Morticia Addams
Template:Short description Template:Redirect Template:More citations needed Template:Infobox character Morticia Addams (née Frump) is a fictional character from the Addams Family multimedia franchise created by American Charles Addams in 1933. She plays the role of the family's reserved matriarch. Morticia Addams has been portrayed by several actresses in various Addams Family media, including Carolyn Jones in the television series The Addams Family (1964–1966), Anjelica Huston in the feature films The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993), and Catherine Zeta-Jones in the streaming television series Wednesday (2022).
Cartoons
Morticia first appeared in Charles Addams's newspaper cartoons<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> as the stern, aloof matriarch of the family. She often appeared with the rest of the family, and was, along with Gomez and Grandmama, one of the few members to actually speak in the cartoons.
Background
Morticia is the wife of Gomez Addams and mother of Wednesday, Pugsley and Pubert Addams. The character originated in the Charles Addams cartoons for The New Yorker magazine in the 1930s. In the cartoons, none of the family members had names. When the characters were adapted to the 1964 television series, Charles Addams's selection of her name was inspired by "mortician". Morticia's maiden name is "Frump" and she has an older sister named Ophelia (also played by Carolyn Jones in the original TV series). In the television series, her mother is Hester Frump (played by Margaret Hamilton). Her mother-in-law is Grandmama Addams. In the 1990s Addams Family films, familial relationships are changed for the characters of Grandmama and Fester. Grandmama is actually Morticia's mother, not Gomez's, while Fester is Gomez's brother, not Morticia's uncle.
Morticia is slim, with extremely pale skin and long flowing straight black hair. She commonly wears black hobble dresses to match her hair, tightly form fitting, with a fringe of octopus-like cloth "tentacles" at the lower hem. According to Wednesday, Morticia applies baking powder to her face instead of actual makeup. In each episode, she easily allures her husband Gomez by speaking French (or any other foreign language for that matter). Morticia is musically inclined, and is often seen freely strumming a Japanese shamisen. She frequently enjoys cutting the buds off of roses, which she discards (keeping only the stems), likes cutting out paper dolls with three legs and making sweaters with three arms, collecting the mail from the hand-in-the-box Thing, and cooking unusual concoctions for her husband, including eye of newt. Her personal pet is Cleopatra, a fictitious breed of carnivorous plant called an African Strangler, to which she feeds hamburgers and various other meats.
She is described as a witch. In one episode, she wears a black pointed hat. Her family tree can be traced back to Salem, Massachusetts, and witchcraft is also implied at times in the television series.<ref>Season 1: Episode 5, "The Addams Family Tree"</ref> For example, Morticia likes to "smoke," an activity that does not involve cigarettes or cigars (such as her husband frequently enjoys), but smoke instead emanates directly from her.<ref>Season 1: Episode 9, "The New Neighbors meet the Addams"</ref>
In 2009, she was included in Yahoo!'s Top 10 TV Moms from Six Decades of Television for the time period 1964–1966.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> AOL named her one of the 100 Most Memorable Female TV Characters.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In other media
Morticia was also one of the inspirations for the Disney character Magica De Spell, first designed and drawn by Carl Barks for the Donald Duck universe.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Natasha Fatale, a villain from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, was also based on Morticia's design.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Relationships
Family tree
See also
References
External links
- Morticia Addams at the IMDb (Archived)