Charles Addams

The Google Doodle today, January 7, 2012, honors "graveyard guru" Charles Addams, father of the Addams family, who came into living rooms first through print in the New Yorker and then via television--John Astin as Gomez Addams, Carolyn Jones as Morticia, Jackie Coogan as Uncle Fester (Frump), and Ted Cassidy as Lurch, the butler. The wonderfully scary but ultimately well-intentioned family lives off some kind of stash--a lucky thing, because Gomez, who is after all an attorney, doesn't seem to have any clients. In the 1990s, Raul Julia and Angelica Huston starred in a couple of Addams Family films. More here from PC Magazine and here from the Washington Post. Check out Morticia's Morgue here.