The Addams Family (1964 TV series)

• Morticia Addams (née Frump) (portrayed by Carolyn Jones) – A cultivated and beautiful woman who knits, dabbles in art, plays the shamisen, raises carnivorous plants and trims roses by clipping off the buds and arranging the thorny stems in a vase. With long, straight ebony-black hair, she is always attired in a long, floor-length tight black dress that ends, apparently, in a full set of tentacles. With her aristocratic bearing and detachment, she is often the calm center of the chaotic events of the household.
• Gomez Addams (portrayed by John Astin) – A retired lawyer[6] of Castilian descent, who is passionately in love with his wife, often referring to her in Spanish pet names such as "Querida" and "Cara Mía". His ardor is greatly intensified when she speaks French. Gomez is very wealthy as a result of owning numerous companies and stocks, and is often following the tape from a stock ticker that is installed in the living room. Gomez squanders money in a cavalier manner and loses it on stocks, but remains wealthy. His hobby, which he shares with his son Pugsley, is gleefully crashing and detonating model trains. He refers to Spain as his "ancestral home". Regularly dressed in a double-breasted and chalk-pinstriped suit with a black tie, Gomez is almost always seen smoking a cigar. The cigar may be already lit when he pulls it from his coat's breast pocket or from the cigar store Indian prop, although sometimes he is seen lighting one, and after that he may put the burning match into his breast pocket. Astin added this trait to the character as he had already been a cigar smoker prior to the show's debut, but then quit after the series ended.[6]

Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan) and Lurch (Ted Cassidy)

• Uncle Fester Addams (portrayed by Jackie Coogan) – Morticia's exuberant uncle who is completely bald and dressed in a floor-length fur-collared coat. Fester is quite fond of dynamite and blasting caps. He often relaxes on a bed of nails, by inserting his head into a book press or by being stretched on a wooden torture rack. He powers light bulbs by placing them into his mouth (the toy or "magic" light bulb used for this trick is still available today).
• Lurch (portrayed by Ted Cassidy) – The Addams' loyal butler, who mainly speaks in grunts or groans. Morticia and Gomez summon him with a hangman's-noose bell pull, to which he immediately appears on screen and replies, "You rang?" He is physically imposing and plays the harpsichord that was originally in Cousin Crimp's family for 400 years. After Lurch answers the door he removes the hats of male visitors, usually crushing them in the process. He is frequently seen with a feather duster. Cassidy made a cameo appearance as Lurch on an episode of the Batman TV series, and on TV music shows while promoting the pop song of the era "The Lurch" (and the dance which it accompanied).
• Grandmama Addams (portrayed by Blossom Rock) – Gomez's mother, a witch who conjures potions and spells and dabbles in fortune telling and knife throwing. Sometimes she is carrying a battle-axe or sharpening it on a grinding-wheel in the middle of the living room.
• Wednesday Addams (portrayed by Lisa Loring) – Gomez's and Morticia's daughter and the youngest member of the family, Wednesday is a strange yet sweet-natured little girl who enjoys keeping bizarre pets such as a black widow spider named Homer and a lizard named Lucifer, in addition to playing with a beheaded doll named Marie Antoinette.
• Pugsley Addams (portrayed by Ken Weatherwax) – Gomez's and Morticia's son and Wednesday's older brother. Kind-hearted and smart, he occasionally conforms to conventional standards contrary to his family, such as joining the Boy Scouts. He also enjoys engineering various machines, playing with blasting caps, and playing with his pet octopus Aristotle.
• Thing – A disembodied hand that appears out of boxes and other conveniently placed containers. Thing also appears from a knothole in a tree in the front yard, and in The Addams Family in Court, Thing reaches out of Gomez's briefcase to hand him a legal paper in court. Gomez's constant "companion" since childhood, Thing is always ready to assist family members with minor daily services and diversions, such as lifting the receiver on telephones, retrieving the mail, lighting cigars, pouring tea and playing chess. The tagline is, "Thank you, Thing." Thing apparently has the ability to teleport from container to container, almost instantly: Thing sometimes appears from different containers at opposite ends of the room within seconds of each other. Though Ted Cassidy would often portray Thing, assistant director Jack Voglin would sometimes portray Thing in scenes where Lurch and Thing appear together. Thing (sometimes "The Thing") was billed as "Itself" in the closing credits.

While the following relatives have made appearances on the show, there have been references to other relatives in each of the episodes:

• Cousin Itt (portrayed by Felix Silla, voiced by an uncredited Tony Magro) – Gomez's cousin, Itt is a diminutive character composed entirely of floor-length hair accompanied by a bowler hat and sunglasses. He speaks in rapid, unintelligible gibberish that only the family can understand. The character was created specifically for the television series.[7][8]
• Ophelia Frump (portrayed by Carolyn Jones) – Morticia's flighty flower-child older sister who is the "white sheep of the family". In the two-part second-season episode "Morticia's Romance", Gomez is originally engaged to Ophelia in an arranged marriage, but when he sees the then-22-year-old Morticia (dressed in a grown-up version of Wednesday's clothing), they fall in love with each other. The flowers entwined in Ophelia's hair actually have roots that travel down into her foot, and the foot raises when one of the flowers are tugged on. She sings in three-part harmony and has a love of judo that enables her to flip men (usually Gomez) onto their backs. Ophelia was played by Carolyn Jones in a blonde wig, and, along with Cousin Itt, was created specifically for the television series,[7] appearing in family portrait artwork by Charles Addams after the show's debut.[8]
• Hester Frump (portrayed by Margaret Hamilton) – The mother of Morticia and Ophelia. She is a witch and an old friend of Grandmama Addams.

• Arthur J. Henson (portrayed by Parley Baer) – An insurance executive in the town where the family resides.
  • Joe Digby (also, Horace Beesley, portrayed by Eddie Quillan) – An insurance clerk who works for Arthur Henson.
• Sam L. Hilliard (portrayed by Allyn Joslyn) – A truant officer who is scared to death of the family. In one episode, his middle name is given as "Lucifer", much to the family's delight ("Sam Hill" is an older American euphemism for Satan).
• Mr. Briggs (portrayed by Rolfe Sedan) – The neighborhood mailman who delivers the mail to the Addams house.
• Sam Picasso (portrayed by Vito Scotti) – A scheming Spanish artist upon whom family members rely for artistic advice.

Series creator David Levy explained the premise of the show to syndicated columnist Erskine Johnson in August 1964: "We have made [the family] full-bodied people, not monsters ... They are not grotesque and hideous manifestations. At the same time we are protecting the images of [Charles] Addams' 'children', as he refers to them. We are living up to the spirit of his cartoons. He is more than just a cartoonist. He's a social commentator and a great wit."[9] The tone was set by series producer Nat Perrin, who was a close friend of Groucho Marx and writer of several Marx Brothers films. Perrin created story ideas, directed one episode and rewrote every script. The series often employed the same type of zany satire and screwball humor seen in the Marx Brothers films, in addition to wordplay and occasional slapstick. There were continual running gags that labeled people who were not members of the family "strange" or complained of their behavior. Another one was members of the family trading objects when they collided; in "Cousin Itt and the Vocational Counselor" Gomez ends up with Morticia's knitting and Morticia has his cigar. Other running jokes were about strange food and drink, e.g. toadstools and hemlock; bats and other "creepy" things; and Gomez's glee at losing money on the stock market. It lampooned politics ("Gomez, The Politician" and "Gomez, The People's Choice"); modern art ("Art and the Addams Family" and Morticia's painting in several episodes); the legal system ("The Addams Family in Court"); rock n' roll and Beatlemania ("Lurch, The Teenage Idol") and Hollywood ("My Fair Cousin Itt").

The show's memorable theme, written and arranged by longtime Hollywood composer Vic Mizzy, was dominated by a harpsichord with finger snaps as percussive accompaniment. Ted Cassidy punctuated the lyrics with the words "neat", "sweet" and "petite". Mizzy's theme was popular enough to enjoy a release as a 45-rpm single, though it failed to make the U.S. charts. The song was revived for the 1992 animated series, as well as in 2007 for a series of Addams Family television commercials for M&M's chocolates. It was also revisited in the dance scene in Addams Family Values.

The closing theme was similar, but was instrumental only and featured such instruments as a triangle, a wood block, a siren whistle and a duck call replacing some of the finger snaps.

The show has been aired worldwide. In the United Kingdom, it first aired on ITV in 1965–1966, and then it appeared on Sky 1 in 1991 and ran until 1992. It was then aired on BBC Two from 6 p.m. on Monday nights starting in February 1992 until the end of 1993 and then moved to Saturdays in 1994 and later in school summer holidays before it vanished at the end of August 1996.

In October 2011, the series was picked up by Cartoon Network's sister channel Boomerang and ran through the entire month of October that year for Halloween alongside The Munsters. It vanished from Boomerang after Halloween 2013.

The series airs on select local stations,[10] and as of November 2013 airs weekends on the national movie/classic TV network Antenna TV[11]

As of April 2019, the series can be purchased on iTunes, and can be streamed in the United States via Amazon Video and IMDb. The minisodes are available on Crackle and Vudu.

As of October 1, 2019, the series is also being aired on its own channel (310) on the ViacomCBS-owned free streaming service Pluto TV.

A soundtrack album was released in 1965 containing all of Vic Mizzy's compositions for the series entitled Original Music From The Addams Family.[15]

A successful film, The Addams Family, was released by Paramount Pictures in 1991, starring Raul Julia as Gomez, Anjelica Huston as Morticia, Christopher Lloyd as an amnesiac Uncle Fester and Christina Ricci as Wednesday. After the film's release, series creator David Levy filed a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures; the suit was settled out of court. A sequel, Addams Family Values, followed in 1993, to greater critical success than the first film, though it earned less at the box office.

Ted Cassidy makes a in-character appearance as Lurch in a "window-cameo" in the 1960s Batman television series.