Grandmama (The Addams Family) - Sitcom

Sitcom

Per the 1960s sitcom, Grandmama is of partially French descent; her Great-Great-Grandmother Slice was "the Belle of the French Revolution," and Grandmama sometimes regaled Pugsley and Wednesday with tales of that era, prompting Wednesday's hobby of decapitating her dolls. However, Grandmama herself was apparently born in Spain, which she later refers to as "the old country." She and her husband (referred to only as "Mr. Addams," he never received a first name in dialogue and was apparently deceased (or at least misplaced) by the 1960s) lived in Spain at least until Gomez was six, when Gomez was promised in marriage to a family friend's daughter, although both Gomez and Grandmama had forgotten this by the 1960s. She is the daughter of Grandpa Slurp, Gomez's maternal grandfather (Gomez's paternal grandfather, Grandpa Squint Addams, is mentioned in several episodes.). Described in the episode "The Addams Family Tree," Slurp was a two-headed man distinguished by his buck teeth and receding chin. "He was a handsome devil!" declared Gomez.

Little else is known of Grandmama's past save that she first voted in 1906. When Fester pointed out that there was no women's suffrage in 1906 (implying Grandmama lived in the U.S. at the time), she cryptically declared "That didn't stop me!"

Grandmama received neither first name nor maiden name in the 1960s series, although as a fortune teller she used the aliases "Madame Bovary," "Madame de Pompadour," and, following her arrest for fraud, "Madame X." In various media she is known as Granny, Grandmama/Grandma/Granny Frump, Esmerelda, Grandma Addams, and Eudora Addams.

Grandmama was given a more positive image in the 1989 game Fester's Quest, where the instruction booklet says her psychic powers foretold the alien invasion that would come and abduct all the people in the city, so she invoked a curse on the Addams family mansion. As a result, when extraterrestrial scouts scanned the Addams residence for life forms they found none, thanks to Grandmama's curse.

Grandmama was most famously played by Blossom Rock in the original television series, and was later played by Jane Rose, Judith Malina, Carol Kane, and Alice Ghostley in the subsequent films. In the second television series, she was played by Vancouver actress Betty Phillips. In the first animated series, Janet Waldo played Grandmama just as she played Morticia. In the second series, Carol Channing did her voice. In the Broadway musical, she is played by Jackie Hoffman. Here it is not entirely sure whose mother Grandma is. Morticia explains to Gomez how, as she says, your mother came to visit and, apparently, never left. To which he replies: "I thought she was your mother!"