Hey, That Was the....

A sheriff with Dal McKennon’s stock Western voice walks away after spotting the fugitive Indian he’s looking for. Then he realises what’s happened.

Director Paul J. Smith times each drawing of the take for two frames but moves the background at the same pace as when the sheriff was walking to give the scene a bit of extra movement.



Bob Bentley, Herman Cohen and Ray Abrams are the animators on this short, Chief Charlie Horse (1956). This cartoon features the lamest cartoon “fire dance.” Lantz’s ‘40s animators like Pat Matthews could have done a great job with that scene.

Betty and Allen

If there was ever an ideal TV game show couple, it was Betty White and Allen Ludden.

White had been a game show panelist. Ludden was a game show host. They married in 1963 and stayed happily that way until his death in 1981. Ludden was a well-educated man. White has become more and move beloved as the years roll on. If I may boldly venture an opinion, it is impossible to hate Betty White.

Their coupling attracted newspaper columnists who filled everyone in about their lives, separately and conjointly. You can find out more in these two Sunday newspaper features. The first one was in the Yonkers Statesman of March 14, 1964 while the second came from the Associated Press of May 16, 1965.

The Allen Luddens — 'At Home' In Chappaqua
For Him, The Password Is 'Education'
By JANE F. BONNEVILLE
What the general store once was to the small town, the supermarket is to modern suburbia — a meeting place for the community. So look sharply next time — that handsome young couple pushing "his and hers" shopping carts may well be Allen Ludden, host of TV's "Password" program and his bride, TV star Betty White.
Now residents of Chappaqua, they share the weekly marketing chore in typical suburban fashion. And, like many husbands before him, Mr. Ludden sometimes expands the shopping list.
For some reason, unexplained, he specializes in buying pepper, ground pepper. "We have enough boxes now to last for years," commented his amused young wife. Mr. Ludden just smiled, and patted her hand.
Married last June, the Luddens are confirmed suburbanites. "Neither of us has really ever lived in a city and it never occurred to us that we would," said Mr. Ludden, a former Briarcliff resident.
Charmed By The House
Their new home, in the hills north of the village, was a farmhouse 100 years ago. "Originally right on the road, some years ago it was moved back and joined to the barn. Now the barn is the living room, the master bedroom, and a playroom in the basement," explained Mrs. Ludden, with a bride's pleasure in showing others her lovely house. And the home makes an ideal "backdrop" for the captivating Mrs. Ludden, a tawny haired import from California.
"When we first saw this house, surrounded by lilacs in bloom and fruit trees in flower, it was love at first sight for us all." She then spoke of discovering a waterfall while she and her husband were walking about the grounds, a discovery more exciting than finding oil on the land.
The collective "we" she used includes the children of Mr. Ludden, who was a widower. His son David is at Andover Academy; Martha is a Horace Greeley High School student, and Sarah attends the Robert E. Bell School.
Mrs. Ludden, who likes "anything out of doors," is also an advocate of shared family fun. Both are at hand with a swimming pool which doubles as a skating rink in winter.

Dark-rimmed glasses give him a scholarly appearance but Mr. Ludden's conversation is liberally bespattered with drollery. "I tell people, modestly of course, that we have the most beautiful house in the world."
Author, Ex-Teacher
That scholarly look is genuine however, for Mr. Ludden is a scholar, author and former teacher as well as entertainer.
He holds B.A. and Master's degrees from the University of Texas, and a Phi Beta Kappa Key, which he doesn't talk about either. He taught at the University and a Texas high school before entering the Army in 1942.
At war's end he had the rank of captain, a Bronze Star, and valuable experience working with Maurice Evans, gained while producing and directing more than 40 Army shows in the Pacific.
The entertainment field soon demanded his full attention, but Mr. Ludden never lost his deep interest in young people. He was with a Hartford, Conn., radio station for some time and conducted an award-winning teenage discussion program, "Mind Your Manners." Later he wrote several books based on interviews, and letters he received.
For several years he moderated another award winner, the TV program "G-E College Bowl."
And Mr. Ludden has the distinction of being the only person in the performing arts to receive the Horatio Alger Award, given for "outstanding achievement in free enterprise and the American tradition of equal opportunity." But he brushes off such honors in favor of talking about education and what free enterprise holds for youth.
"If people don't think opportunities exist, they should wake up and look around. The future 'or youth is greater now than at any time in the past 100 years." Mr. Ludden feels the Peace Corps is also awakening youth to the fact that young people are now part of the whole world.
However, It Is his opinion that the educational system in this country has shown little professional progress since the 1900's.
"If It had improved as much as the telephone in the past 60 years we would have one — of an educational system in this country."
"Children will have opportunities galore if equipped to meet them. It boils down to the citizen and the school tax. Just because one's own children are through school, or one has no children, does not absolve the citizen of responsibility to his country."
Served In Dobbs Ferry
Mr. Ludden no longer sat relaxed on the gold covered sofa. He leaned forward, serious, intent. "Money spent for education is the only investment in the future we can make. Youth is our natural resource."
His is not lip service to a theory but conviction born of experience. Some years ago he served on the Citizens' Committee for Schools in Dobbs Ferry.
"I saw children in elementary schools attending double sessions for four years. I went into homes where people said, 'this system was good enough for me'." Mr. Ludden termed this a "hard corps system of an old community."
"For years," he continued, "inadequately educated generations have voted down school bond issues. People sit around complaining about school boards, yet many times these very people do not even know who serves on the boards."
While he praised the education in some Westchester areas his sense of duty to others is strong. "I feel a responsibility, and keep trying to prevent 'Dobbs Ferry' from happening again." So he plugs improved education and better schools at every opportunity, even on his TV programs.
A New Book
He keeps in touch with young people through his books. The latest, "Plain Talk for Young Marrieds" came out early this month. It deals with problems encountered early in marriage but Mr. Ludden emphasizes that he does not pretend to be an authority — merely expresses his own opinions. Many such problems," he remarked, "are, I believe, due to failure in communication and lack of respect for others."
These are not problems in the Ludden home. Within the walls of the tasteful, cheerful house live people whom "behavior experts" would describe as a "strong family," meaning happy, salubrious, contented, and to use a popular phrase, adjusted.
Mrs. Ludden will retain her identity as Betty White, free lancing as guest celebrity on TV game shows and doing commercials. Recently she has appeared on "The Price Is Right" and "Match Game."
But it is also quite evident that this radiant young woman has no intention of permitting her career to interfere with her newest, but favorite role — homemaker for the Ludden family.

Life Is Just Games for Allen Luddens
EDITOR'S NOTE: After playing games on television 52 weeks a year; Allen Ludden likes to drop it when he's at home. The Password master of ceremonies is a writer and gardener. His wife, Betty White, also a television gamester, is decorator, actress and gin rummy winner.
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
Associated Press Writer
New York—Allen Ludden, a Phi Beta Kappa and former university instructor, plays games professionally — on television — 52 weeks of the year. Even his vacation period is filled with programs which are pre-taped.
Betty White, his wife, is an actress who plays games professionally — on television — two weeks out of every four.
And what do the Allen Luddens do when they are relaxing at home?
They play games, of course. At the moment of this writing, Ludden is murmuring darkly because in a two-year-old cumulative Gin Rummy score, his wife has a lead of almost 6,000 points.
The couple, who base their activities in New York where Allen's daily Password is produced, have lived since their marriage two years ago in a big, old and beautiful house in Westchester County, about 35 miles from mid-town Manhattan. There are three Ludden children (Allen was a widower), David, 17, Martha, 15, and Sarah, 11. They are as eager gamesmen as the adults in the family.
• • •
THE FAMILY often plays Password at dinner; chess, checkers, bridge, cribbage or anything else in odd moments. Allen and Betty met on Password, having arrived at their professional status by two very different routes.
She grew up in Los Angeles, studied acting and moved onto radio, with bit parts in such shows as This Your FBI, The Great Gildersleeve and Blondie. In 1951 Betty became the star of a local Los Angeles TV program—on the air five hours a day, six days a week, which explains her easy manners before the cameras. Later she starred in Life With Elizabeth, a live comedy show seen all over the country, and in 1954, the daily Betty White Show on NBC.
Allen, meanwhile, had become interested in dramatics as a student at the University of Texas and directed an Austin Little Theatre Group while teaching there. He produced many army shows in the Pacific during World War 2, and later became personal manager and advance man for Maurice Evans on a nationwide tour of "Hamlet." Eventually, he got into radio, with a teenage interview show, Mind Your Manners on a Connecticut station. This led him to New York as moderator of the radio version of College Bowl.
• • •

COLLEGE BOWL, a top-speed quiz show went on television and led him logically to the day-time Password when it started in 1961.
Allen has a cultivated taste for games: Betty was born with it.
"I come from a family of compulsive game players," she said. "Last week when I was flying east with my mother, we made up a little game. I gave her initials, and she had to fit them to the titles of old movies."
Ludden, the author of four non-fiction books and a novel, all directed at readers under 21, is more inclined to non-game pursuits in his spare time.
He is a gardener, and in two years the spacious grounds and gardens of their old colonial home have been restored to mint condition. While he is involved in two writing projects, Betty has been busy redecorating the interior.
BOTH OF THEM KEEP active, too, with stock engagements. They have appeared together in “Critic's Choice,” “Janus,” “Mr. President” and “Bell, Hook and Candle.”
Betty has starred in six different productions of "The King and I," in "Take Me Along and "Brigadoon." Next month she will tackle the part of Nellie Forbush in “South Pacific” in Milwaukee's Melodytop Theater, an assignment for which she is now taking dancing lessons.
"Actors love to play television games," Betty said. "Mostly because, if they are good at it, games reveal the performer as a person, which has never happened before. But game-playing can also be a problem — type-casting. If you are an actress by trade and have played games a lot on television, lots of luck on your career. That is one reason I'm delighted to play stock so they remember . . ."
"The audience soon forgets that she's Betty White," added Allen. "But I'm afraid it always remembers that I'm Allen Ludden who is acting a part."
Whatever the audience thinks, such is the power of television that they have been breaking house records wherever they appear.
Ludden, who developed College Bowl into a furiously paced intelligence contest between two crack college teams, thinks of it more as a "spectator sport" for the TV audience than a game that the audience can play along with the personalities on camera, true of Password.
• • •
"PLAYING GAMES on television demands only one thing," said Betty. "That is concentration on the game, which means forgetting the cameras."
Ludden, whose principal television exposure for more than 10 years has been on game shows wants to expand his television horizons. He is thinking about a talk show and perhaps a variety program.
"But I never want to leave day-time TV," he said. "There you find a continuing audience."

Brementown Chicken

A rooster is very pleased with its crowing at the start of the ComiColor short The Brementown Musicians (1935).



The crowing doesn’t impress the farmer (you’d think the old guy would have been used to it by now) who throws an alarm clock at the bird to silence it.



In this Ub Iwerks’ adaptation of the fable, the rooster and other rejected animals join together to throw burglars out of the farmer’s house. The cartoon ends with some gags (?) showing the animals rewarded by enjoying a lazy life, concluding with the rooster who needs not crow any longer, thanks to 1935 entertainment technology.



Carl Stalling gets a musical credit but no animators receive mention on the screen.

Mouse on the Attack

The slap-happy lion (from the cartoon of the same name) runs into a corner to escape a terrorising mouse. The mouse has generally just said “Boo” to frighten the lion, but now he launches an all-out assault, finally kicking him out of the scene and making him snap.



This cartoon is an attempt by director Tex Avery to see how many wide-open-mouth shriek takes he can put in one cartoon.

Bob Bentley, Ray Abrams and Walt Clinton are the animators in this 1947 cartoon. Frank Graham plays both the lion and the mouse.

Benny Keeps Punching

Jack Benny’s television series wasn’t on every week at the beginning, and the comedian seemed to vacillate over how many appearances in a season were best for him.

In 1953, he had moved from once a month to once every three weeks. He didn’t appear once a week until the 1960-61 season. Yet back in ’53, he mulled over whether that would have been better for him. (We’ve posted other interviews here where he thought once a week was overkill).

Here are a couple of stories from New York-based reporter Jack Gaver. The first is from September 20, 1953, the second was published September 4th. The first was part of a column of miscellaneous items; I suspect he held onto it from his original story to get some extra inches from his interview.

Benny’s weekly appearances ended in 1965 when his show was killed off in the ratings by Gomer Pyle. He followed the Bob Hope format afterwards—occasional specials under his NBC contract—and did that until he died. He still popped up as a guest elsewhere, meaning these was still lots of Benny on TV for his fans.

Benny Favors Weekly Show, Citing Continuity of Gags
By JACK GAVER
United Press Staff Correspondent
Despite what would seem to be a lot of extra work, Jack Benny feels it would be easier to do a television show every week instead of once every three weeks, as he is doing this season. Last year he was on once a month.
"The reason is simple," the comedian explained on a recent quick trip to New York. "With a show once a week you can have some continuity of gags or situations working for you. We've done that in radio for years.
"But when you come on only once every three or four weeks, you're starting from scratch each time. The listener can't be expected to carry around for that length of time some thought you might have expressed on your previous show."

Waukegan Virtuoso Starts Another Season
By JACK GAVER
NEW YORK (UP) — The old—39, that is—virtuoso from Waukegan was in prime shape to start another radio-television season last Sunday and he attributes this happy state of affairs to the attitude of himself and staff toward their work.
"We work always with the idea of doing the best we can,” Jack Benny explained, “but we don’t fret about it. If we happen to hit a low spot one week — and everyone does now and then—we don’t get into a panic and tell ourselves the next show has to be extra good to make up for it. We just try to make the next one good.
Do Not Press
"Also, if we happen to have an unusually good program, we don’t begin to press with the idea that the next one has to top it or we’ll look bad.” The comedian and his usual radio family will be operating at the old CBS stand every Sunday night. This will be Benny's fourth season on TV and his most active. This time he will do a Sunday TV show every three weeks instead of one a month as last season.
Taped in Advance

"The radio shows will be taped in advance, as we have been doing for some time,” Benny said. "Most of the television shows will be ’live,’ but we nave put four of these half-hour programs on film already and we will spot them when circumstances make it difficult for me to do a ‘live’ show.
“Funny thing, doing a half hour TV show of my type is tougher than if I did an hour show. In an hour show you can make clean breaks for the commercials. With the half-hour type you have to integrate the commercials so you don’t lose any more time than necessary.
“Everything in a half hour show has to be dovetailed and pointed to getting in the most in that space of time. I have to keep punching every minute. With an hour show, I could wander in and out from time to time, using a long sketch it I wanted to, and other performers would get more of a chance.
Public Reaction
"Now, last season we did a long Jeykll-Hyde sketch on one program. Writers and directors who saw it said it was the best thing we'd done. But the public’s reaction wasn’t nearly so good. You know why? The sketch used up nearly all of the 30 minutes and there wasn’t time for the usual fooling around that the audience has come to expect from me when I’m out there just as Jack Benny.”

UPA at 10

Film critics of the 1930s were ga-ga over Walt Disney’s “realistic” animation. Critics of the 1940s were hip to the irreverence of Bugs Bunny. But critics of the 1950s were tired of both. They wanted something more sophisticated, kind of like how they praise art-house feature films over populist ones even today.

Enter UPA.

Gerald McBoing-Boing was the first to catch their attention. Mr. Magoo was next. Why? Because they weren’t animals trying to be sedate and cute, or running around and lippy. They were humans who were reminiscent of something you’d find in panel cartoons in magazines like the Saturday Evening Post. In other words, they weren’t children’s fare, therefore they were far superior.

But like Bambi and Bugs Bunny, the heaps of praise on the UPA characters abated after an initial burst of enthusiasm. Perhaps it was because any interest in new cartoons was drying up, including by the studios themselves. Less money was being spent on them, except at MGM where no money was being spent on them after mid-1957. Meanwhile, kids ate up Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons whenever they appeared on television.

Here’s a feature story from the praise days of UPA. It comes from Richard Dyer MacCann’s “Hollywood Letter” column in the Christian Science Monitor of November 17, 1953. Technically, I suppose it’s correct about the studio being 10 years old, but it really never released anything for mass consumption until 1948.

UPA Cartoons 10 Years Old
Hollywood
It was just 10 years ago that Stephen Bosustow embarked on an independent course as an artist and founded the company which has for so long been referred to as “that new cartoon studio where ‘Gerald McBoing-Boing’ was made.”
Mr. Bosustow feels pretty sure that UPA is now becoming a quality trade-mark for American movie-goers—even if some of them don’t realize that the initials stand for United Productions of America.
UPA is now known also as the studio that makes the “Mr. Magoo” series, and lately there has been interest in an experimental subject based upon Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

“Christopher Crumpet,” in which a youngster turns into a chicken whenever he doesn’t get his own way, is another recent release. Furthermore, Mr. Bosustow has at last achieved the beginning of his ambition to put James Thurber’s drawings on film: “The Unicorn in the Garden” is a brief transcription of a Thurber fable.
* * *
Things are moving right along at UPA, what with precedent-breaking plans for three cartoons produced especially for television, a third story about the cacophonous Gerald McBoing-Boing, and (as usual) something just a little different, called “Fudget’s Budget.”
That last item is a simple tale about two people who live very carefully within “a vine-covered budget,” but gets overconfident when the boss grants a raise in pay. Robert Cannon, the director of this sadly ironic piece, has planned a constant, unobtrusive background of column-ruled paper and scrawly arithmetic for everything that goes on.
Mr. Cannon’s second sequel to the Academy Award-winning “Gerald” consists of an attempt to get the precocious little fellow (who can’t talk, you know, but goes “Boing! Boing!” instead) to learn, after all, to talk.
His parents take Gerald to Professor Joyce to see what can be done about his voice, but even shock treatment can’t get the woeful child to say “How now, brown cow?” Suddenly the professor remembered that the telephone company has a wonderful scrambling and unscrambling device for overseas calls. They try a phone call to Gerald—via Paris. What a surprise to hear the elaborate electronic equipment come forth with Gerald’s solemnly intelligible address to the aforesaid cow!
* * *
Perhaps the biggest new at UPA is the company’s imminent TV debut. It will take place on the Ford Foundation’s Sunday program, “Omnibus,” some time in December. First of a series of three films optioned by “Omnibus”—all of them to be made available to theaters later—it is a story by Heywood Broun called “The 51st Dragon.”
In this symbolic adventure, Gawaine Le Coeur-Hardy is a cowardly young lad who is taking courses at knight school “He was tall and sturdy, but lacked spirit. He would hide in the woods when the jousting class was called. Even when they told him the lances were padded, the horses just ponies, and the field unusually soft, he wasn’t enthusiastic.”
Nevertheless, Gawaine is persuaded to undertake training as a slayer of dragons. Fortified with the knowledge that he has a “magic word” to protect him, he wields his enormous ax with abandon. As to what happens when he confronts his fifty-first victim, that is for you to find out.
* * *

Mr. Bosustow is very much wrapped up in his TV dragon project, and takes keen delight in explaining how the ax is a key element in the design, how the wallpaper pattern sets the mood for each episode, and how the set pieces that stand for the mountains are not unlike the scenic technique of Oriental theatricals. Sterling Sturtevant is the designer of this one; Herbert Klynn is the associate producer and Art Heinemann the director.
“Mr. Magoo Goes Skiing” is the straightforward title of that near-sighted old gentleman’s newest escapade, and it need hardly be said that he and his nephew and a large bear all manage to get onto his pair of skis at once as he goes over a cliff.
Another item now being pencilled in on the story board is a promising cartoon called “Cine-magoo” in which Mr. Magoo mistakes an airline marquee for a movie entrance. When he leaves his first seat to get a better view of the show somewhere else, he manages to pop out the door of the airplane and discovers how really tremendous the new wide screens can be.

Super Autograph

“Is it a comet? Is it a meteor?” asks the narrator.



No! It’s Mighty Mouse! And he’s come to...sign autographs?!?



The really bad audio edit should tell that “Mighty” was added later. If that doesn’t clue you in, Mighty Mouse’s autograph should.



This was back before the character’s name had to be changed. The cartoon’s title was Super Mouse Rides Again when it was released in 1943.

Here’s a hammy pre-takeoff pose for good measure.



As a side note, this may be the only Mighty Mouse cartoon which has a lake but does not include the Terry Splash™ on the soundtrack.

Lovelorn Fish

The cartoon may be called Jolly Fish, but an amorous fish makes an appearance at the start of this 1932 Van Beuren short. He cozies up to Jerry, who shakes his head and shoves the fish away. I love the plus signs in the eyes; old comic strips used to do that sort thing.



Now the fish is angry. He develops feet and hands. He walks on water, chasing after Tom and Jerry’s boat, which contracts.



Both Tom and Jerry bash the fish unconscious with their oars.



In true lackadaisical Van Beuren style, the action lines remain on the screen for a couple of seconds when there is no action.



John Foster and George Stallings get the “by” credit.

Gene Rodemich believed in setting moods with music, not necessarily scoring to the action. The song that plays during most of the cartoon is “By a Rippling Stream.” Thanks to Milt Knight for the ID. You can hear a nice version below.

Ga-Ga For Gomez

John Astin walked away from the failure of the sitcom I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster without any damage. After a year off, he was given the role of Gomez in The Addams Family in 1964.

The show was derived from the single-panel cartoons of Charles Addams that portrayed a group of people who revelled in ghoulishness in an irreverent sort of way. Trying to translate that kind of humour into a half-hour TV sitcom was impossible. So, instead, the series shot off in other directions while still keeping an air of being off-beat.

The Addams Family lasted only two seasons in prime time on ABC but had the same good fortune that a number of used comedies had back in that day—it went into endless daytime reruns and its popularity grew and grew.

Astin enjoyed the role, as we can gather from newspaper interviews of the time. We’ll reprint two below. The first appeared in papers on June 22, 1964, the second on November 2, 1964. Both compare the show with The Munsters. In interviews years later, Astin insisted the shows weren’t the same at all. Both dealt with the macabre in a comic way, but the Munster family couldn’t understand why they were considered different while the Addamses just didn’t care. They went on living their lives.

The Addams Family' May Slay TV Viewers
By HAL HUMPHREY
HOLLYWOOD — Editors of the New Yorker magazine may get a little upset to learn that David Levy, who is producing a new TV series based on the Charles Addams cartoons, believes the Addams wit and audiences not irreconcilable.
"If Addams was not under contract to the New Yorker," says producer Levy, "TV Guide or some other mass circulation magazine would snap him up.
"You should have seen what happened when we showed the pilot film of 'The Addams Family' at the National Association of Broadcasters convention last spring. "And when ABC had the film pre-tested before an audience, the network executives couldn't believe the results. They thought there must have been some mistake," continues Levy, warming to his subject.
• • •
"We showed it to three of Addams' attorneys, who sat as if they were on the Supreme Court, but they began to fall down within three minutes after the film began to unroll."

Addams was in the room, too, at that time. According to Levy, the only sounds he heard emanating from Addams were "strange ones."
"They were really sounds of approval, though," Levy adds, hastily. "And one of the attorneys, a woman, said afterward to Addams, 'He is much more Addams-like than you are.'
"She was referring to John Astin, who plays Gomez. He really moved them. Addams did say later he liked the music, and of Carolyn Jones — she plays Morticia — he said, 'Enchanting!'"
Despite all of this praise, Levy is playing it cautious with the TV critics and refuses to show the pilot to them prior to airtime next September.
HE CAN hardly be blamed for playing it cool. It has been more than two years since Levy phoned Addams to open negotiations.
"We had cocktails at the Plaza in New York and discovered we both had roots there. I knew Addams had turned down other TV offers, but I believe he warmed up when I told him I did not read the New Yorker stories, only the cartoons.
"It took a year from that day just for the attorneys to do the paperwork involved, and it was largely Addams and hit attorneys' paper."
Addams also had to approve the cast which Levy came up to fit the characters most prominent in Addams' murky and macabre world. Besides Carolyn Jones and John Astin, there is a six-toot-nine giant named Ted Cassidy who will do his first acting as "Lurch." Six other characters will be used more or less frequently.
Levy made a deal with the Filmways company, the same studio which turns out "Beverly Hillbillies," "Petticoat Junction" and "Mr. Ed." If Addams is acquainted with any of those series, he might be experiencing some apprehension at this point over how his brain-children will thrive in such a climate.
• • •
LEVY DOES grant that any writer assigned to "The Addams Family" TV series will need "far more imaginative gifts than those turning out ordinary situation comedy."
"We will be telling the TV audience, too, that these are not the neighbors next door," says Levy.
Meanwhile, over at CBS, a Thursday night time spot is being cleared for what the network is heralding as a completely new idea in situation comedy — The Munsters — which dealt with a 'normal' American family whose physical characteristics are reminiscent of such famous movie monsters at Frankenstein's creation, Dracula and a lady vampire."
The Addams attorneys may discover their TV work is not finished yet.

John Astin 'Arrives' In Series
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD — It must be nice to be independently wealthy, madly in love with your wife and serene enough to enjoy your children and relatives talking and playing together in the living room.
This happy home time occurs every Friday night at ABC's reverse joke series, "The Addams Family," where the sweet things in lite are pet spiders, poison ivy and a hangman's noose.
The head of the house, nonconformist Gomez Addams — addicted to cigars, double-breasted chalk striped suits and blowing up toy trains — walks about with feet wide apart, full of good cheer. He is a happy man and so far has never been seen in a downcast mood. Life is very good to Gomez.
Actor John Astin, formerly seen as a carpenter in "The I'm Dickens . . . He's Fenster" series, was the first person cast in the series, derived from Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons, and he has given a good deal of serious thought to Gomez.
"We did a number of tests without makeup," says John. "And some felt I was too straight. There was a suggestion to do odd things with the eyes, but we stopped that."
Astin, a talented, serious New York actor, leaning towards the works of Samuel Beckett, and who once produced Christopher Fry's "A Sleep of Prisoners," written to be performed in a church, plays Gomez in an expansive mood.

"You can tell about Gomez from the way he walks," he says. "The legs shoot out. And when he stands the feet are far apart, like a cigar smoking New York businessman, only Gomez is a successful nonconformist. This can't simply be a reverse joke show. We have to affirm our position."
So far the series does rely on the reverse joke and the kids don't seem to mind at all. The cartoon characters on TV are sweet and a big hit among the young viewers whose after school television chatter revolves mostly around "The Addams Family" and "The Munsters."
Both series could be written by the same people in that both emphasize a close family life, sight gags galore and reverse jokes. Their viewpoints are remarkably similar.
'Attack Objects'
Pushing the nonconformist line, Astin says, "We attack objects, not people. We know we're different and we feel others are not as fortunate as we are. And when we take out our aggressions, no guilt is involved."
"The Addams Family" and "The Munsters" take great care to stress a happy home life. "These are good people" is implied in every line. Now this wasn't the case in all Addams cartoons "Many suggested violence," admits Astin. "and it wasn't necessary for Addams to follow up. Cartoons don't have to answer any question, but we do in 26 minutes."
Astin was an Addams fan before he joined the cast and enjoyed the marvelous poetic expressions on the characters while performing some weird deed. "I remember one cartoon where the butler poured hot oil over Christmas trees and he positively beams," says Astin, "but we can't do things like that."
With the role of Gomez, Astin has quickly erased his former image of the carpenter who played straight man on the "I'm Dickens-Fenster" series. There were times when Astin toyed with the idea of changing his name to Harry Dickens, after being stopped by fans who ask whether John is Fickens or Denster. "I'm John Astin," he would say politely. "Oh, yes, you're Dick Fenster," would be the reply.
'More Opportunity'
"People don't know I've done serious things," says Astin with downcast eyes. "In New York I was known as very strong for art for art's sake plays." Now that Astin is a TV figure living in Southern California, some of his theater associates accuse him of selling out.
"I've had more opportunity here," says Astin, whose Fry play ran one performance in New York's Phoenix Theater. "I say art is where you make it. I intend to do my little art film and it won't matter where I am."
He rolled his eyes, twisted his mouth, threw back his head and there was Gomez, a happy man.

Astin went on to an ill-advised appearance on Batman before creating the wonderfully semi-hinged Buddy Ryan on Night Court in the ‘80s. But, I suspect, for many, he’ll always be Gomez Addams.