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 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 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 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 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.
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.
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.
Yeah, there wasn't a dedicated Adams Family strip like Peanuts or Garfielder.
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 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 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, 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, 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.
Last week at the third Tron movie. Everyone around me was just checking their watch wondering why they came, and I'm just over.
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 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 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.
You said it's one of those two person horse costumes, right, that's what he's going with.
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.
Yeah, making it a one person horse costume is gonna make it so much scarier.
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.
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.
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
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, 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.
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 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 the ocean and they're like watching Noah's Arc drift over the horizon.
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.
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?
So just like right off the bat, so much darker than you'd expect.
Yeah, I guess it hits harder in a medium like that because it's a little unexpected, right you think.
About it completely, You think it's gonna be sweet.
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 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 alpo every day. But I'm one of those strange people who actually had a happy childhood.
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.
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.
A few quirk so.
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, and he used the maybe creepiest of all, he used the salvaged tombstone of a child, Little Sarah, aged three, as a cocktail table.
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 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 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.
I'm sure that went a lot further back in those days, right, but still not enough to live on I wouldn't think.
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, 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 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 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.
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.
I do not, But if you say it's cool, I've gotta trust you. He was so cool.
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 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, 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.
It to Pugsley, which is still weird. But Pugsy is so much cuter than Pubert.
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.
So what about Wednesday.
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.
Full of grace.
But when Wednesday's child is full of woe.
That's so sad. I know what happened on Wednesday? I have no idea.
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 and you reap what you woe, So Wednesday's titles are also full of woe.
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 for spooky mannss, and of course, the story of that
famous theme song, Don't Go Anywhere. Welcome back to Part 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 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 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.
Yeah, that's the perfect blend of creepy and sweet.
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 black and white to match that gothic gray scale of the original comics.
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 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.
Those Yeah, I remember that in So Dark.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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 that Martitia was actually his dream girl.
You mean, he based the character on someone he.
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 is that he had been drawing early versions of the character a full decade before his first marriage.
Oh okay, so it's more like he based his why on more Titia then.
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 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 been carried forward in every incarnation of the family ever since.
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.
I know, read couples.
You know, they were shown sleeping in separate beds pretty often until the mid nineteen sixties.
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.
You know, that's kind of sad between spouses only if you're really weird.
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 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.
It is still the best use of a home computer by bar It's really cool.
Though.
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.
Not bad, but you.
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.
Yeah. I mean, using a computer named Wizzo to predict horse races is definitely more silly than evil, right right.
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, 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 some well placed finger snapping. Missy even sang the theme song himself and then over dubbed it three times to make it sound.
Like multiple people. And while you might assume he did that.
For eerie effect, it was actually a cost saving measure because the production studio refused to pay for backup singers.
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 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 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 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.
What about when the show went off the air, was the band lifted weirdly?
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 fully forgave them for disowning the family after such a strong start together.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Would have liked that.
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.
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 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. 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 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.