Google’s Creepy Doodle Pays Homage to Charles Addams, Macabre Creator of ‘The Addams Family’ (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on January 7, 2012
Google doodle today honors 100th birthday of cartoonist Charles Addams, creator of 'The Addams Family'
The unconventional, prolific cartoonist Charles Addams, considered a master of black humor, would have celebrated his 100th birthday today. Best known for his creation of the iconic, macabre “The Addams Family,” Google pays tribute to Addams, born January 7, 1912, with today’s spooky black-and-white Google doodle of the ghoulish cartoon family, complete with Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Wednesday, Pugsley, butler Lurch, and Cousin Itt, with their Gothic home in the background.
Charles would approve.
Video of today’s Google homepage doodle:
Every kid wanting to appear cool in the mid-1960s knew all the lyrics to the TV theme song of “The Addams Family”:
Addams Family TV Show Opening – 1964
From Washington Post, CHARLES ADDAMS GOOGLE DOODLE: Spooky ‘Addams Family’ logo celebrates macabre cartoonist:
To celebrate the centennial of the late, great cartoonist’s birth, Google today features a deft ghoulish “Doodle” in honor of Charles Addams, the longtime New Yorker magazine contributor who was a master of the macabre and a brilliant wit of the weird.
Of course, to many fans, Addams is best known for his namesake cartoon family that has leapt from page to soundstage to Broadway stage. Long after its single-panel creation, “The Addams Family” enjoys an entertainment immortality befitting the otherwordly brood.
Addams’s inspired tribe — headed by the wealthy, mustachioed Gomez and alabaster, raven-locked wife Morticia — already has an afterlife of several generations. Even the spooky, ooky lyrics and finger-snapping tune from the ‘60s TV show — which featured the “misadventures of a blissfully macabre family” — seem destined to hum in human brains for eons, an earworm for all eternity.
To pay tribute to Addams and his Family, Google’s search homepage spotlights Gomez and Morticia in the front of the logo’s “G”; Cousin Itt holding the “O”; young Pugsley in the “G” of a guillotine next to sister Wednesday (whose favorite toy was Marie Antoinette); towering butler Lurch grasps the ”L”; and Uncle Fester chomps down on the “E.”
Charles Addams first created his shocking Addams Family in a cartoon in a 1938 issue of the New Yorker magazine. He refined the characters over the years. Seen here are Grandma Frump, Wednesday, Gomez, Morticia, Lurch, Pugsley, & Uncle Fester
From PC World, Google Honors ‘Graveyard Guru’ Charles Addams With Doodle:
Google is giving a nod to the Addams Family.
The Internet search leader is celebrating what would have been the 100th birthday of Addams Family creator Charles Addams with a Doodle featuring the creepy, kooky, mysteriously spooky family.
Its home page features Morticia, Gomez, Cousin Itt, Pugsley, Wednesday, Lurch, and Uncle Fester meshed with Google’s logo in a black and white cartoon. Click on it and you’ll get a page with search results for the cartoonist, including a link to the Tee and Charles Adams Foundation, which provided the Doodle to Google.
While the 1960s TV show and its finger-snapping jingle might come to mind when you think of the Addams Family, the characters actually had their genesis earlier — in cartoons, many of which appeared in The New Yorker starting in 1938. Initially, the family members didn’t have names and they didn’t get them until the show was in development.
Addams, who drew more than 1,300 cartoons during his lifetime, was born in New Jersey on Jan. 7, 1912. From a young age, his father encouraged him to draw.
He created cartoons for a high school magazine, attended several universities that now hold tribute to him and, in 1933, joined True Detective magazine, where he was tasked with retouching photos of corpses.
Addams was known for his work creating ghoulish characters.
In this interview from a few years back, Charles Kuralt and Bill Geist discuss cartoonist Charles Addams and the display of his artwork at the New York library.
From Telegraph, Charles Addams gets Google doodle:
Charles Addams, the cartoonist who created the Addams Family, has been commemorated in a new Google doodle to celebrate the centenary of his birth on 7 January.
Addams, who was born in Westfield, New Jersey, in 1912, created the amazing characters of the Addams Family – Gomez, Morticia, Lurch the butler, Uncle Fester, Grandma Frump, Cousin It, Thing, Pugsley and Wednesday, that have featured in cartoons, television shows, cinema films, theatre shows and musicals since they first appeared in a cartoon in 1938.
Addams died of a heart attack in September 1988. He had been married three times. A recent sell-out musical adaptation of The Addams Family featured Brooke Shields as Morticia Addams.
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