How The Addams Family Got So Rich (& Why)

Boasting a love for all things macabre, The Addams Family remains one of the most beloved creations in American pop culture, but how and why did the family become so rich? Although the peculiar group was created in the 1930s, the clan is better known for the 1960s sitcom. Since then, The Addams Family has been rebooted numerous times via television series, animation, and live-action films.

Their latest incarnation is in animated form, with The Addams Family 2 releasing on October 1, 2022, and starring Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron. Despite their various interpretations, the essential premise always remains the same. They are a bizarre but loving family who delights in anything spooky and are either unaware or unconcerned with the outside world’s opinion of them. The household consists of family patriarch Gomez Addams and his wife Morticia, children Wednesday and Pugsley (almost renamed Pubert), Uncle Fester, Grandmama, butler Lurch, and servant Thing.

The family is far from conventional and rarely seen conducting any kind of work. Yet, they are exorbitantly wealthy, normally residing in a Gothic mansion, and the 1991 live-action The Addams Family revolves around a plot to steal the family’s vast fortune. The cause of this wealth is both Gomez’s family inheritance and the success of several eccentric business interests, while the family was originally intended to satirize idyllic American life.

Gomez Addams is descended from Castilian royalty, thereby inheriting a large sum of money to provide for his extravagant lifestyle. 1991’s The Addams Family displays some of the family’s heirlooms and depicts Gomez (Street Fighter’s Raul Julia) working with his lawyer. Gomez is also a successful entrepreneur that is invested in Wall Street. He has ties to various businesses all over the world, despite often investing by mere whim. He is fortunate, purchasing a swamp for its scenic value, only to then discover an oil deposit underneath. He also bought a mummified hand at a flea market which turned out to be part of the remains of an Egyptian pharaoh. Gomez Addams’ other businesses include a tombstone factory, buzzard and crocodile farms, and salt and uranium mines. He simply invests in anything that appeals to his spooky, adventurous personality. Gomez even studied law, taking pride in sending criminals to prison by losing cases as a defense attorney.

One of the richest households in America, the Addams Family were created by cartoonist Charles Addams, who envisioned the peculiar aristocrats as a satire of the American Dynasty. Originating as a one-panel cartoon in The New Yorker in 1938, Addams painted the household as a reversal of the ideal 20th Century American family. They live in a large, ornate home and never want for anything, entirely untroubled by issues relating to work. They just so happen to have a deep interest in the macabre and love their Gothic lifestyle, finding typical suburban families entirely absurd. In contrast to the cold, superficial view of the nuclear family with a work-obsessed patriarch, Gomez and Morticia are wonderful parents. Gomez doesn’t shy away from expressing adoration for his wife, memorably depicted by John Aston (father of The Lord of the Rings and Stranger Things‘ Sean Astin) and Carolyn Jones in the 1960s Addams Family sitcom, and Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston in the 1990s films.

The Addams Family movies and shows repeatedly demonstrate how the clan appreciates their wealth but its primary function is to indulge their morbid interests. Gomez knows how to safely provide for his family but will happily squander money on anything that amuses. They are the perfect example of rejecting the norm and being happy with oneself, no matter how frightening they appear to others.

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