Original May 25 post:
From a Witney Seibold article at SlashFilm about 1991’s The Addams Family film:
On Christmas 1946, the New Yorker published a notorious Addams strip wherein his Family’s home was visited by carolers. High above their heads, standing on the home’s central tower, the Addams Family is slowly tipping a cauldron, presumably full of hot oil or molten lead, onto their visitors’ heads. That strip would later be made into a Christmas card.
![](https://www.dailycartoonist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/466-BoilingOil-640x845-1.jpg)
That strip was also the first image seen in Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1991 film adaptation, “The Addams Family.” Indeed, in a 2021 interview with the AV Club, the director said that he just stole the gag outright. And that wasn’t the only one. There was also a scene partway through Sonnenefeld’s film involving a model train that he lifted from a strip, as well as a teaser trailer that imitated Addams’ work.
Sonnenfeld said:
"[T]he inspiration was always in Charles Addams' drawings. And there are actual images that I just stole outright from his work and turned into two-dimensional moving pictures. Like, there is a Charles Addams drawing of someone playing with an H.O.-gauge train set, and it shows a commuter looking out the window and seeing some man playing with the controls of his train set. And I stole that and used it exactly. In fact, I'm the guy in the train!"
![](https://www.dailycartoonist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screenshot-2024-05-25-at-18-28-55-the-addams-family-train-scene-was-taken-right-from-the-comics-1714487190.webp-WEBP-Image-780-×-438-pixels.png)
Witney couldn’t find the commuter train cartoon.
That strip was not published in the New Yorker, however. Or, at the very least, I was unable to find it in my massive “Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker” compendium, a coffee table book that no household should be without.
After looking for the cartoon online (my Addams books are boxed away) I also failed to find it.
The cartoon does strike a chord, but I’m not sure it is an Addams cartoon (Gahan? Vip? Rodrigues?)
Anybody have any ideas?
Update:
With the help of Fred (the librarian) and docnad narrowing the search (see comments)
and an eBay listing that showed a number of inside pages, we have found the cartoon!
From page 74 of Charles Addams’ Homebodies (Simon and Shuster, 1954) …
![](https://www.dailycartoonist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screenshot-2024-05-27-at-14-23-35-s-l1600.jpg-JPEG-Image-1200-×-1600-pixels.png)
For one, I’ve seen the cartoon years ago. I used to collect Addams Family paperbacks, and remember the cartoon.
And it’s almost certainly Addams’ work, because in the 1964 TV show, Gomez runs trains fast and blows them up – and we close up on his leering face. See YT for the scene.
Of course, why else would a grown man play with trains?
I think I know the cartoon in question. The problem is, I can’t find it. The one that comes to mind is a man in a train looking out the window at a boy (much larger than the man) kneeling on the floor operating a switch box labelled “Lionel.” I think it’s in the collection Homebodies, which is the one Addams book in my collection I can’t find. It’s not in any collection I can find, either. I looked through My Crowd, two New Yorker cartoon collections, and the World of Charles Addams, as well as all the other Addams collections I have.
Confirmed. It’s in Homebodies.
Thank you. I still need to find my copy, but now the need isn’t as urgent. 🙂