Charles Samuel "Chas" Addams

 Charles Samuel "Chas" Addams (January 7, 1912 – September 29, 1988)

Some of the recurring characters, who became known as The Addams Family, have been the basis for spin-offs in several other media. Addams was distantly related to U.S. presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, despite the different spellings of their last names, and was a first cousin twice removed to noted social reformer Jane Addams. A house on Elm Street, and another on Dudley Avenue (In Westfield, NJ) that police once caught him breaking into, are said to be the inspiration for the Addams Family mansion in his cartoons. College Hall, the oldest building on the current campus of the University of Pennsylvania, where Addams studied, was also an inspiration for the mansion. He was fond of visiting the Presbyterian Cemetery on Mountain Avenue. 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. Addams' first drawing, a sketch of a window washer, ran in The New Yorker on February 6, 1932, and his cartoons ran regularly in the magazine from 1938, when he drew the first instance of what came to be called The Addams Family, until his death. He was a freelancer throughout that time. During World War II, Addams served at the Signal Corps Photographic Center in New York, where he made animated training films for the U.S. Army. The Addams Family television series began after David Levy, a television producer, approached Addams with an offer to create it with a little help from the humorist. All Addams had to do was give his characters names and more characteristics for the actors to use in portrayals. The series ran on ABC for two seasons, from 1964 to 1966. Charles Addams died on September 29, 1988, after suffering a heart attack, he was 76 years old.