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Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Before we get started with this episode, we

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Speaker 1: have one last live show to announce for We will

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Speaker 1: be in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the National World War

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Speaker 1: Two Museum on Tuesday, November six. Okay, we know that

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Speaker 1: selection day, but we don't want coming to our show

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Speaker 1: to keep you from the polls. We are both going

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Speaker 1: to vote early before we leave for New Orleans, and

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Speaker 1: Louisiana offers early voting as well, so we encourage you

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Speaker 1: to do so. You can find out more about this

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Speaker 1: show and get a link to buy tickets at missed

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Speaker 1: in History dot com slash tour. Welcome to Stuff You

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Speaker 1: Missed in History class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm

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Speaker 1: Tracy view Wilson. Tracy, I have to ask you a

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Speaker 1: question right out of the gate. I'm putting you on

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Speaker 1: the spot. Okay, the Adams Family or the Monsters? Oh man.

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Speaker 1: So when I was a kid, I loved the Adams

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Speaker 1: famly most and I thought the Munsters were a weird knockoff.

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Speaker 1: That's not accurate, no, but but that's valid to think that. Um.

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Speaker 1: I will probably shock you by saying when I was

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Speaker 1: a kid, I liked the Munsters more, really I did.

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Speaker 1: It was not until I got older that I kind

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Speaker 1: of switched it over. And I think I realized I

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Speaker 1: was trying to figure out why that was. And I

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Speaker 1: think it was an aspirational gould Um where I mean,

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Speaker 1: I could never be like the long, willowy Mortitia, but

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Speaker 1: I could probably pull off a lily. Oh sure, like

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Speaker 1: Avond de Carlo with her little white stripe in her hair.

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Speaker 1: And she was shorter and she had that fabulous rush

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Speaker 1: dress and the bat necklace, and so I think that

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Speaker 1: was what it was. But I liked them both. Now

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Speaker 1: I love them both. But today we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about Charles Adams, who was the creator of the Adams

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Speaker 1: Family as a cartoon, long before it was ever a

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Speaker 1: TV series or films, etcetera. And Charles Adams was, by

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Speaker 1: all accounts a compelling figure. He visited cemeteries for fun,

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Speaker 1: and he was a car enthusiast, and he raced cars

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Speaker 1: as an amateur, and he collected and shot crossbows. And

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Speaker 1: Alfred Hitchcock once just showed up on his doorstep with

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Speaker 1: no advanced warning, hoping to meet him and saying when

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Speaker 1: Charles Adams opened the door. I've just come to see

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Speaker 1: you in your natural Bailey Wick. But Adams very likely

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Speaker 1: surprised the filmmaker because he surprised a lot of people

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Speaker 1: who thought they could intuit what the creator of the

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Speaker 1: kinds of cartoons he made would be like, because he

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Speaker 1: was not an elusive sort of proto goth at all.

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Speaker 1: He was in fact, very dapper and sociable, and he

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Speaker 1: was irreverent but by all accounts, completely delightful to be around. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And there is so much great stuff to his story

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Speaker 1: that this is a two parter, so um, we had

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Speaker 1: to talk about all of his good and bad qualities.

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Speaker 1: And also I will just say that, after doing all

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Speaker 1: this research, if I build a time machine, my answer

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Speaker 1: might have changed again because I just want to go

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Speaker 1: back and maybe have cock pals with Charles Adams. I

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Speaker 1: think he would be just a super fun guy to

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Speaker 1: hang out with. I also feel like this is an interesting, um,

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Speaker 1: not exactly counterpoint, but that's the word that I can

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Speaker 1: think of to last Halloween's Edward Gory episode. Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: in terms of them both having sort of a maccab

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Speaker 1: fascination in their work and having very distinctive personalities. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's interesting. Uh. It doesn't come up in either

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Speaker 1: of these episodes, but naturally people would ask him a

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Speaker 1: little bit about gory Um and other artists as well, cartoonists,

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Speaker 1: and and he always felt that um uh And I'm

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Speaker 1: paraphrasing based on stuff that I read that to him,

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Speaker 1: he was just to Charles Adams, he just thought he

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Speaker 1: was funny. He didn't really see himself necessarily as macab

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Speaker 1: at all, whereas he really thought that Edward Gorey had

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Speaker 1: this insight into like the darker side of humanity, and

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Speaker 1: he was like, I strap funny off. Which is kind

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Speaker 1: of interesting because a lot of his stuff, at least

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Speaker 1: for the time, it was very dark. Nowadays, it's probably

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Speaker 1: considered pretty mild by comparison, but it has sort of

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Speaker 1: a wonderful an unexpected nature of how it looks at

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Speaker 1: the world and humanity, and that some people often found

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Speaker 1: a little bit dark or a lot dark. Yeah, So

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Speaker 1: we'll start at the beginning, as we usually do. Charles

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Speaker 1: Samuel Adams was born in Westfield, New Jersey, on January

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Speaker 1: seventh nine. His father, Charles Hughey Adams, had studied to

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Speaker 1: be an architect, but then ended up working at a

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Speaker 1: piano company. He worked his way up from a salesman

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Speaker 1: to an executive, and he really traveled a lot. The

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Speaker 1: young Charles's mother was Grace M. Spear Adams, and he

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Speaker 1: went by the name Charlie. By all accounts, he was

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Speaker 1: a very jolly baby, and the Adams has had this

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Speaker 1: blue eyed child a little late considering the time. Grace

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Speaker 1: was in her thirties when he was born, and they

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Speaker 1: really just treasured him. Yeah, there's a great store. And

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Speaker 1: in the biography that I read of him that she

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Speaker 1: initially was very nervous and she bought a baby book

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Speaker 1: and was doing and she eventually just threw it out

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Speaker 1: because she was like, I just love this kid, and

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Speaker 1: we're just going to raise him that way. Um, like

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Speaker 1: that will be their guiding principle. Uh. He was also

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Speaker 1: really fascinated as a kid by some of the old

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Speaker 1: Rundown Victorian homes in their neighborhood. And when he was eight,

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Speaker 1: Charlie and a number of other boys broke into one

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Speaker 1: that was under renovation and they drew skeletons on the

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Speaker 1: walls and they caused all kinds of other mischief. They

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Speaker 1: messed with the some of the paint and resins that

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Speaker 1: the construction workers had left behind, and this got them

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Speaker 1: in a little bit of trouble with the local police.

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Speaker 1: Adams liked to tell people that he got arrested at

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Speaker 1: the age of eight for trespassing and vandalism, but there

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Speaker 1: was actually no arrest. The kids were instead rounded up

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Speaker 1: and they were taken to the courthouse and Mr Adams,

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Speaker 1: Charlie's father paid for the damages that the boys had done.

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Speaker 1: This is like an episode of the Andy Griffiths, totally.

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Speaker 1: A lot of his life sounds like that. Growing up,

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Speaker 1: he always stressed what a normal, sort of wholesome, happy

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Speaker 1: boyhood he had. Yeah, later on, as a young man,

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Speaker 1: he really did get arrested, though. He was arrested when

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Speaker 1: he removed the tank top part of his swimsuit at

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Speaker 1: the beach after having seen a photo of Italian men

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Speaker 1: who were wearing their swimsuits with just the shorts on. Yes,

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Speaker 1: for emulating fashion. He got in a little bit of

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Speaker 1: legal trouble. Charlie did remain fascinated with Victorian homes after

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Speaker 1: his childhood, even but during his childhood he liked to

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Speaker 1: wander the streets of their town, where there were a

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Speaker 1: lot of them, and he would imagine the secrets of

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Speaker 1: the people who lived there and thought about the sinister

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Speaker 1: possibilities of the things in their lives they might be hiding.

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Speaker 1: But his own family, like I said, was pretty happy

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Speaker 1: and even pretty ordinary. His parents were devoted to one another,

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Speaker 1: and he sometimes joked that he was strange because he

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Speaker 1: didn't have an unhappy childhood. He was a much beloved child,

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Speaker 1: and he also really loved his parents. The only thing

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Speaker 1: that seemed to darken this picture of perfection and happiness

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Speaker 1: was that his mother would get lonely when his father

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Speaker 1: traveled for work. Long past that home break in, Charles

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Speaker 1: continued to be a prankster. He liked to use the

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Speaker 1: dumb waiter in the family home to sneak into his

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Speaker 1: grandmother's room and then jump out and scare her, something

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Speaker 1: that he admitted doing the same. Eternal grandmother, Emma Louise

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Speaker 1: tough Spear, would go on to inspire the grand My

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Speaker 1: character in his famous work as an adult, and it

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Speaker 1: was through her that Charlie was related to not only

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Speaker 1: the Toughs family, but also very distantly to John Adams. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that's the other side of the family, not the

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Speaker 1: Adams from whence his name comes, which is a two

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Speaker 1: D situation um as in it has two d's in it.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, so he had a pretty illustrious family set

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Speaker 1: of connections on his mother's side. He also would say

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Speaker 1: that in the inspiring the Grandmother later on in Adams family,

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Speaker 1: that was his grandmother, Like when she first woke up

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Speaker 1: in the morning and hadn't combed her hair, she was

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Speaker 1: not always disheveled. But even as a kid, there were

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Speaker 1: also some clues that Charlie was really in tune with

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Speaker 1: the maccabre. So, in addition to thinking about those secret

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Speaker 1: lives of the people in the houses around him, he

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Speaker 1: adored things like skeletons and coffins and even iron maidens.

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Speaker 1: At one point he said he really believed that if

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Speaker 1: he had told his parents he wanted an iron maiden,

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Speaker 1: they probably would have bought one for him. But some

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Speaker 1: of his fascination with such things actually came from his

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Speaker 1: fear of them. He was actually pretty claustrophobic. He wrote

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Speaker 1: about it as a kid in his diary, and he

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Speaker 1: was afraid of snakes. But instead of trying to avoid

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Speaker 1: those things, he confronted them, and he drew his fears

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Speaker 1: to deal with them. One of the things that comes

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Speaker 1: up over and over when you read about his house

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Speaker 1: as an adult is that he had all kinds of

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Speaker 1: snake art in it, so he clearly really embraced that fear.

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Speaker 1: He also really loved art. He started drawing as a kid,

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Speaker 1: and his parents encouraged him in it even when Charlie

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Speaker 1: was still very young, younger than seven. He was drawing

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Speaker 1: pictures of World War One as it took place. He

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Speaker 1: was imagining the scenes that he heard about in news reports.

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Speaker 1: And he also liked to draw a lot of pictures

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Speaker 1: of KAISERVILLELM. The Second being killed in all kinds of ways.

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Speaker 1: He was hanged, he was run over by a car,

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Speaker 1: on and on. Yeah, yeah, he drew everything he heard,

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Speaker 1: and Grace and Charles really believed that their child had

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Speaker 1: a true and unique talent, so much so that at

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Speaker 1: one point Grace brought some of his drawings to Ht

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Speaker 1: Webster at the New York Herald and said, look at

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Speaker 1: my child and what he can do. But Webster was like,

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Speaker 1: this kid has no talent. It's such a common story

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Speaker 1: among parents being like my kid is amazing, and another

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Speaker 1: non related person is like, not really though throughout all

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Speaker 1: of his education, Charlie was a lot more likely to

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Speaker 1: draw humorous cartoons during class than to take notes, and

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Speaker 1: even in drawing class, he would hurry through assignments and

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Speaker 1: then scribble his humorous cartoons for the rest of the

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Speaker 1: class period. I did this all through school, but it

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Speaker 1: was with reading. His classmates found him to be fascinating

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Speaker 1: and fun and he really never lacked for company when

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Speaker 1: he wanted it. Yeah, he was one of those kids,

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Speaker 1: it's been described that kind of fit in with everybody.

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Speaker 1: Like he didn't have one click, he had kind of

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Speaker 1: people from each click that also hung out with him. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And at this point though he still thought like art

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Speaker 1: was probably a good plan, but that he was going

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Speaker 1: to be like a commercial illustrator. He didn't think all

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Speaker 1: of this doodling and cartooning would amount to much of anything.

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Speaker 1: And after graduating from Westfield High School, he enrolled in

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Speaker 1: Colgate College in Hamilton, New York. And this was actually

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Speaker 1: a really difficult transition for his mother, who was now

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Speaker 1: often without her traveling husband and her son who was

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Speaker 1: away at college. In his sophomore year, Adam's transferred to

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Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania. But what he thought was going to

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Speaker 1: be an art program that would more closely suit his needs,

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Speaker 1: actually turned out to be more of an architecture program.

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Speaker 1: He only lasted a year there. He never finished his

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Speaker 1: undergraduate degree, and when he left college, he started taking

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Speaker 1: classes at the Grand Central School of Art in New York,

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Speaker 1: and this school still proudly lists him as an alumnus,

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Speaker 1: but he only stayed there a year. In nineteen thirty one,

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Speaker 1: he drew a sketch of a window washer from an

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Speaker 1: aerial point of view, and then, on a whim, dropped

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Speaker 1: it off at the New Yorker offices. Like you do.

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Speaker 1: He left it in an envelope, but he didn't include

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Speaker 1: a return address on it. And then several months later

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Speaker 1: he went back to the New Yorker hoping to just

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Speaker 1: pick up his sketch, and he found out that it

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Speaker 1: had been published in the space at the end of

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Speaker 1: a column that's what's called a decorative spot. It was

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Speaker 1: in the February sixty two issue. He got a check

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Speaker 1: for seven dollars and fifty cents. And he was twenty

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Speaker 1: when this happened. Yeah, he apparently went running to show

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Speaker 1: one of his friends, a young lady, that he had

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Speaker 1: met in art school that that he had become close

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Speaker 1: friends with this check and she actually thought he had

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Speaker 1: forged it. She's like, no, you didn't. Well, the idea

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Speaker 1: of a person just dropping something off at the New

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Speaker 1: Yorker office and then having it published smontage, like that's

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Speaker 1: pretty far fetched. Yeah. Um, But just a few months

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Speaker 1: after this this joyous milestone, Charlie's father died at the

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Speaker 1: age of fifty eight, and that sudden death. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: entirely sudden, but he became ill very quickly and died

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Speaker 1: not long thereafter. It really catalyzed a change for Charlie.

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Speaker 1: He kind of realized at that point the school was

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Speaker 1: never going to give him what he needed, and he

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Speaker 1: just wanted to go ahead and start earning a living.

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Speaker 1: And so to that end, he took a job retouching

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Speaker 1: crime scene photos for True Detective magazine. So in this case,

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Speaker 1: he would sometimes make them a little less gory and

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Speaker 1: gruesome before publication, or he would just do layouts where

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Speaker 1: he had to add captions or um any descriptive text

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Speaker 1: on the image to further explain it to readers. He

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Speaker 1: made fifteen dollars a week, and that wasn't super great money,

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Speaker 1: but it was a really secure job during the depression,

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Speaker 1: which was a very difficult thing to find. He submitted

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Speaker 1: to The New Yorker again, This time it was a

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Speaker 1: sketch of a hockey player who forgot his skates and

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Speaker 1: he's standing on the ice with his colleagues and his

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Speaker 1: stocking feet. This was published on January fourth, nineteen thirty three,

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Speaker 1: and he'd later talked about how unfunny this piece of

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Speaker 1: art was and wonder why the magazine ever went for it.

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Speaker 1: He continued to submit cartoons to The New Yorker, and

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Speaker 1: several more were published that year. Thirty four was leaner,

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Speaker 1: though the magazine only published one of his cartoons. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, he submitted an image of a printing

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Speaker 1: press that was running a paper with the headlined sex

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Speaker 1: Fiend Slays tot. He submitted that to The New Yorker,

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Speaker 1: and The New Yorker published in on March twenty three.

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Speaker 1: It was a skewering of the press and the tendency

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Speaker 1: to run just the most lurid stories possible on the

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Speaker 1: front page. And from that point Adams, who had already

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Speaker 1: started signing his art chas Adams, simply because he liked

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Speaker 1: how it looked. He didn't actually go by chas in

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Speaker 1: his life, started to get a little more brazen with

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Speaker 1: the dark subjects of his cartoons. He did routinely get

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Speaker 1: notes that his drawing needed to be better, and so

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Speaker 1: he started working with ink wasashes, which added a lot

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Speaker 1: of depth to his images, and he started selling a

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Speaker 1: lot more art and making more money. Coming up, we

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Speaker 1: will talk more about Charlie's early work for The New Yorker,

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Speaker 1: but first we're going to take a little breaks so

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Speaker 1: we can hear from one of our sponsors. At the

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Speaker 1: age of twenty three, Adams was regularly publishing with The

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Speaker 1: New Yorker as a contributor. That was a job that

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Speaker 1: ended up really defining his career in the public's relationship

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Speaker 1: with his work. This wasn't a huge money gig. He

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Speaker 1: got paid ten dollars for spots, those little smaller ones

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Speaker 1: that were kind of fillers, and a fee per square

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Speaker 1: inch for larger images, which wasn't great money. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: a high volume business, and there was no guarantee that

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Speaker 1: submitted work was going to be accepted. And he also

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Speaker 1: submitted to other publications during this time and got published

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Speaker 1: in some of them, but The New Yorker was his

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Speaker 1: primary source of income, and as his popularity with readers grew,

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Speaker 1: the magazine started getting requests to purchase his original drawings,

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Speaker 1: and then on January one of eight, he had his

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Speaker 1: first cover with the magazine. Not all of adams drawings

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Speaker 1: were his own ideas. He collaborated with writers at The

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Speaker 1: New Yorker for some of his work, and he hired

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Speaker 1: gag writers on his own as well that included Richard McAllister.

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Speaker 1: This was a really common practice, and at the time

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Speaker 1: The New Yorker ran its cartoon division around this idea

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Speaker 1: of writers and artists working as collaborators. Yeah, sometimes people

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Speaker 1: are a little shocked. And I know, even later in life,

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Speaker 1: as like sort of the next generation of artists was

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Speaker 1: coming up in The New Yorker, many of whom had

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Speaker 1: been idolizing Charles Adams. They were like, what what do

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Speaker 1: you What do you mean he didn't write those jokes

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Speaker 1: and would be like, no, he would get somebody sometimes

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Speaker 1: to write the joke, and then he would illustrate the joke.

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Speaker 1: It's like an actor with a script. Uh. So it's

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Speaker 1: a little startling for some people. Uh. Mortitia Adams first

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Speaker 1: appeared in print on August six, Although she did not

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Speaker 1: have that name at the time, she kind of got

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Speaker 1: called all manner of things like ghoulish woman or you know,

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Speaker 1: creepy woman. Still her trademark long elegant look is unmistakable,

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Speaker 1: although her hair is pulled back. In that one, she

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Speaker 1: is being given a pitch by a vacuum salesman while

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Speaker 1: a large, imposing butler, a bat and a mysterious figure upstairs.

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Speaker 1: I'll look on and the scene plays out against what

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Speaker 1: is obviously a cobwebby haunted house background. And Adams, who

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Speaker 1: just called the work vacuum Cleaner when he recorded it

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Speaker 1: in his own personal records, was paid eighty five dollars

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Speaker 1: for it, and he had absolutely no idea where that

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Speaker 1: was eventually going to lead. Harold Ross, who was the

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Speaker 1: co founder and editor in chief of The New Yorker,

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Speaker 1: saw something in this, though he asked Adams to fill

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Speaker 1: the Victorian house he had created for the Vacuum Cleaner

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Speaker 1: cartoon with more characters. Things evolved immediately. The butler went

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Speaker 1: from this beard man who to the very clean shaven

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Speaker 1: look that was reminiscent of Frankenstein's Monster as that character

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Speaker 1: looks in James Whale's films, the surroundings got more dilapidated

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Speaker 1: and creepier, but new characters didn't appear. But Harold Ross

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Speaker 1: still liked it though, and it ran in the magazine

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Speaker 1: in November of nine, more than a year after that

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Speaker 1: first Ghoulish vacuum cleaner sale, and then on January twelve

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Speaker 1: of nineteen forty, The New Yorker published one of Adams's

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Speaker 1: most famous non Adams Family cartoons. It's kind of nicknamed

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Speaker 1: The Ski Tree or You'll see it referred to as

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Speaker 1: the Skier, and it features a skier who has just

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Speaker 1: passed a tree, and the skiers ski tracks can clearly

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Speaker 1: be seen going around each side of the tree uninterrupted,

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Speaker 1: and the skier is continuing on. And then a witness

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Speaker 1: in the form of a cross country skier traveling in

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Speaker 1: the opposite direction, looks on in bewilderment. Uh, though he

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Speaker 1: doesn't know quite how this person went around a tree

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Speaker 1: on its skis from both sides. Uh. It perfectly encapsulates

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Speaker 1: Charles adams as sense of the absurd and the mind bending,

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Speaker 1: and Adams became pretty instantly famous for The Skier, which

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Speaker 1: surprised him greatly. He thought it was just an incredibly

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Speaker 1: simple cartoon, and he couldn't quite grasp why people wanted

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Speaker 1: to analyze it so tirelessly. For meaning, it got written

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Speaker 1: up by professors. People wrote, you know, their thesis on it.

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Speaker 1: He heard about it being taught in like logic classes,

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Speaker 1: and he was like, it's just a weird cartoon. You

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Speaker 1: got well. And my embarrassing admission for this episode is

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Speaker 1: that I didn't really like, I'm familiar with that cartoon.

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Speaker 1: I'm I've seen it plenty of times before. When I

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Speaker 1: read the description in this outline, I could immediately call

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Speaker 1: it to mind. And I did not make the connection ever,

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Speaker 1: that that was the same guy as the Adams family.

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Speaker 1: I can understand that. I mean, it's it's an early

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Speaker 1: stage of when he was doing Inkwashes, so it didn't

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Speaker 1: have that same level of depths, And it is not

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Speaker 1: it's weird, and like I said, it's a little mind bendy,

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Speaker 1: but there's nothing of the sort of creepy stuff that

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Speaker 1: we more closely tied to him. So the nineteen forties

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Speaker 1: were really eventful for Adams. In nineteen forty he illustrated

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Speaker 1: the book But Who Wakes The Bugler by Peter Devrees.

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Speaker 1: Two years later he published his own anthology, Drawn and

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Speaker 1: Quartered That Random House, and after that he was constantly publishing.

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Speaker 1: He had a lot of books. Um That elegant woman

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Speaker 1: in adams Dark Victorian House, who would later become Morticia,

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00:19:31,280 --> 00:19:35,159
Speaker 1: fell in love, almost in tandem with Charles Adams. The

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Speaker 1: artist came up with a round, old fashioned looking paramore

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Speaker 1: for his macab lady as his life was becoming entwined

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Speaker 1: with that of Barbara Jean Day. Barbara, who went by Bobby,

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Speaker 1: is often described as looking like Morticia, though Adams at

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Speaker 1: various times would list all of the many ways that

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Speaker 1: they were different. In early nineteen forty three, so World

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Speaker 1: War Two, Adams was drafted into the U. S. Army,

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Speaker 1: and just a month after he joined, his mother died

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Speaker 1: at sixty six, which was incredibly rough on him. Three

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Speaker 1: months later, perhaps to try to reclaim a little bit

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Speaker 1: of happiness, on May twenty nine, Charlie took leave to

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Speaker 1: marry Bobby in Westfield. They honeymooned in Manhattan, and then

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00:20:15,119 --> 00:20:17,239
Speaker 1: Charlie returned to the base that he was stationed at,

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Speaker 1: which was just in a Storia. Barbara set up their

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Speaker 1: new home in an apartment at thirty six and a

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Speaker 1: half East seventy Street, and she also started to look

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Speaker 1: even more like Charlie's cartoon ghoul woman. She grew out

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Speaker 1: her hair, which was very dark, and she started wearing

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00:20:32,359 --> 00:20:35,679
Speaker 1: a lot of black. Because Charlie's barracks were nearby, the

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00:20:35,680 --> 00:20:37,840
Speaker 1: couple saw a lot of each other and they socialized

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Speaker 1: with other couples as well. Yeah, this isn't a time

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Speaker 1: where they were like separated. During his service time, he

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Speaker 1: stayed on the base, but it was apparent that many

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Speaker 1: of the soldiers who were stationed there that had wives

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Speaker 1: or girlfriends often left at night. He certainly was having

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Speaker 1: dinners with friends and colleagues during this time. But because

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Speaker 1: of his art background, Charlie was selected to work at

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Speaker 1: a Signal Core photographic center, making training films and pamphlets

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Speaker 1: and signs and similar types of things for the military.

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Speaker 1: And during this time he was also still submitting regularly

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Speaker 1: to The New Yorker. He occasionally produced war theme art,

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Speaker 1: usually the request of an editor, but he mainly stayed

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Speaker 1: true to his own grim humor and subjects. He wanted

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Speaker 1: his work to be timeless and not tied to the

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Speaker 1: era in which it was drawn, and the children of

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Speaker 1: the Little Monstrous Family, who would evolve into Pugsley and Wednesday,

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Speaker 1: appeared during this time as well. Charlie's army time ended

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00:21:32,760 --> 00:21:35,919
Speaker 1: in after the war was over and he started a

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00:21:35,960 --> 00:21:39,200
Speaker 1: life that was really pretty glamorous. Adams had moved into

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00:21:39,240 --> 00:21:43,040
Speaker 1: a nicer apartment. He started buying cars and unique antiques.

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00:21:43,480 --> 00:21:46,880
Speaker 1: He purchased a farm, spent months on Fire Island, and

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Speaker 1: party with friends, including old friends and new friends, some

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Speaker 1: of whom were very high profile in the art or

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Speaker 1: writing scene. Yeah, it seemed like he and Bobby really

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00:21:56,040 --> 00:21:59,960
Speaker 1: had like that sort of charmed uh artsy power couple

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00:22:00,119 --> 00:22:02,159
Speaker 1: life where they just hung out with everybody cool. They

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00:22:02,200 --> 00:22:05,359
Speaker 1: hosted the coolest parties. He was busy getting into two

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00:22:05,480 --> 00:22:08,760
Speaker 1: racing his expensive cars at this point, and in December

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Speaker 1: The New Yorker published one of the most famous of

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Speaker 1: the Adams family cartoons called Boiling Oil. And this features

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Speaker 1: an angled aerial view of a Victorian mansion with a

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00:22:19,080 --> 00:22:21,639
Speaker 1: group of carolers clustered at the bottom of the image

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Speaker 1: at the door. They're kind of small in the picture. Lurch,

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00:22:24,920 --> 00:22:27,520
Speaker 1: Gomez and Mortsia again not named this yet, but it's

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Speaker 1: easier to do that for shorthand are standing on a

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00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:32,040
Speaker 1: ledge near the top of the house, and they have

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00:22:32,080 --> 00:22:35,439
Speaker 1: a vat of boiling oil tipped just before it spills

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00:22:35,440 --> 00:22:39,880
Speaker 1: out onto the merry singers. Huge numbers of requests came

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00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:42,320
Speaker 1: in from fans after this was published, asking if they

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00:22:42,359 --> 00:22:45,800
Speaker 1: could use it on their Christmas cards, and Adams always

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00:22:45,840 --> 00:22:48,040
Speaker 1: granted permission so long as they were just doing it

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00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:50,240
Speaker 1: for personal use and they were not mass producing it

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00:22:50,280 --> 00:22:55,359
Speaker 1: for sale. Charlie really embraced the ghoulish eccentric identity that

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00:22:55,440 --> 00:22:58,240
Speaker 1: his fans seemed to want him to have. He went

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00:22:58,280 --> 00:23:01,800
Speaker 1: on picnics and graveyards and even snatched an old gravestone

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00:23:01,880 --> 00:23:04,679
Speaker 1: which he later used as a table. Please do not

430
00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:11,640
Speaker 1: steal gravestones. His home filled up with ghoulish odds and ends,

431
00:23:11,680 --> 00:23:14,880
Speaker 1: and he got all manner of odd and creepy gifts.

432
00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:17,800
Speaker 1: He would tell reporters and friends about them, and he

433
00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:20,160
Speaker 1: was very conscious of how they added to this whole

434
00:23:20,200 --> 00:23:24,359
Speaker 1: macab mystique. These things included stuff like a human thigh

435
00:23:24,440 --> 00:23:28,280
Speaker 1: bone and a skull that was gilded with gold. Yeah,

436
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:30,679
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. The human thigh bone I have

437
00:23:30,800 --> 00:23:33,800
Speaker 1: seen relate in two different ways. One that it was

438
00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:35,440
Speaker 1: a gift from a fan, and one that it was

439
00:23:35,480 --> 00:23:37,720
Speaker 1: a gift from one of his wives, but I never

440
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:42,320
Speaker 1: saw like conclusive corroboration of either of those, so that

441
00:23:42,440 --> 00:23:46,040
Speaker 1: he had one um. By the late nineteen forties, though,

442
00:23:46,119 --> 00:23:48,960
Speaker 1: what had started as a small issue in the Adams

443
00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:53,600
Speaker 1: marriage loomed progressively larger. Bobby enjoyed their life, but she

444
00:23:53,720 --> 00:23:56,320
Speaker 1: really wanted to slow things down a little bit and

445
00:23:56,400 --> 00:23:59,879
Speaker 1: start a family. Charlie found it challenging enough to be

446
00:24:00,119 --> 00:24:02,280
Speaker 1: in a monogamous marriage and that was something that he

447
00:24:02,400 --> 00:24:05,640
Speaker 1: never quite managed to do, and he did not want

448
00:24:05,680 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 1: to add children to the equation. He was absolutely great

449
00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:11,560
Speaker 1: with kids, He enjoyed playing with kids, His friends kids

450
00:24:11,560 --> 00:24:13,879
Speaker 1: all loved him, but he thought having one of his

451
00:24:13,920 --> 00:24:15,879
Speaker 1: own in his life was going to really limit his

452
00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:19,120
Speaker 1: options and basically just prevent him from living the life

453
00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:21,480
Speaker 1: he wanted, and he later would say when this topic

454
00:24:21,480 --> 00:24:26,080
Speaker 1: would come up, I'm my own child. Eventually, Charlie agreed

455
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:28,600
Speaker 1: that they could have a baby, but they weren't able

456
00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:32,760
Speaker 1: to conceive. Bobby wanted to adopt a child, and Charles

457
00:24:32,760 --> 00:24:35,080
Speaker 1: agreed on the condition that they get an older child

458
00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:37,960
Speaker 1: and not an infant. But then when a child fitting.

459
00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:41,240
Speaker 1: Their application finally became available, Charlie got cold feet about

460
00:24:41,280 --> 00:24:43,800
Speaker 1: it and he couldn't complete the paperwork, and this ended

461
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 1: their marriage. Bobby left shortly thereafter with another man. Yes,

462
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:50,760
Speaker 1: so they had had eight years where they seemed like

463
00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:53,800
Speaker 1: the perfect couple and then it ended rather abruptly. Uh.

464
00:24:53,840 --> 00:24:56,720
Speaker 1: And that same summer that the marriage ended, Charlie's best

465
00:24:56,760 --> 00:25:00,159
Speaker 1: friend and fellow cartoonist died. That was Sam Kobeing, and

466
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:03,760
Speaker 1: he died suddenly in a car accident, and Adams actually

467
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:06,719
Speaker 1: felt somehow responsible for the death because he had been

468
00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:09,960
Speaker 1: the person who got Sam interested in cars, and even

469
00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:12,159
Speaker 1: though he was not driving dangerously, I guess he was

470
00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:14,720
Speaker 1: driving kind of fast down a straight away when another

471
00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:18,399
Speaker 1: car entered and hit his car. And Bobby and Charlie

472
00:25:18,440 --> 00:25:21,240
Speaker 1: attended Sam's funeral as a couple. It was their one

473
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:25,240
Speaker 1: last appearance as a married couple. Despite all these personal setbacks,

474
00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:29,239
Speaker 1: Charlie's professional life was continuing to flourish. Not only were

475
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:31,960
Speaker 1: there more books, but also merchandise. There was a line

476
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:35,080
Speaker 1: of Chas Adams scarves and housewears that was launched in

477
00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:38,240
Speaker 1: the early nineteen fifties. He also worked on an assortment

478
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:41,480
Speaker 1: of projects with his friends. Yeah, some of those came

479
00:25:41,520 --> 00:25:43,399
Speaker 1: to fruition and some did not, But he always just

480
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:45,440
Speaker 1: had fun kind of noodling around with other people on

481
00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:49,919
Speaker 1: collaborations and projects. And it turned out that adams is

482
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:53,440
Speaker 1: penchant for dark humor really connected with readers. He already

483
00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:55,439
Speaker 1: knew that based on the whole Christmas card thing, but

484
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:58,920
Speaker 1: it continued to snowball. He got fan mail from all over,

485
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:01,520
Speaker 1: and at one point he told James Thurber quote, I

486
00:26:01,560 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 1: have gotten a lot of letters about my work, most

487
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:07,080
Speaker 1: of them from criminals and subhumans who want to sell ideas.

488
00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:10,720
Speaker 1: Some of the worst come from a minister in Georgia.

489
00:26:10,920 --> 00:26:13,520
Speaker 1: And all kinds of rumors are also started to follow

490
00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:15,720
Speaker 1: him around this time, like that he slept in a

491
00:26:15,760 --> 00:26:18,680
Speaker 1: coffin and sometimes that he would put eyeballs in his martinis.

492
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:22,240
Speaker 1: Those were untrue, but the legendary tales of his drinking

493
00:26:22,320 --> 00:26:25,440
Speaker 1: and womanizing that started around this time were absolutely based

494
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:29,280
Speaker 1: in reality. He was really fun, loving and famous, and

495
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:31,959
Speaker 1: once his divorce became public knowledge, he was like a

496
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:35,639
Speaker 1: magnet for prospective dates. He dated some women regularly, and

497
00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:38,280
Speaker 1: there were rumors of some possible engagements, but he was

498
00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:42,199
Speaker 1: never exclusive with anyone. Yeah, the list of women that

499
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:45,679
Speaker 1: he was almost maybe engaged to is mighty long. I

500
00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:51,240
Speaker 1: mean we're talking dozens. And then he met a woman

501
00:26:51,359 --> 00:26:54,640
Speaker 1: named Barbara Barb in nineteen fifty three, and her full

502
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 1: name was actually a stell b Barb, and she was

503
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:01,439
Speaker 1: a tall, dark haired, flashy beauty. She looked to a

504
00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:04,480
Speaker 1: lot of his friends like an ultra glamorized version of

505
00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:07,680
Speaker 1: Charlie's first wife, Bobby. He very clearly had a type.

506
00:27:07,800 --> 00:27:10,439
Speaker 1: Some of his friends really perceived her rather unkindly. She

507
00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:13,480
Speaker 1: was described by some of them as a bimbo. But

508
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 1: in fact, Barbara was smart as a whip and very ambitious,

509
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:19,560
Speaker 1: and she had what seemed to be a very successful

510
00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 1: law career. She did have a legitimate law degree, but

511
00:27:23,440 --> 00:27:26,280
Speaker 1: she also embellished her own life story in ways that

512
00:27:26,359 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: made it really hard to discern how much she was

513
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:31,680
Speaker 1: a self made success and whether she may have gotten

514
00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:35,240
Speaker 1: her money from other means. But regardless of how anyone

515
00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:39,760
Speaker 1: else saw Barbara Barba, Charles Adams was completely captivated by her.

516
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:44,679
Speaker 1: But one aspect of their courtship was always consistently relayed

517
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:48,160
Speaker 1: based on accounts of all of Charlie's friends and Charlie.

518
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 1: It was a really tumultuous relationship. Charlie confided in friends

519
00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:56,640
Speaker 1: at various points that Barbara was sometimes violent when they fought,

520
00:27:56,720 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 1: hitting him and brandishing a knife at one point. They

521
00:28:00,280 --> 00:28:02,879
Speaker 1: also ended up having a number of false starts on

522
00:28:02,960 --> 00:28:05,240
Speaker 1: wedding dates. They would plan to get married, and then

523
00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:06,520
Speaker 1: they would get in a big fight and it would

524
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:08,960
Speaker 1: fall apart, and they would just do that cycle over

525
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:11,440
Speaker 1: and over. But they still did get married in South

526
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 1: Carolina at the end of nineteen fifty four. The marriage,

527
00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:18,919
Speaker 1: like the courtship, was really a roller coaster. Barbara lied

528
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 1: to Charlie about being pregnant when she wasn't. She told

529
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:24,360
Speaker 1: him that she had no family when it turned out

530
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:28,160
Speaker 1: that she did and they were nearby in Brooklyn. Police

531
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 1: had to intervene in fights between the two of them

532
00:28:30,320 --> 00:28:33,120
Speaker 1: on occasion, and throughout all of it. It turned out

533
00:28:33,119 --> 00:28:35,399
Speaker 1: that Barbara had maintained a romance with a man in

534
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 1: England who she saw whenever she was traveling to Europe,

535
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 1: which was a frequent part of her work, and the

536
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:43,840
Speaker 1: Any Yorker at this time had first rights to any

537
00:28:43,880 --> 00:28:46,959
Speaker 1: of Charlie's cartoons, as outline in a contract that had

538
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:50,600
Speaker 1: been put in place. In the nineteen forties, Barbara Barbe

539
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:52,840
Speaker 1: set up a company of her own that would manage

540
00:28:52,840 --> 00:28:55,160
Speaker 1: the sale and distribution of any work that the New

541
00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:58,479
Speaker 1: Yorker had not taken. And under this set up, Barbara

542
00:28:58,600 --> 00:29:01,360
Speaker 1: was paid to manage the aagement and manage his art,

543
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:04,480
Speaker 1: and she was entitled to fift of the earnings from

544
00:29:04,520 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 1: these sales. This marriage and all kinds of aspects of

545
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 1: their relationship were completely confusing to everyone in Adam's social circle,

546
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:15,959
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a bit more about that after we

547
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 1: take a quick sponsor break. So, as we said before

548
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 1: we cut to our sponsor break, no one really understood

549
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: this marriage, which, as it turns out, was not even

550
00:29:33,240 --> 00:29:37,120
Speaker 1: common knowledge for reasons that are a little unclear. Barbara,

551
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:40,840
Speaker 1: who Charlie's friends nicknamed Bad Barbara since they called his

552
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:43,680
Speaker 1: first wife Good Barbara, just kind of a sticky situation

553
00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 1: to be in. But she wanted to keep the wedding

554
00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 1: a secret for a while, and of course there were

555
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 1: tons of rumors about why she might want that, but

556
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 1: we don't really know. But Charles also seemed a little

557
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:55,840
Speaker 1: afraid of his second wife, and he was willing to

558
00:29:55,880 --> 00:29:58,680
Speaker 1: give in to her various demands just to keep the

559
00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:02,560
Speaker 1: peace and hopefully keep their various problems from getting out

560
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:07,360
Speaker 1: and damaging his career. But he wasn't counter submissive. From

561
00:30:07,520 --> 00:30:10,560
Speaker 1: very early on, he was taking delivery of love letters

562
00:30:10,560 --> 00:30:13,960
Speaker 1: that were arriving from Barbara's British lover and then taking

563
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:17,480
Speaker 1: those to his lawyers for safekeeping, without ever telling barb

564
00:30:17,600 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 1: that he had them. I feel like this is the

565
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 1: inspiration for a whole storyline on parks and recreation. It

566
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: absolutely could be the inspiration of so many different genres

567
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:34,200
Speaker 1: of drama, comedy and horror. Well, it's specifically the multiple

568
00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:38,480
Speaker 1: wives with the same name um, with one of them

569
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:41,840
Speaker 1: being the particularly bad one. So then in October of

570
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:45,760
Speaker 1: Barbara insisted that Charlie take out a hundred thousand dollar

571
00:30:45,880 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 1: life insurance policy that named her as its irrevocable beneficiary.

572
00:30:51,080 --> 00:30:53,440
Speaker 1: Charlie talked to a lawyer and then he went along

573
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 1: with the policy and Barbara went into couples counseling. He also, though,

574
00:30:58,240 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 1: hired an investigator to follow o'barbara's activities in England, and

575
00:31:02,240 --> 00:31:04,840
Speaker 1: he told friends that he thought that Barbara was trying

576
00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 1: to kill him. The marriage finally ended in nineteen fifty six,

577
00:31:08,480 --> 00:31:11,520
Speaker 1: with Barbara asking for the rights to fifty of Charlie's

578
00:31:11,560 --> 00:31:15,080
Speaker 1: cartoons and ownership of some of his properties. She promised

579
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:17,040
Speaker 1: that she would return the real estate to him in

580
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 1: her will. He happily agreed, thinking this was a relatively

581
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:24,000
Speaker 1: painless way to escape this whole marriage, and after a

582
00:31:24,040 --> 00:31:27,120
Speaker 1: quickie divorce, Barbara immediately left for England and moved in

583
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:30,560
Speaker 1: with her lover there. Incidentally, they're quickie divorce, which happened

584
00:31:30,560 --> 00:31:33,720
Speaker 1: in Alabama at a time where Alabama was the place

585
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:35,800
Speaker 1: you went to for a quickie divorce could because you

586
00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:37,600
Speaker 1: could just stand there and say yes, I'm a resident

587
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:40,200
Speaker 1: of Alabama and no one would question it, and then

588
00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:43,200
Speaker 1: they would do the legal proceeding. Allegedly, their divorce took

589
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:45,080
Speaker 1: like forty five minutes, and a lot of people were

590
00:31:45,080 --> 00:31:48,000
Speaker 1: doing exactly the same thing. But this became high profile

591
00:31:48,120 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 1: enough that people were like, wait a minute, we got

592
00:31:50,320 --> 00:31:53,360
Speaker 1: to change the loss. This is this is way too easy.

593
00:31:53,400 --> 00:31:57,080
Speaker 1: We can't be like the divorce destination and his legal

594
00:31:57,120 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 1: team that he would consult was always like, don't do this,

595
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:01,280
Speaker 1: don't sign anything she gives you, and he would be like,

596
00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:03,200
Speaker 1: you're right, and then he would go back and sign

597
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 1: it um. But finally he thought he was free, and

598
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:10,200
Speaker 1: by the end of ninety six, Charlie had started an

599
00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: affair with a woman named t Davy, who was his

600
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:15,520
Speaker 1: friend's wife and was also very pregnant at the time,

601
00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:18,600
Speaker 1: and this happened when he visited them in Tennessee during

602
00:32:18,600 --> 00:32:22,240
Speaker 1: the holidays. T whose name was Marilyn Matthews but she

603
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:24,480
Speaker 1: had gone by Tea since she was a kid, had

604
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 1: known Charlie for about nine years at that point. She

605
00:32:27,040 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 1: had been introduced through her husband, Buddy Davy, who was

606
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 1: an heir to the Standard Oil fortune, and this affair

607
00:32:33,360 --> 00:32:36,200
Speaker 1: was not very serious for either of them. Tea's marriage

608
00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 1: was struggling at the time, although they were working on

609
00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 1: things with a therapist, and Charlie was still dealing with

610
00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 1: his divorce. It was a brief and casual dalliance, but

611
00:32:45,360 --> 00:32:48,280
Speaker 1: a deepening friendship grew between the two of them as

612
00:32:48,360 --> 00:32:51,440
Speaker 1: Charles stayed there in Tennessee with a very pregnant Tea

613
00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:55,680
Speaker 1: while Buddy traveled for work. Meanwhile, Barbara, who had remarried

614
00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:58,680
Speaker 1: but not told Charlie about it, once again appeared in

615
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:01,240
Speaker 1: his life. The two started trying to see each other

616
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 1: socially when she was in New York, and it's been

617
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:06,240
Speaker 1: theorized that he was possibly trying to make nice with

618
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 1: her in order to get his properties back, but he

619
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 1: always remained really unfathomably friendly to her. Yeah, his friends

620
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:17,480
Speaker 1: all had theories about why he might have social dates

621
00:33:17,520 --> 00:33:19,840
Speaker 1: with her, and that was one of them. That was

622
00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:21,960
Speaker 1: kind of the summation was maybe he's trying to get

623
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:25,240
Speaker 1: his stuff back. We don't know she blackmailing you, right,

624
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:30,280
Speaker 1: because she did seem a little snaky um. He also

625
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:33,400
Speaker 1: had a project during this time called Dear Dead Days,

626
00:33:33,440 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 1: which was published in nineteen fifty nine, and this was

627
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:38,840
Speaker 1: a concept book, and the concept was that it was

628
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:41,880
Speaker 1: the memory album of the Adams family, and it featured

629
00:33:41,880 --> 00:33:45,400
Speaker 1: photographs that tied to their world and inspired the cartoons

630
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:47,640
Speaker 1: that he had drawn of them. But there are only

631
00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 1: a few pieces of his artwork within it. Some of

632
00:33:50,480 --> 00:33:53,800
Speaker 1: the photographs were eerie and unsettling, and it was not

633
00:33:53,840 --> 00:33:56,959
Speaker 1: what people expected. It was not what his fans wanted,

634
00:33:57,280 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 1: and this book did not sell very well, but Adams

635
00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:02,200
Speaker 1: thought it was great. He felt like this was a

636
00:34:02,280 --> 00:34:07,160
Speaker 1: very fulfilling artistic endeavor. Incidentally, maybe been formed by these

637
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:11,000
Speaker 1: two failed marriages. Charles wanted it never to be actually

638
00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:15,200
Speaker 1: stated in captions or images that his gothic bride and

639
00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 1: her odd, rotund paramore were married. As his characters that

640
00:34:19,719 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: he was starting to form into a group in these cartoons, Yeah,

641
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:26,759
Speaker 1: they never were a family. Initially in his mind, they

642
00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:30,360
Speaker 1: were just like odd ghouls that lived together there. And

643
00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:33,799
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the press started calling them actually Adams

644
00:34:33,840 --> 00:34:37,560
Speaker 1: family that they started to take on that tone. Despite

645
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:41,879
Speaker 1: the lackluster reception of Dear Dead Days and the end

646
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Speaker 1: of this really bad though reef marriage, Charles Adams was

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Speaker 1: entering a stage of his life that was again sort

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Speaker 1: of like the epitome of a glamorous, successful party lifestyle.

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Speaker 1: We are going to talk about all of that, and

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Speaker 1: of course the Adams Families transitions from the page to

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Speaker 1: the screen on our next step soon. Uh. I have

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Speaker 1: listener mail. It's a brief listener mail, but it felt

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00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:05,839
Speaker 1: like it tied into this because it is from one

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Speaker 1: of our younger listeners and it has a drawing on

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Speaker 1: it and he writes, can you do an episode on

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Speaker 1: the Odinbach Castle. My ancestors owned it. I am also

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Speaker 1: named after it. This is from our listener Odin who

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Speaker 1: drew a beautiful castle at the bottom. I'll put it

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Speaker 1: on my list. You never know when those might pop up.

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Speaker 1: Everything's in sort of a long list, constant rotation situation

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Speaker 1: where it depends when we find resources and and when

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00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:31,399
Speaker 1: things just work out with our schedule. But I will

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Speaker 1: put it on the list, Odin, I promise you. Uh.

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Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us, you can

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00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:37,759
Speaker 1: do so at History Podcast at housetuf works dot com.

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00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 1: You can also find us pretty much everywhere on social

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Speaker 1: media as missed in History and Missed in History dot

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00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:45,799
Speaker 1: com is also where you'll find our website where you

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Speaker 1: can get any episode of the show that has ever existed,

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00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:51,799
Speaker 1: as well as occasional other goodies, and you should do

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00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: that at missed in History dot com. You can also

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00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:57,440
Speaker 1: subscribe to this show on Apple, Podcast, Google Play, Spotify,

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Speaker 1: where wherever it is you get your podcasts m M.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit

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Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. M