also said he related more to Uncle Fester than the Gomez,
they definitely had the same taste in women. Another thing
I just learned this week is that it was actually
actor John Aston's idea to make Gomez and over the
(21:25):
top romantic. It's one of the sweetest parts of the show,
I think, for this family. And after being cast in
the role for the nineteen sixty four TV show, he
reportedly told producers that quote, their romance should be unceasing
and the slightest look or keyword should send Gomez into raptures.
And this character beat worked so well that it's actually
(21:46):
been carried forward in every incarnation of the family ever since.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, and you know, looking back, that feels like a
pretty progressive move for the time, Like early TV shows
were notoriously prudish about that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
I know, read couples.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
You know, they were shown sleeping in separate beds pretty
often until the mid nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah. I wonder if it's because they were so creepy
and so other that they were allowed to get away
with that romance factor too.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
You know, that's kind of sad between spouses only if
you're really weird.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
This is a random bonus fact. But that's not the
only thing that Adams Family was head of the curve on.
They were also the first TV family to have a
home computer, which I only learned in this research. But
in the nineteen sixty five episode of The Adams Family Splurges,
viewers were introduced to Wizzo, a clunky home computer built
by Gomez and Pugsley. It was portrayed by a real
(22:44):
life UNIVAC or Universal Automatic computer, and the family used
it to predict the horse race winners as a way
to pad their vacation budgets.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
It is still the best use of a home computer
by bar It's really cool.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Though.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I know that Adam West Batman show that debuted in
sixty six, so that means that Adams computer beat the
bat computer by like a full year.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Not bad, but you.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Know, the sad thing to me is that despite the
show's merits and milestones, Charles Adams wasn't a fan of it.
He famously complained that the family members were quote about
half his evil is his originals, and if you compare
them yourself, it's hard to argue with him.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah. I mean, using a computer named Wizzo to predict
horse races is definitely more silly than evil, right right.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah, it doesn't have quite the same bite as dumping
hot oil on Christmas carollers. But it's maybe no surprise
then that the show only lasted two seasons and was
never a huge ratings hit, though it did have a
successful afterlife and reruns and helped introduce the family to
a much wider audience. Also, despite being watered down for television,
(23:57):
there was one thing that Adams liked about the adaptation,
and that of course, was the theme song. The tune
was written and arranged by film composer Victor Mizzi, who
also went on to write the theme for Green Acres,
so really a bit of a departure there. And the
song Spooky Melody was created with only harpsichord percussion and
(24:18):
some well placed finger snapping. Missy even sang the theme
song himself and then over dubbed it three times to
make it sound.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Like multiple people. And while you might assume he did that.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
For eerie effect, it was actually a cost saving measure
because the production studio refused to pay for backup singers.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Oh that's really interesting, And since that is the only
thing that Adams liked about the show, let's play a
little bit in his honor right now. Mysterious and spooky.
They're all together, the ad family. The house is a
(24:58):
muse yep when they come to see yup really arms Breham.
The Adams family. That is obviously going to be stuck
in my head all day, and I do not mind.
But all right, since you brought up the backlash to
the old TV show, I do want to close out
by talking about the most brutal setback and comeback that
(25:20):
Charles Adams faced in his career, so you might imagine
that having his comic strip adapted for primetime television would
improve Adam's standing at The New Yorker, but it actually
did just the opposite. During the show's brief run, the
Adams Family disappeared from the magazine's pages, and that's because
it's new editor, William Sewan, thought the strip had grown
(25:41):
too commercial for the New Yorker brand, and not only
did Sean ban Adam's most popular characters, he also turned
away many of the artists' other strips, believing that jokes
about death were in bad taste.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
What about when the show went off the air, was
the band lifted weirdly?
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Sean considered the damage done, so the moratorium continued all
the way until his retirement in nineteen eighty seven. In
the meantime, Adams kept the family alive through advertising and
by occasionally sneaking them into his other cartoons. And while
he never burned bridges with The New Yorker during the
Shawn years, according to those close to him, he never
(26:20):
fully forgave them for disowning the family after such a
strong start together.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yeah that's rough, all right, Mango I think I'm ready
for the comeback part now. So how'd Adams get his revenge?
And did it involve boiling oil?
Speaker 1 (26:34):
No? Definitely, no oil. And I'd say it was more
like vindication than vengeance. So after Sean stepped down, Robert
Gottlieb took over as editor, and he was much more
receptive to Adam's graveyard sense of humor. Gottlieb welcomed the
Adams family back with open arms, and for the rest
of his life, Charles got to draw whatever he wanted
for The New Yorker, just like in the old days.
(26:54):
But this is the creator of the Adams Family we're
talking about, So of course the story ends with a
bittersweet twist, and here it is the reunion that Adams
had waited more than two decades for lasted only about
a year and a half. He died in September of
nineteen eighty eight at the age of seventy six, after
suffering a heart attack.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
All right, bear with me, but is it weird to
say I wish he had been strangled by an octopus instead.
I don't want to be insensitive. It just feels like
he deserved a weirder death.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yeah, I'm sure he'd appreciate that. But if it's any causolation,
his ashes were interred in that pet cemetery that I mentioned,
the one where he married his third wife. Yeah, yeah, okay,
that is pretty weird definitely. And speaking of his last wife,
her name was Tea, and she offered one last punchline
as a parting gift to Adams. He was a lifelong
(27:48):
fan of auto racing and was found dead behind the
wheel of his parked car, So Tea told a press
He's always been a car buff, so it was a
nice way to go.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Wow, that really does sound like a caption for one
of his cartoons, like someone just seeing someone dead at
the wheel and being like, well, he.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Would have liked that.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
So yeah, I think maybe a fitting death after all.
And because you took us out on that perfect sour
note for a Halloween episode, I think you deserve today's trophy, Mango.
Just be careful not to spill it, okay, because it
is full of boiling oil.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, of course it is. Well, that is going to
do it for today's episode. If you have a spooky
story you want to share with us, we are all ears.
Give us a call at three o two four oh
five five nine two five. That is the part Time
Genius hotline that we have set up again. That's three
oh two, four oh five five nine two five. You
can also drop us a line at high Geniuses at
(28:44):
gmail dot com. That's Hi Geniuses at gmail dot com.
We will be back next week with another brand new
episode and in the meantime from Will, Dylan, Gabe, Mary,
and myself, thank you so much for listening, and Happy Halloween.
(29:12):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongage
Heartikler and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social
(29:35):
media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shoring.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Medal of Honor: Stories of Courage
Rewarded for bravery that goes above and beyond the call of duty, the Medal of Honor is the United States’ top military decoration. The stories we tell are about the heroes who have distinguished themselves by acts of heroism and courage that have saved lives. From Judith Resnik, the second woman in space, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice, these are stories about those who have done the improbable and unexpected, who have sacrificed something in the name of something much bigger than themselves. Every Wednesday on Medal of Honor, uncover what their experiences tell us about the nature of sacrifice, why people put their lives in danger for others, and what happens after you’ve become a hero. Special thanks to series creator Dan McGinn, to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and Adam Plumpton. Medal of Honor begins on May 28. Subscribe to Pushkin+ to hear ad-free episodes one week early. Find Pushkin+ on the Medal of Honor show page in Apple or at Pushkin.fm. Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.fm/plus
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com