Чарльз Аддамс: Қара юмор суретшісінің өмірі мен шығармалары

American cartoonist (1912–1988)

Charles Samuel Addams (January 7, 1912 – September 29, 1988) was an American cartoonist known for his darkly humorous and macabre characters. Some of his recurring characters became known as the Addams Family, and were subsequently popularized through various adaptations.

Addams was born in Westfield, New Jersey. He was the son of Grace M. (née Spear; 1879–1943) and Charles Huey Addams (1873–1932), a piano company executive who had studied to be an architect. One friend said of him: "His sense of humor was a little different from everybody else's." He was also artistically inclined, "drawing with a happy vengeance", according to a biographer. He also attended the University of Pennsylvania in 1930 and 1931. He then studied at the Grand Central School of Art in New York City in 1931 and 1932. The New Yorker Obituary of October 17, 1988 says his first drawing for The New Yorker, ran February, 1932. However, his first drawing actually appeared in the February 4, 1933 issue. Here he drew the first in the series that came to be called The Addams Family in August 6, 1938 and ran regularly until his death. Addams remained a freelancer throughout that time. Addams created a 1952 mural for the library at Penn State depicting prominent Addams Family members. Television producer David Levy approached Addams with an offer to create The Addams Family television series, with a little help from the humorist. Addams gave his characters names as well as qualities for actors to use in portrayals; the series ran on ABC from 1964 to 1966. Dear Dead Days (1959) is a scrapbook like compendium of vintage images (and occasional pieces of text) that appealed to the author's sense of the grotesque, including Victorian woodcuts, vintage medicine show advertisements, and a boyhood photograph of Francesco Lentini, who had three legs. Addams drew more than 1,300 cartoons over the course of his life. Beyond The New Yorker pages, his cartoons appeared in Collier's and TV Guide, as well as books, calendars, and other merchandise. The 1957 album Ghost Ballads, featuring folk songs with supernatural themes by singer guitarist Dean Gitter, was packaged with cover art by Addams depicting a haunted house. The Mystery Writers of America honored Addams with a Special Edgar Award in 1961 for his body of work. The films The Old Dark House (1963) and Murder by Death (1976) feature title sequences illustrated by Addams. In 1946, Addams met science fiction writer Ray Bradbury after having drawn an illustration for Mademoiselle magazine's publication of Bradbury's short story "Homecoming", the first in a series of tales chronicling a family of Illinois vampires named the Elliotts. The pair became friends and planned to collaborate on a book of the Elliott Family's complete history with Bradbury writing and Addams providing the illustrations, but it never materialized. Bradbury's stories about the "Elliott Family" were finally anthologized in From the Dust Returned in October 2001, with a connecting narrative and an explanation of his work with Addams, and Addams's 1946 Mademoiselle illustration used for the book's cover jacket. Although Addams's own characters were well established by the time of their initial encounter, in a 2001 interview, Bradbury stated: "[Addams] went his way and created the Addams Family, and I went my own way and created my family in this book." Janet Maslin, in a review of an Addams biography for The New York Times, wrote: "Addams's persona sounds cooked up for the benefit of feature writers  was at least partly a character contrived for the public eye," noting that one outré publicity photo showed the humorist wearing a suit of armor at home, "but the shelves behind him hold books about painting and antiques, as well as a novel by John Updike." Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock was a friend of Addams, and owned two pieces of original Addams art.

Addams died on September 29, 1988, at the age of 76, at St. Clare's Hospital and Health Center in New York City, having suffered a heart attack after parking his automobile. An ambulance took him from his apartment to the hospital, where he died in the emergency room. As he had requested, a wake was held rather than a funeral; he had wished to be remembered as a "good cartoonist". In accordance with Addams's wishes, he was cremated, and his ashes were interred in the pet cemetery of "The Swamp" estate.

The Tee & Charles Addams foundation was established in 1999 "to interpret and share the artistic achievement of Charles Addams’s life through exhibitions and programs developed from all works by Charles Addams including the Foundation’s own collections and from its copyrights of the Addams oeuvre." Prior to the COVID 19 pandemic the foundation offered tours of the couples' property and displayed artefacts from Addams' life. The Charles Addams Fine Arts Hall in Philadelphia was named in his tribute by the University of Pennsylvania in 2001. On the occasion of his 100th birthday, January 7, 2012, Charles Addams was honored with a Google Doodle. Addams was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2020. On April 30, 2021, the original art for his macabre holiday illustration "Addams and Evil", a 1947 interior book cartoon from The Addams Family Christmas, sold for $87,500, the author's world auction record, over seven times initial estimates.