Where in the World Is.....John Astin?

I remember that it was Halloween year round when the 1964 hit TV series, the Addams Family lit up our black and white televisions. Mortica and Gomez and their extended creepy family entertained us with their kooky and spooky family rites. The writing was sharp and smart as it gently poked fun at the typical American family of television in those days.

This was no Father Knows Best where Dad came in the door, and the perfect family bowed down to fatherly wisdom. No, in the Addams Family, Pop was naïve and clueless about his own "monstrous" family and the "normal" world in which their family seemed to prosper. The children, daughter Wednesday, and son Pugsley, loved their parents who doted on the borderline murderous antics of the kids. Various other family members came and went and the entire effect was one of macabre love and familial closeness, with Lurch, Uncle Fester and Thing, the mysterious all knowing Hand.

At the helm of this very tongue in cheek family, was a dark haired, mustachioed, suave patriarch "Gomez Addams," played by actor, John Astin. As an adolescent, I rather fancied Gomez Addams with a schoolgirl crush. I yearned for a father that cool and charming with that wicked dimpled grin and absolute faith and belief in his children. He loved his family, pampered them, approved of everything they did. And he was fabulously rich!

The show was a delight to watch and John Astin was part of the stellar cast that included Carolyn Jones as Mortica, his sexy in black witchy wife, Ted Cassidy as the lurching Lurch, and Jackie Coogan as lovable, goofy Uncle Fester. Produced by Aaron Spelling, the original series ran for 2 years and spawned several spin off entertainment ventures including television specials and 2 movies in 1991 and 1993.

Born on March 30, 1930 to a well to do middle class family in Baltimore, John Astin attended John Hopkins University where he studied mathematics. He was a math prodigy and intellectual whiz kid, who starred in his school play his senior year and discovered acting. He began a vagabond existence that included being homeless and working as a janitor in New York while struggling to find a path to stardom. He played a small role in West Side Story in 1961 that led to other film acting job, roles in television series and eventually was cast as Gomez in The Addams Family. It was a brief hit and John Astin went on to a busy career in film, television and theatre.

John Astin's better known work includes TV's quirky Bunny O Hare (1971), Evil Roy Slade (1972), Freaky Friday (1976), one season as the Riddler on Batman, submarine commander Matthew Sherman in Operation Petticoat(1970) and the movie, European Vacation (1985). His comedy brilliance shines in the role of "Dr. Gangreen" in some of the "Killer Tomato" cult films, as well as in the hit TV show, Night Court, where he played Buddy, an eccentric former mental patient and stepfather to Harry Stone. Gunsmoke, The Greatest Show on Earth, Mary Tyler Moore and The Duckman TV series are just a few of the television shows John Astin guest starred in during his long career.

John Astin received an Academy Award nomination for Prelude, a short film that he completely wrote, produced and directed. In the one man play, Edgar Allan Poe: Once Upon a Midnight, which toured the country in 2005 and 2006, we were able to see John Astin leave the comedy character behind and demonstrate the breadth of his dramatic acting ability.

John Astin is still working, taking occasional small roles and teaching daily at John Hopkins, his alma mater,where he is working to develop a drama major at the university. You can watch an interview about his life and work at this You Tube Link interview. But I suggest this reading of Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven with John Astin in character as Edgar Allen Poe.

John Astin is currently married to Valerie Ann Dandobal and they live in Baltimore where he remains close to his five sons, David, Allen and Tom, sons of his first wife, Suzanna Hahn, and two with his second wife Patty Duke Astin, Sean Astin (of Lord of the Rings fame) and MacKenzie. He says he loves being a grandfather and is enjoying his stint as a drama professor at John Hopkins.

This line, adapted from Edgar Allen Poe's own journals, could celebrate the life of John Astin, who has managed to merge work and life with love and family.

"The world is a collective madhouse, its inhabitants are merely faking sanity. It is critical to becoming aware of these aberrations, for pretensions can be the enemy of love." or perhaps this one. J "Anyone who hates an octopus is warped."

John Astin said recently, "I feel that Poe, through his own tortured existence, gained deep insight into the nature of the universe, along with an intense love and appreciation for life itself. Through this play I want to share that impression with others."

This writer would agree that Edgar Allan Poe and John Astin have brought this viewer a deeper, but fun, insight into the universe, with increased appreciation for life itself. While Poe died young and tortured at age 40, John Astin continues to live and work with a vibrant life force that has allowed him to share his humour, his wit and his life work with us. We never know what touch, what link binds us to another, to each other.

For a tortured young girl growing up in a less than TV picture perfect family, The Addams Family and John Astin as Gomez made me laugh and I began to believe that love in a family didn't have to be the typical one plastered on my television screen in the 50's and 60's. Leave it to Beaver was the fantasy. The Addams Family was a pretty good reality.

Resources used

http://www.astin-poe.com/

http://www.freebase.com/view/en/john_astin

http://www.dagonbytes.com/film/fame/johnastin.htm

http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/John-Astin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=296847