The 'Addams Family' cast: unconventional lives, untimely deaths

The original cast was a mishmash of Academy Award nominees, broadway actors, and child stars. When the show came to an end, many of its stars didn't go on to have picture-perfect lives. If not darkness, death followed many of them after the macabre show, and history claimed most of their lives early. Here's a refresher on the show and what happened to its stars. .

The original Addams Family TV show hit TV screens in 1964, following the lives of a macabre yet magnetic close-knit family whose wealth allowed them to pursue their creepy passions. Based on cartoons by Charles Addams, this sitcom aired for just two seasons but helped turn the franchise into a staple of popular culture.

Image: Addams Family clip, MGM, YouTube

By inverting and perverting the ideal American family, the series spawned video games, four films, three other TV shows (including Netflix's ongoing smash hit 'Wednesday'), goth fashion, academic research, and even soundtracks based around its Grammy-nominated theme song featuring finger snaps. A Morticia line sums up the whacky inversion of expectations nicely: "Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly."

Image: Addams Family clip, MGM, YouTube

Carolyn Jones, who had already been nominated for an Oscar for her role in 'The Bachelor Party (1957)' and won a Golden Globe for "New Star of the Year" in 1959, played the show's delightfully witchy matriarch. Before becoming Morticia, she also appeared in 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and the Hitchcock film 'The Man Who Knew Too Much.'

Image: Addams Family clip, MGM, YouTube

Even though Jones proved her comedy chops in her role as Morticia Addams, and even got a Golden Globe nomination for the role, her acting career declined afterward. During the 1970s, she appeared only sporadically in films and TV.

The stunning actress married four times, including to the powerful producer Aaron Spelling, but they divorced the same year 'The Addams Family' debuted. She didn't have children.

In 1981, she was sadly diagnosed with colon cancer right after landing a soap opera role. When the disease worsened, she married her boyfriend of five years, Peter Bailey-Britton, in an all-out wedding. She died less than one year later, at age 53.

The morbid youngest child of the Addams family was played by Lisa Loring, who auditioned for the job when she was just five years old. In a 1980 interview with Daytimers magazine, she said she landed the role because of "her pout."

Image: Addams Family clip, MGM, YouTube

After the show ended, she returned to school but got married and had her first child when she was 15. Her mom died of alcoholism in 1974, and Loring divorced a year later. In total, she married four times (including to an adult film star) and had two children.

Although Loring played a few more roles, including the soap opera 'As The World Turns,' her daughter told the New York Times that Loring took up acting to support her own single mother when she was young and that "acting was not her love."

Image: Addams Family clip, MGM, YouTube

On Jan. 28, 2023, Loring died from a stroke at age 64. According to her friend Laurie Jacobson, it was brought on by "smoking and high blood pressure." No matter, "she went peacefully with both her daughters holding her hands," her daughter told Variety.

Born in 1914, Coogan was one of Hollywood's first child stars, appearing in the 1921 Charlie Chaplin film 'The Kid.' After, he sued his mother and stepfather for spending around $3.5 million of his earnings. The case helped establish California's first known legal protection for earnings of child stars: the Coogan Act.

After joining the Air Forces in WWII and surviving a deadly car crash, he got back into acting and found his most famous TV role as the deranged, electric, but loveable Uncle Fester.

Image: Addams Family clip, MGM, YouTube

Like his costars Jones and Loring, Coogan also tied (and untied) the knot on four occasions. His first wife was the pin-up girl and sex symbol of the day, Betty Grable (couple pictured circa 1938).

After suffering from heart and kidney problems, as well as hypertension, Coogan died of heart failure at age 69 in 1984. His 'The Addams Family' costar John Astin delivered his eulogy.

The 6'9 actor's height tended to land him unusual roles, most famously that of the gloomy butler Lurch on 'The Addam's Family.' Fun fact: He also played The Thing (the hand). Lurch was originally supposed to be mute, but when Cassidy ad-libbed "You rang?" the character was immediately given a voice, and that line became his catchphrase.

Image: Addams Family clip, MGM, YouTube

'The Addams Family' was one of his first roles, but it propelled him to success. He appeared in classics like 'The Beverly Hillbillies,' 'I Dream of Jeannie,' 'Tarzan,' 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' (pictured), and many more. He also voiced roles for 'The Fantastic Four,' 'The Incredible Hulk' and 'Godzilla.'

He needed surgery to remove a benign tumor from his heart, which formed due to the acromegaly that gave him his deep voice and height. But complications arose while he was recovering at home, and he died in 1979.

Image: Addams Family clip, MGM, YouTube

Born into a showbiz family, Weatherwax stared acting as the devious Pugsley Addams at age nine. But after the show went off the air, he didn't like being typecast in a similar role and stopped acting. He joined the army when he was 17 but later made most of his career behind the camera as a grip. He remained lifelong friends with Lisa Loring.

Image: Addams Family clip, MGM, YouTube

Weatherwax died of an unexpected heart attack when he was just 59 years old in December 2014. At the time, his family told the Los Angeles Times that they "were devastated" but also overwhelmed by fans expressing sadness. Giving him a very 'Addams Family' sendoff, a ceremony to dedicate a niche to his remains was held on Halloween.

Image: Mary Dawson, 'Small Town Life in Big L.A.' blog, December 28, 2014

John Astin started his career on Broadway but was spotted and identified for comedic potential and snatched up by Hollywood. He appeared on several shows, but his most popular role was as the wacky patriarch Gomez Addams.

Image: Addams Family clip, MGM, YouTube

While he has been married three times, he's shaken the show's mortality curse and is still thriving at age 92. He said he's done hundreds of TV shows, as many as 40 movies, and "loves acting." He is a practicing Buddhist.