Grandmama (The Addams Family)

Eudora Addams, known as "Grandmama" (enPR2|grǎndʹmə-mäʹ), is a fictional member of The Addams Family, created by cartoonist Charles Addams.

Grandmama is the grandmother of the Addams children. Although her relationship to the other family members is somewhat inconsistent in the various incarnations of the family. She is Gomez Addams' mother and Pugsley and Wednesday's paternal grandmother in the "Addams Family" (1964 to 1966) and the "New Addams Family" (1998 to 1999) television series . However, in the cartoon and film (1991) series, she was Morticia's mother and Pugsley and Wednesday's maternal grandmother.

Grandmama is known for her cynical—and sometimes morbid—sense of humor and her recreational interest in the occult. She is often shown concocting various potions, spells and hexes for a multitude of purposes, and even dabbles in fortune-telling. In the episode "Halloween, Addams Style," when a neighbor claims to have seen a witch on the family's roof, she declares this untrue as she was just up there herself and saw no one, indicating that she does not consider herself a "witch" by the standards the family follows. One of her favorite hobbies is wrestling alligators. She is probably best recognized for her gray frizzy hair and her shawl.

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 Pompador," and, following her arrest for fraud, "Madame X." In various other media she is known as Granny, Grandmama/Granny Frump, Esmerelda Frump, or Grandma Addams. In "The New Addams Family", she is given the first name Eudora.

Grandmama was most famously played by Blossom Rock in the original television series, and was later played by Judith Malina, Carol Kane, and Alice Ghostley in the subsequent films. In the first animated series, Janet Waldo played Grandmama just as she played Morticia. In the second series, Carol Channing did her voice.

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