IndustryGoogle Doodlers Pay A Call On Charles Addams’ 100th Birthday

Google Doodlers Pay A Call On Charles Addams' 100th Birthday

If you thought today's Google Doodle looked a little creepy or kooky or even mysterious and spooky, you would be right. The cartoonist who created The Addams Family has been honored with a Google Doodle on what would have been his 100th birthday.

If you thought today’s Google Doodle looked a little creepy or kooky or even mysterious and spooky, you would be right. The cartoonist who created The Addams Family has been honored with a Google Doodle on what would have been his 100th birthday. His “kooky” and macarbe cartoons began appearing in the New Yorker magazine in 1932 with the Addams making their debut in 1938. In celebrating Charles Addams, the Google logo has undergone a grayscale transformation, featuring the seven main characters of the Addams Family.

From left to right, Morticia and Gomez dance in front of the “G.” Cousin It holds the first o, while the second hides behind the Addams’ Mansion. Wednesday is holding the rope of a lower-cased g-shaped guillotine, in which Pugsley’s head rests. The tall butler, Lurch, holds the ‘L’, while Uncle Fester munches on the ‘E’.

Addams Family Google Doodle

Born January 7, 1912, in Westfield, New Jersey, Addams spent most of his life in Northeast United States – attending Colgate and the University of Pennsylvania, which now has a fine arts building named after him. Addams was a distant relative of the two US presidents bearing the different spelling of his last name. While he started contributing artwork to the New Yorker in 1933 at the age of 21, the first Addams Family comic was published as a single-frame cartoon in 1938. By 1940, he was published regularly in the New Yorker, where he continued to be published for over 60 years until he died in September 1988.

Charles Addams was known for his dark morbid humor. His work was, and is, very popular and beyond the TV series, movies and Broadway musical, they are referenced by Alfred Hitchcock in North By Northwest and Addams collaborated with sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury. Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday and Pugsley were given names when the television show was first developed. He drew over 1300 cartoons during his career and published a number of books.

The Addams Family and their dark humor became his legacy. Most of us are familiar with the 1960s TV series. While only on the air for two seasons, the episodes continue airing with regularity on cable stations, fueled by nostalgia and popularity. The Addams family was featured as a recurring set of characters on the Scooby-Doo Saturday morning cartoons. They received their own animated series in the 70s and again in the early 90s.

The characters were turned into a full-length feature movie in 1991, which did so well it spawned a sequel just two years later. In May 2010, the Addams Family took to Broadway, where it enjoyed nearly two full years, closing just seven days ago.

Now the Addams Family gets the next honored medium, the Google Doodle. The popularity of the doodle already has charles addams in the top-10 searches. The Charles Addams Foundation website has also been largely overloaded and unreachable this morning, as well.

Do you like it? After some of the Doodles from last year, should it have been more interactive? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

Frank Watson also contributed to this post.

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