Grandmama (''The Addams Family'')

Grandmama is a fictional character in the Addams Family television and film series. First appearing in the works of cartoonist Charles Addams, she is a supporting character in series film, television and stage adaptations.

Character background

Grandmama Addams is an aged witch who concocts potions and spells, and dabbles in fortune telling and knife throwing. She is the grandmother of the Addams children, Pugsley and Wednesday, although her relationship to the other family members is less consistent. Grandmama first appeared along with the then-unnamed Addams family in Charles Addams' original cartoons published in The New Yorker, in which she was regularly illustrated with shoulder-length frizzy hair and a fringed shawl.^[1] Addams described Grandmama in a 1963 character synopsis as "a disrespectful old hag" and "foolishly good-natured ... a weak character [who] is easily led."^[1]

In Charles Addams' original The New Yorker cartoon strips, the character was referred to as Grandma Frump,^[2] therefore making her Morticia's mother. For the original television series — as well as The New Addams Family, in which she is named Eudora Addams — her relationship to the family is retconned and she becomes Gomez's mother. However, both the feature films and animated television series conform to Charles Addams' original concept of Grandmama as Wednesday's and Pugsley's maternal grandmother. In the first film, Morticia and Fester discuss how "Mother and Father Addams" were killed by an angry mob, removing any possibility that Grandmama could be Gomez and Fester's mother. In the third film, in which she is named Esmeralda, she is again implied to come from Morticia's family. The character is simply referred to as Granny in the two animated series. In the 1992 series, Grandmama is Morticia's mother and, in the second episode, introduces herself with the line, "the name's Granny Frump".^[3] The following episode references Gomez's parents, Mother and Father Addams.^[4] In the Broadway musical The Addams Family, Morticia refers to Grandmama as Gomez and Uncle Fester's mother (complaining that she was supposed to move in for two weeks, and it's been twelve years), to which he reacts with surprise and says that he thought she was Morticia's mother; Morticia later says that Grandmama "may not even be part of this family".

Appearances

References