Customer Reviews

Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life

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What a fantastic biography of this mysterious man, this legendary cartoonist! It's about time someone explored fully the life of Charles Addams, father of "The Addams Family" and master of the macabre and bizarre cartoons from The New Yorker magazine. The tales from his odd childhood and woes of his wives (well, two of them) make for a terrific story here and Linda Davis has given Addams the proper send-up with this highly detailed and smartly written biography. (There are a few small pebbles in the shoe: for instance, The Addams Family television sitcom in the 60s was filmed, not "taped"...) But all in all, superb research and insight into this talented being with an eerie twist to him. The book makes you wish you'd met the man. There are ample illustrations inside, examples of Addams artwork, snapshots, diary entries, family photos, etc. Bravo!

Not a waste of time, & informative; but Tom Kunkel, author of the great Harold Ross biography, is not even remotely in jeopardy of being eclipsed.

The artist infused with an abundance of charm needed a writer equally blessed with a warm sense of humor & wit - not an author with a compulsive need to describe each & every detail in his cartoons (particularly if the cartoon itself is on the opposite page).

She did do an excellent job of it in some respects. Her exposure of the frauds of his maniacal & manipulative 2nd wife, & the inane brain of the vain Joan Fountaine (one of his paramours), was first-rate.

But as with the anemic Fred Allen bio (by Robert Taylor), Davis never really got a feel for her subject until at the very end, in the chapters that describe a trip out to Connecticut taken by Addams (by now, in his mid-70s) & Frank Modell, only a few days before Addams passed away.

It also might have been the subject matter, Addams himself - something along the lines of, when astonished acquaintances of Cary Grant would discover what a remarkably un-debonair man he could be, in real life.

Addams knew his way around a tux, but he never exhibited any desire to do anything other than to race sports cars & draw brilliant illustrations later to be united with punch lines (many of which were not his own).

At the tail end of a (probably platonic) fling with (the post-JFK, pre-Onassis) Jackie Kennedy, she thoughtlessly wounded him with a cruel remark.

" 'Well, I couldn't get married to you,' she told him. 'What would we talk @ at the end of the day - cartoons?' "

(She probably said the same thing to the pool boy.)

But I'll give it this. It was a pleasant change to read a book @ The New Yorker that hadn't been written in anger by ex-staffers with their "How It All Went Wrong" axes to grind.

"Charlie" was one of my mother's paramours and of all of them, our favorite.
We kids adored him. He was all about bringing good times to everyone he came in contact with, in his own inimitable way. Linda interviewed us all and in the end, wrote a very vivid and fair biography, but you don't have to be an insider to become enthralled.
He was a sweetheart who had a taste for the macabre. Who knows where these things come from really? He made scary funny. Its a strange calling, but it worked for him. His was a totally unique niche; he didn't have to reinvent anyone else..he was an original.

He generously drew a charming full color cartoon for me in response to my sending him a large black balloon I had found and had to send to him. It appears in the book in black and white. This and the many memories I have of him, I will cherish forever.

Who was Chas (Charles) Adams? While you won't know by the time you finish this revealing biography, you'll certainly expand beyond the line sketch you probably have now of his life. If you are a New Yorker fan, you'll know him from his hundreds of cartoons and dozens of covers that expressed a most unique and other worldly perspective. If you are a fan of celebrities, you may know more about him as someone who drove classic cars, dated high-profile women, and favored allusions to death and dying. If you are a classic television fan, you'll know that his cartoon characters were the foundation for The Addams Family. If you favor camp, you know about his armor collection, his preferences for cross-bows, and other lethal items which he liked to display in public.

The biography also reveals a kindly man who was patient with everyone, including those he didn't particularly like. You'll also learn of his fascination with the Morticia appearance (based on having married two women who met the bill). More surprisingly, you'll find him to have been victimized by his second wife . . . even long after they were no longer married. The book also portrays a heterosexual version of Truman Capote who fascinated many of the most desirable women.

Most pleasingly, Ms. Davis does a delightful job of portraying the development of his cartooning style and art . . . including dozens of prime examples that are well reproduced. Even when there's no reproduction, Ms. Davis is good at capturing the essence of an image in a few words. She also provides a history of 20th century New Yorker cartooning, including how many of the final cartoons represented the influences of many people other than the artist who signed the final version.

While each of those aspects is well and thoroughly portrayed, the core of the man doesn't quite make it through. Addams seems like a case of arrested development in many ways, but his willingness to be kind and considerate of others displays greater maturity than his preferences for self-indulgence and his cartooning approach suggest. In today's world, he would clearly be just another clever self-promoter . . . except that his stunts seemed aimed at creating joy rather than a higher income. Clearly, he didn't take himself too seriously, yet he did take his work seriously. Ms. Davis has, however, done readers and cartoon fans a great service by writing this biography which will undoubtedly stir up other sources and perspectives to flesh out the man who shortened his first name because it looked better that way on a cartoon.

My dad and Charlie were in business during their undergraduate days at UPenn. Dad would go out and take orders and Charlie would draw custom Christmas "and other special occasion" cards. I thought this was pretty neat. Nearing his deathbed, my dad finally confessed the he'd go out and take very specific instructions, gather photos, descriptions, etc. and bring other sordid details back to Charlie, who would then draw "pornographic" cards based on those orders. That revelation got me looking at Wednesday in a whole new light! It was enjoyable to read that Charlie was like that all his life.

One of the most commonly asked questions of cartoonists is, "Where do you get your ideas?"

And of course when the cartoonist is Charles Addams, this question leads to unrivaled speculation and disinformation, which over the years created its own brand of peculiar mythology.

Now comes an impressive new biography by Linda H. Davis. In "Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life" Davis takes on the stories that Addams slept in a coffin and drank martinis with eyeballs in them. Instead, what emerges is a surprising portrait of an amazing artist who led a full and colorful life.

Yes, Addams certainly had quirks and odd obsessions. But he was also universally loved, and so charming that he dated the likes of such luminaries of his time as Greta Garbo, Joan Fontaine and Jackie Kennedy Onassis (along with untold numbers of others). He drank hard, raced cars, and no party or social gathering was considered complete without him. His fan base ran the gamut from the criminally insane to Sean Connery and Alfred Hitchcock.

In this first ever biography of the subject, Davis charts Addams' meteoric rise and more than 50-year career as the most esteemed cartoonist at The New Yorker. With his cartoons, Addams became a significant cultural force by combining horror and humor, a genre that continues to flourish today. His impact and influence on generations of cartoonists is impossible to calculate, but it's fair to say that Gary Larson's Far Side would not have existed without him.

Addams' own unique creation of The Addams Family began as print cartoons which went on to inspire a popular TV series, animated cartoons and two Hollywood feature films. With these characters, Addams provided role models for eccentrics and nonconformists everywhere. The message of the Addams Family was simple: Namely that love and laughter can--and does-- flourish everywhere, even within families and social groups that seem outside society's norms.

An esteemed biographer whose previous subjects have included Stephen Crane and Katherine White, Davis spent over six years on this book and interviewed more than 130 persons who knew Addams well, or as well as anyone could. Although Addams died in 1988, Davis had exclusive access to his personal effects and papers that had been in the possession of his wife Tee until her death in 2004. Addams' two other wives also participated in helping Davis to define the man nicknamed "Chill" by his friends.

Davis provides a wealth of detail, but wisely avoids drawing hard conclusions or offering up pseudo-psychoanalysis. Instead, the dichotomy between the artist's urbane and cheerful public persona and his morbidly dark humor are presented in a way that leaves the reader, if nothing else, even more appreciative of Addams' depth, genius and mystery.

With this approach Davis reframes the question of "where" Addams got his ideas to that of "why." Addams was unlike anyone else, and so it is only natural that his ideas would be unlike those of others. As for why he was the way he was, that's a question Addams seems to have taken to the grave with him. In "A Cartoonist's Life" we see that just as one question is put to rest, another rises up - a conclusion that Addams himself would have no doubt enjoyed.

"Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life" is a warm and tenderly written biography in which the essence of the man behind the dark side of his cartoons is gently exposed. Author Linda H. Davis has offered a comprehensive look into Charles Addams's life and it has a few surprises.

Addams, born into relative prosperity in Westfield, New Jersey just prior to World War I, could have lived a rarefied life (and in some ways he did) were it not for his penchant for seeing the world in a different way from most of us. Davis points out that Addams, although never admitting to liking children and never having any of his own, nonetheless gravitated toward children at parties and visits to friends' homes. He was wildly popular with the children he got to know and that childlike quality is evident in the cartoons he drew. He disliked the word "macabre" in describing his work and as the author points out there is never any outward blood and gore in his cartoons. The ghoulishness is implied and having been treated to several of Addams's cartoons in this book I would agree with Addams himself....his best cartoons are uncaptioned.

Charles Addams's personal life was another matter. Married three times, his second wife, Barbara Colyton, had the most and longest lasting effect on him. Control and money were her issues and she dominated the cartoonist for years after their divorce. Yet as Davis points out, Addams never had too much of an axe to grind with her or other women in his life. Indeed, he had many women as confidants...something most men eschew.

It is surprising to see how little money Addams made in his life, relatively speaking. He seemed to care about other things and one of the great loves of his life was his dog, Alice. Remarkably, too, Addams lived in an age where, at the New Yorker at least, cartoonists were mostly given ideas from which to draw something. It appears that his originality came later rather than earlier in his career.

Linda Davis has done a fine job in taking us through the life of this wonderfully warm, if complicated man. As his friend, the writer Philip Hamburger remarked on Addams's death in 1988, "Charles Addams was 'sui generis'". Without a doubt he must have been. I think Addams would have been a lovely dinner guest, replete with humor and full of attentive, quiet listening to his fellow guests. I wish I had met him.

I thought this well-researched biography of the brilliant cartoonist Charles Addams was readable and fascinating. Addams was a man who created a body of work that was so strong, so potent, that it somehow drews him into the macabre world of his creation. He was apparently a gentle soul with a rogueish sense of humor, who collected crossbows and weapons, but never had a bad word to say about anyone. The sense of Addams as a (self-made) man really comes across in this well put-together book, however the one thing that seems ever-elusive, is the dark wit of the great cartoonist-this book is rather dry and does not have much of a sense of fun. I do feel, however, that thanks to the fine work of writer Linda Davis, I now know Addams as a real person, not just as the mysterious force behind the dilapitated facade of the Addams Family's mansion. This book is definitely worth reading, and very enjoyable for any fan of this original and significant artist/humorist.

This solid biography traces Charles Addams' life from his semi-poor suburban upbringing to his first attempts at submitting free-lance cartoons to being a regular contributor to THE NEW YORKER, through the creation of what came to be called "The Addams Family" and through the rest of his creative life and more.

Probably the part I liked best came when the author describes and explicates Addams' best work in words we can understand. When THE NEW YORKER was still highly grounded in the verbal humor of Peter Arno and Helen Hokinson, Addams was messing with our minds by showing (for example) his trademark family up on the roof with a vat of *something* awaiting innnocent Christmas carolers below. The author points out that we don't really know what's in the cauldron (oil, lead or water??), and that the Addamses had not yet begun to tip it over -- the danger is something we bring to the drawing ourselves, and usually do.

A surprise to me was the extent to which Addams' highly informed and original cartoons had to be given backstory to produce the mid-1960s TV sitcom, "The Addams Family" (Snap! Snap!). Wednesday and Lurch got their names, Pugsley was created from whole cloth, and other expository elements had to be added to the mix. The show was not a huge hit, but it ran on TV originally for two years, long enough to raise an eyebrow or two at THE NEW YORKER, whose cartoon editors were by and large conservative and for whom the semblance of "popularity" was something to guard against (as in, appealing to the old lady from Dubuque). After the TV show, the magazine accepted no more Morticia - Gomez cartoons from Addams. He kept contributing and made a good living at it, but his peak inspiration seemed to be over.

When Addams was winding down his career in the Seventies and Eighties, he became something of a bon vivant, who derived most of his living from the many paperback reprints of his classic cartoons, not only the Addamses but other topics. Addams wasn't exactly part of the jet set or the glitterati but rubbed elbows with them. I suspect Addams' life story will lose a few readers at this point as his creative life waned, and his social and sexual lives took off. The author faithfully catalogs that chapter in his life as well; and truth be told, Addams had a very full life.

This is not the kind of biography people storm the bookstores for, but if you're interested in this singular talent (who may have indeed been something of a genius), you'll do well here.

Charles Addams was not the sinister character one might suppose created the Addams Family weirdos. Nor did he have an unhappy childhood that found expression in the darkest of his cartoons. On the contrary, his life from earliest years to his final day was a happy one. This news might confound some psychologists. But a reader of Linda H. Davis's biography of Addams will delight in her account of a life that held more sunshine than darkness and more than the usual surprises.