They’re Creepy and They’re Kooky...The Addams Family

Cartoonist Charles Addams might be more interesting than his weird creations, The Addams Family, that first debuted in the New Yorker in 1938. A freelance cartoonist his whole life, he had already worked for the magazine since 1932, but with the first appearance of Morticia, Lurch, and the Thing, I imagine it was shocking to the sensibilities of a 1930s audience. Addams himself was often described as a ghoulish, bizarre, and depraved, on the basis of his wicked sense of humor. However, his friends and acquaintances thought he was charming and captivating as he juggled the three loves of his life: women, cartooning, and vintage cars. (Owning 20 vintage autos at one time.) One biographer described him as being "A well-dressed courtly man with silvery back-comb hair in a gentle manner, he bore no resemblance to a fiend." In reality Charles Samuel Addams was a "ladykiller" who accompanied such beauties as Greta Garbo, Joan Fontaine, and Jacqueline Kennedy on social occasions. The cartoonist was married three times to women that all resembled the Morticia character he created. And lucky for us his last wife, Maryland "Tee" Matthews Addams founded the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation in 1999. The archive includes about half of the nearly 1,600 published works by Charles Addams, with the other half residing in institutions and private collections around the world. But the real beauty of this collection is the enormous body of previously unpublished works, photographs, correspondence, and interview materials in the media.

The creepy members of The Addams Family evolved over time into the characters that we know today, first from print, then television, and finally the silver screen. Following is a rough chronology of the main cast members in print. Starting with Morticia. whose name came from Addams leafing through the Yellow Pages and stumbling upon a large section of morticians. The matriarch had a few rough incarnations before she became the slim and statuesque raven-haired beauty we recognize now. Asked if she was based on one of his wives, the artist would say that he created what he adored, and that he was just plain lucky to have married his Heavenly fantasy three times! Gomez came along next in 1942, fully formed with no real changes to be made. Except the character eventually drew a lot from the notes and suggestions from Addams for the 1960s Filmways television program. Now Gomez smoked cigars, though the artist never drew that in the cartoons, though his creator greatly enjoyed them. The dancing, swordplay, and the references to Morticia speaking French, never appeared in any of the cartoons but worked well thought Addams for the television show. Wednesday, the child of Woe, debuted in the June of 1940 New Yorker, and was pretty much the child later represented in the TV show. The creepy little girl with six toes on one foot who liked to dance! She was followed by her grim and malevolent brother’s early prototypes that developed into the 1943 chubby character of Pubert. He later had a name change to Pugsley. One bad little boy. 

Lurch the butler appeared in the first Addams Family cartoon as a silent giant with a full beard, but soon evolved into to a three-piece suit majordomo by the end of 1939. An Old Hag from a 1941 cartoon, where Morticia is trying to borrow a cup of cyanide from a neighbor, eventually morphed into the character of Granny Frump. But the hag was rarely seen until she became an in-house member the mid-1950s. And my favorite character, Uncle Fester, also debuted in January of 1941, who Addams said was really his alter ego. "He's like me or how I look and feel with a bit more hair." Like Charles Addams he was a charming man-boy with his own ingenious mischievous streak. And to round out the remainder of this weird family we have the Thing who also appeared in the first cartoon as a whole person hiding behind the stairs. But the creature used in the televised version was first published in print in March of 1954 with two hands working a record player as the family sits in their drab living room. A few other relatives and family friends would occur off and on over time but never really became solid cast members, except the lovable hairball Cousin Itt which debuted late in 1963. I hope you enjoy the cartoons provided. Here is my only Chas Addams story. The "mother store" of Half Price Books is a little less than two miles from my home, so I go there about once a week to look for items. It's huge and was once a jewelry/department store that even has a vault to keep their collectibles stored. I have found books autographed by Forrest Ackerman, Phillip Jose Farmer, and others for a few dollars and felt very lucky. But a friend of mine bought an Addams Family anthology book once and found an ORIGINAL DRAWING inked on the flyleaf! 

Smokey Bear, A National Treasure!

In 1979 I was a movie usher for the Plitt Theatres in Richardson, Texas and one of the first shows I worked was the War/Comedy "1941" with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. In this movie a Japanese sub is set to attack the coast of California and I thought at the time..."this could never happen" but apparently it did. I should have studied harder in my history class because in early 1942, an Imperial submarine did surface and shelled an oil field near the Los Padres National Forest. Although the overall attack failed, it did bring to light that our firefighters were away at war and we needed a civil defense program to fix this problem. So the the U.S. Forest Service, the Association of State Foresters, and the War Advertising Council joined forces to create the Cooperative Forest Fire Prevention Program to figure out a solution. Later that year, Walt Disney Productions released Bambi and its phenomenal success prompted the CFFP to obtain the rights for a year to use the movie’s characters on a 1943 fire prevention poster. But after the year was up the CFFP needed a new symbol of their own. Starting out, they experimented with a squirrel as the mascot before landing on the idea of using a bear that could stand upright and demonstrate fire safety practices. So on August 9, 1944 Albert Staehle came up with the blue jean chubby bear wearing a ranger hat that became our beloved Smokey Bear. (Not Smokey THE Bear as people often mistakenly call him.) The Smokey Bear Wildfire Prevention campaign was an instant success, making it the longest-running public service advertising campaign in history. (Now in its 80th year.) 

But we all surely remember that 16 page comic "The True Story of Smokey Bear" (If not you can order 100 copies for $47 to teach fire safety to children in the classroom off Smokey's web site. He also has an Instagram and Twitter page.) It tells the story of a big 1950 forest fire in New Mexico’s Capitan Mountains where a rescued bear cub survived by climbing a tree, but suffered severe burns on his paws and hind legs. News about the little black bear quickly spread (like wildfire) throughout New Mexico and across the USA. So seeing a great opportunity, the U.S. Forest Service quickly “adopted” the cub, who was named Smokey and sent to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., as a living symbol of wildfire prevention. The real-life Smokey was such a huge hit with children, that all their letters made the post office give the bear his own zip code (20252). With his passing in 1976 the mascot was buried at the Smokey Bear Historical Park in Capitan, New Mexico. 

If you pull up Smokey Bear on eBay you get over 9400 items for sale! Smokey has appeared in print, radio, and television ads and on stamps, t-shirts, and just about everything else from ashtrays to Funko Pop toys. (Thanks to a 1952 Act of Congress that removed Smokey from the public domain, all licensing revenue is used for wildfire prevention education.) He has been featured in a radio play, songs, and even COMIC BOOKS. Most importantly, he has educated generations of children and adults about wildfire prevention. Hey, but you're thinking this should be about original art right? Well it looks like the first Smokey strip was appearing soon after the war as a one panel public service announcement illustrated by artist Harry Rossoll. I think these advisories were running at least into the 1970s if I'm not mistaken. Then the bear had an early appearance as Smokey the Fire-Preventing Bear Comes to the Rescue of Peter Porkchops, a one page public service announcement that was used in most of Nationals Periodical Publications books in 1949. The Forrest Service put out its own comic in 1950 called Forest Fire (Featuring Smokey the Bear) and was written by Malcolm Ater and illustrated by Jack Sparling and Rudy Wendelin. (Remember that last name.)  

Dell Comics jumped on the bandwagon in 1955 with their Four Color anthology series with issue #653 and had a handful of Smokey Bear comics until 1961. The writers and artist on the books set the stage for future media to follow. Smokey now had a kid, Little Smokey (Not the cocktail weenie), and there is also a raccoon, Specs (Not the liquor store rabbit), Lindy the flying squirrel, Hawkeye the hawk, Spike the porcupine, and Hammer-Head the woodpecker to round out the cast. Some interesting and often weird stories were produced for the anthropomorphic-funny animals acting out stories of carelessness and greed, including a story about two bears who are Communist spies! Morris Gollub did those wonderful painted covers but I could not exactly identify any of the interior artists.  

Next Smokey was picked up by Columbia Features who worked with various licensed properties in the 1950s and 60s. Their approach was to use the characters established by Dell in their Sunday and daily formats and copy the Mark Trail nature strip. They focused on light adventure stories involving ecology, forestry, and wildlife. The strip was credited to "Wes Wood" but I think Paul S. Newman did the scripts with Morris Gollub the artwork. Also a spin-off from the TV cartoon, Smokey Bear had a 13 issue run with Gold Key Comics in 1970 with art by Mike Roy and John Costanza that once again used the established characters from years before. I've also seen Spanish versions and I bet there are more stories of the famous bear in other languages. But really only one man is remembered today as Smokey's "caretaker" for over 30 years, Rudy Wendelin. He created a more human version with Smokey's solemn expression and now carrying his signature shovel. Government posters, postage stamps, first-day covers, television, magazines, and film were all part of Wendelin's Smokey Bear project. And the black bear still lives, as I recently saw him on a huge billboard driving down Interstate 35 in Austin...REMEMBER, ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT WILDFIRES!

The Unknown Soldier Revisited

Signing up for the United States Army together and stationed in the Philippines, two brothers are trapped in their foxhole as the Imperial Army sweep across the islands. Inspired not to lose hope by his older brother who said "one guy can affect the outcome of a whole war! One guy in the right place...at the right time..." before he sacrificed himself on a Japanese grenade to save his younger brother whose face was hideously disfigured from the blast. His tragedy becomes our victory as this one man chose to erase his identity and endure intensive training to become America's top intelligence operative, "The Unknown Soldier". Kanigher and Kubert's war-torn creation appeared first in Our Army at War #168 in June of 1966, before getting his own series in Star-Spangled War Stories #151, in the summer of 1970. This "Man of a Thousand Faces" whose head is always wrapped in heavy bandages, using make-up and latex masks to transforms himself into any individual. Only taking sensitive covert missions behind enemy lines, his only tell, scratching his face where the scars meet under his disguise to give himself away. Such a thorn in the flesh of the Fuhrer, Hitler devised a special Nazi agent, the Black Night, to deal with the lone American. But the Immortal G.I. gets the last laugh as he staged the Fuhrer's "suicide" then disappears to fight another day as the Unknown Soldier!