Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life

Charles Addams’s groundbreaking New Yorker cartoons, Hollywood’s Addams family paled beside the cartoonist’s. “Not half as evil as my original characters,” sighed Addams. Though the haunted-household cartoons developed a following among New Yorker readers long before the 1960s sitcom, and the Addams and their seedy Victorian mansion soon became recognizable types, the artist with the well-known signature “Chas Addams” remained an enigma. Called “the Bela Lugosi of the cartoonists,” Addams was the cartoonist everyone-even Hitchcock-wanted to meet. He was bedeviled by rumors. People claimed that he slept in a coffin, collected severed fingers sent by fans, and suffered bouts of madness that sent him to the insane asylum.

That’s from the publisher — a good summation of “Mr. Twisted” — so I was excited.

I finished this book last night and I have to say — a horrible disappointment.

It never fails. I pick these bios up all the time and beg for a peek inside the world of these great artists (writers, poets, artists, musicians). I start by looking at the photos — no photos — book’s tossed back on the shelf. If there are photos, I look at the credits. I want photos from family, friends, lovers, illegitimate children, neighbors, employees and one-night-stands — not regurgitated stuff from the Internet or other magazines and books. I want fresh stuff — new blood. I want to learn something I haven’t already discovered during all those late night sessions when I can’t write a complete sentence and become bored with porn (is “bored with porn” an oxymoron?).

With Addams, I wanted all the dark twisted secrets; where was he? What time of day was it? Was he medicated or nursing a broken heart? What tools did he use? — Get the picture I need painted here? Show me photos of his desk! Around his office! When I read I bio I want to walk away from it as if I just spent a weekend with the person. I’ve read some great bios (I’ll share those another time) and in my library you’ll easily be able to find them; pages dog-eared, notes in the margins, dates on the inside cover of the date, time and location I last picked the book up and the best passages highlighted — SIGH the smell of a great book.

These are the bios I thirst for — the one’s that make me feel like I have lived with the person, walked in their shoes, shared some Absinthe with, stolen one of their pens — even if for a weekend or a few evenings — pure inspiration — think Hemingway’s “Moveable Feast.”

Maybe, just maybe, someone will do Mr. Addams justice — after all he did marry the love of his life in a Pet Cemetery and called his estate, “The Swamp.”

Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life

Charles Addams’s groundbreaking New Yorker cartoons, Hollywood’s Addams family paled beside the cartoonist’s. “Not half as evil as my original characters,” sighed Addams. Though the haunted-household cartoons developed a following among New Yorker readers long before the 1960s sitcom, and the Addams and their seedy Victorian mansion soon became recognizable types, the artist with the well-known signature “Chas Addams” remained an enigma. Called “the Bela Lugosi of the cartoonists,” Addams was the cartoonist everyone-even Hitchcock-wanted to meet. He was bedeviled by rumors. People claimed that he slept in a coffin, collected severed fingers sent by fans, and suffered bouts of madness that sent him to the insane asylum.

That’s from the publisher — a good summation of “Mr. Twisted” — so I was excited.

I finished this book last night and I have to say — a horrible disappointment.

It never fails. I pick these bios up all the time and beg for a peek inside the world of these great artists (writers, poets, artists, musicians). I start by looking at the photos — no photos — book’s tossed back on the shelf. If there are photos, I look at the credits. I want photos from family, friends, lovers, illegitimate children, neighbors, employees and one-night-stands — not regurgitated stuff from the Internet or other magazines and books. I want fresh stuff — new blood. I want to learn something I haven’t already discovered during all those late night sessions when I can’t write a complete sentence and become bored with porn (is “bored with porn” an oxymoron?).

With Addams, I wanted all the dark twisted secrets; where was he? What time of day was it? Was he medicated or nursing a broken heart? What tools did he use? — Get the picture I need painted here? Show me photos of his desk! Around his office! When I read I bio I want to walk away from it as if I just spent a weekend with the person. I’ve read some great bios (I’ll share those another time) and in my library you’ll easily be able to find them; pages dog-eared, notes in the margins, dates on the inside cover of the date, time and location I last picked the book up and the best passages highlighted — SIGH the smell of a great book.

These are the bios I thirst for — the one’s that make me feel like I have lived with the person, walked in their shoes, shared some Absinthe with, stolen one of their pens — even if for a weekend or a few evenings — pure inspiration — think Hemingway’s “Moveable Feast.”

Maybe, just maybe, someone will do Mr. Addams justice — after all he did marry the love of his life in a Pet Cemetery and called his estate, “The Swamp.”