The surprising color of the "Addams Family" living room


	May 13, 2025

Original photo by PictureLux / The Hollywood Archive/ Alamy Stock Photo

The living room set of the "Addams Family" TV show was actually pink.

The Addams Family was filmed in black and white, and it's difficult to imagine it any other way — not only because it premiered in 1964, when color television was still something of a novelty, but because the aesthetic perfectly suits the show's gothic vibes. It was hardly dour on set, however, as the iconic living room where most of the action takes place was actually pink. A resurfaced photo of the set shows just how garish many of the colors were — including bright pink walls and rugs — which in hindsight makes perfect sense: As long as nothing looked out of place in the final black-and-white rendering, its real-life hue didn't make much of a difference.

Several of the set's props were repurposed from another MGM production, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, which was released a few short months prior to The Addams Family. The characters of the latter made their first appearances in a series of single-panel New Yorker comics by series creator Charles Addams, the first of which debuted in 1938. None of the characters had names in the original comic, however. Most of them, including Morticia and Wednesday, received their monikers when Addams licensed a doll collection based on the cartoon in 1962. And speaking of names, Wednesday's middle name is — naturally — Friday.

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Lurch and Thing were played by the same actor.

In addition to his roles in Star Trek and I Dream of Jeannie, Ted Cassidy is best known for his performance as Lurch in The Addams Family. He reprised his role as the hulking butler in several iterations of the franchise, including the 1973 animated series and the 1977 television movie Halloween With the New Addams Family, as well as in episodes of the 1960s Batman TV series and The New Scooby-Doo Movies. But Lurch wasn't his only contribution to the show, as the disembodied hand known as Thing belonged to Cassidy as well — something many fans didn't realize at the time, as the character is credited as "Itself" in the credits. Cassidy had a separate contract for playing Thing and portrayed the character with his right hand, though he occasionally switched to his left to see if anyone would notice. Audiences probably didn't, just as they likely couldn't tell when assistant director Jack Voglin portrayed Thing in scenes featuring both of Cassidy's characters.