"The Addams Family" and Marc Davis

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We already did a post on the influence of Charles Addams on the Haunted Mansion. Today's post might be regarded as something of a footnote to that one, but it isn't really. See, I gave the wife a box set of the entire "Addams Family" television program (1964-66) for Christmas, and it became obvious to me after just a few episodes that the TV series was itself a direct influence on Marc Davis, independently of the published work of Mr. Addams in books and magazines. Since I'm currently working on a big post on Davis, I figured I had better finish researching this new discovery, and having done so, I've decided to make it a sort of pre-post to the big one.

That was a lot of TV to wade through. Unlike, perhaps, some of you, I find that I can only watch three or four "Addams Family" episodes at a sitting. It's fine for a half hour once a week, as Nature intended, but for me the show is basically a one-trick pony, and the schtick becomes a little tedious watching it for hours on end, notwithstanding the good performances and the better-than-average writing.

Hence, the delay.

I don't suppose that many Forgottenistas are unfamiliar with "The Addams Family," but if any review seems necessary, well, Google is your friend.

The show premiered September 18, 1964 and ran for just two seasons, with a total of 64 episodes. That premiere coincides rather precisely with the period in which Davis was assigned to the Mansion project and began churning out concept sketches. I'm convinced that Marc was among those who tuned in to check out the sitcom adaptation of the Charles Addams characters he and other Disney artists knew so well from the pages of The New Yorker and published anthologies of his cartoons. He took some mental or maybe even written notes, and some of the gags he saw made it into sketches for the Haunted Mansion.


Not A Doubt: Granny's Knitting

The place to begin is with those examples where there is no room for serious doubt that Davis was directly inspired by the TV program. The first one involves a sketch we've already discussed in the context of influence from Charles Addams artwork. You will recall that we cited this Davis concept as evidence of inspiration from Addams:

Granny disappears as she rocks back and forth. This character really did make it into the finished attraction, in the Ballroom, where she sits near the fire. What didn't make it was the bizarre, multi-limbed item she is knitting. Addams used the basic gag at least twice, once with "Morticia" doing the knitting, and once with "Granny" doing it, as in the Davis sketch.

So much for review. In both Addams sketches the knit item is an infant's nightie with four legs instead of the expected two. But in Davis's sketch he has replaced the nightie with an item that looks like an amalgam from at least two and perhaps three episodes of "The Addams Family." Davis's "Granny" is knitting something with (1) three sleeves, (2) an absurdly long turtle-neck, and (3) it seems like the whole sweater is ridiculously long.

Behold, "Cousin Imar's" three-sleeved sweater, from the premiere episode, "The Addams Family Goes to School," (Sept 18, 1964):

Sorry that the clip goes on so long. No . . . that's a lie. I'm not sorry. And neither are you. Anyway, an absurdly long-necked sweater

turns up six episodes later, this one intended for "Cousin Eustace," in "Halloween with the Addams Family" (Oct 30, 1964):

Finally, it's possible that Davis took a further cue from the insanely long sweater Morticia is
knitting in "Fester's Punctured Romance" (Oct 2, 1964), but in this case I wouldn't insist upon it:

The fact that this episode lies in between the other two makes me think that, on balance, Davis probably did lay this one under contribution along with those, where the influence seems harder to deny.

Incidentally, the long knit item reappears at the end of the "Halloween" episode and much later in "Morticia the Breadwinner" (Mar 26, 1965). Similarly, the three-armed sweater reappears in "Mother Lurch Visits the Addams Family" (Jan 15, 1965). There is a lot of gag-recycling in the series, and there are still other goofy knitting jokes if you keep all three of your eyes open for them.

I have to say that Davis's generally sound comic instincts let him down a bit in this case. There are too many separate examples of the bizarre in his Granny's needlework. As with the ill-fated Squeaky Door Ghost, we have in Granny's lap something that cannot be read in an instant, as must these gags be read. To the quick glance, it's just an impenetrable mass of weird knitting, and it takes a good deal of time and effort to figure out what the hell she's doing. In fact, without the "Addams Family" episodes, we would have difficulty disentangling it even with all the leisure in the world. The TV program itself showed better sense in presenting the gags one at a time.

To return for a moment to the final product in the Mansion, we find that the Ballroom's Granny figure ultimately goes back not to Davis but to a Ken Anderson sketch, and in this case the final character owes little to Davis's later contributions:

©Disney

It's true that she disappears and reappears, like the other Ballroom ghosts, but no attempt is made to coordinate this with her rocking chair. It's also true that she originally had a knitting basket beside her on the floor, and it's still there, so it's possible that she did indeed start out a knitter; nevertheless, at least by 1974 she was given a book and not a set of knitting needles to hold:

©Disney

(For those of you who simply must know these things, the book—at least at WDW—is Arizona in the '50s.)

Not a Doubt: The Squeaky Door Ghost

Seems like we just got off the phone with this one. You will recall that this was another joke much too complex and time-consuming to actually work. Davis explained the gag as "a gal who was trying to put the squeak into a door" (MDIHOW 427). It is difficult for me to believe that Marc was not directly inspired here by Lurch in "Morticia Joins the Ladies League" (Oct 23, 1964):

Not a Doubt: Bruno

The final example of what I think are clear examples of direct inspiration involves a white bear rug that appears frequently in the earliest "Addams Family" episodes but is soon dropped. His name is Bruno and he growls menacingly at any who tread upon him, as in the premiere episode of Sept 18, '64:

As if to drive home the point, Gomez Addams asks his insurance agent why his policy is being canceled in "Crisis in the Addams Family" (March 12, 1965). "Well," says the agent, "because the policy doesn't make sense. Things like this: double indemnity for flogging by a carnivorous plant, gunpowder burns, being bitten by an enraged rug."

I'm sure many of you will already know where I'm going with this:

If it stood alone, I'd be a little more skeptical, but in light of the examples we've already seen, I think it's a ding-ding winner.

Okay, A Little Doubt: The Gate

Y'all will have to form your own opinions about whether the Addams' iron gate, featured in dozens of episodes, including the premiere, may have had some influence on Davis's proposed entrance gate into the Haunted Mansion's Portrait Hall:

©Disney

There is a some resemblance between the central, squiggly portion of Davis's gate and the regularly spaced squiggles on "Gate" (as he is known on the TV show), and furthermore, it's likely that Davis's gate behaved as if it were "alive" as well. Add to this that it's virtually certain Marc saw the Addams gate several times, and there's your case. But I won't push it any harder than that. Far be it from me to force a gate, especially if it's like one of these bad boys. (By the way, that premiere episode was the only one in which the Addams house façade was an actual set rather than a painting.)

A Little More Doubt: Ophelia

"Ophelia," based on the Shakespeare character in Hamlet, has gone on to become a trope unto itself, even to the point of being referred to as "The Ophelia." Read up on her at the link if you want more detail. For our purposes, it may be noted that both Marc Davis and "The Addams Family" presented their own versions of the Ophelia trope:

As far as I can see, there is only one thing that suggests a link between the Addams Family version and Davis's sketch, and that's the merging of this trope with another: the pedal-picking "loves me, loves me not" thing. Davis has this as the actual title of his sketch, while Ophelia Frump alludes to it in "Ophelia Finds Romance" (Jan 28, 1966):

The reasons I'm a little skeptical about this one is that the combination of the two tropes seems to come so naturally that coincidence seems as probable an explanation as any. Also, this episode comes rather late in the series run, and I can't help thinking that Davis had lost interest in it by that time. I note that the most persuasive examples of inspiration from the show all stem from the very earliest episodes of Season One. I think Davis figured out before the end of 1964 that he had probably seen all he needed to see.

Speaking of coincidental mash-ups of separate tropes...


Super Mega Doubt: The Cauldron

* The black-robed, wart-nosed witch with her potion book, stirring her bubbling black cauldron.
* The mad scientist in his laboratory with his test-tubes and retorts (cue the bubbling colored water and dry ice).

Those are two very familiar and distinct tropes, but it's not hard to imagine a mash-up. Davis and "The Addams Family" both gave us one:

MDIHOW 370

If you stare at those two long enough, the needle may indeed start a-twichin', but my advice is to forget it. Not only is it Uncle Fester and not Grand Mama (which would have strengthened the case), but the dating is against it. The Davis sketch is from the summer of 1964; that is, months before "The Addams Family" even premiered, and the episode in question comes along well into the second season ("Cousin Itt's Problem"; Oct 25, '65). Of course, it must be stipulated that dates assigned by the Disney Archives have sometimes been and therefore can be incorrect, so an error here cannot be absolutely ruled out, but generally I think it's better to trust the dates unless you have much harder evidence than this. Better to see this as an example of two creative minds independently seeing the comic potential in mashing up the witch/mad scientist tropes. That's interesting enough, no?

The dates for all the other Davis artwork in this post come from the safe distance of 1968.

We've seen many other examples of Marc Davis taking ideas from here, there, and anywhere he could find them, but not many other examples of multiple inspiration from a single source. Although none of the gags inspired by "The Addams Family" made it into the finished ride, you might argue that Granny's knitting basket in the Ballroom represents a faint if not altogether ookie glimmer.

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Charles Addams and the Haunted Mansion

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Updated December 2019

Forgottenistas, what do you think of the cartoons of Charles Addams? Like 'em? Dumb question, I suppose. For me, Gary Larson is a lot funnier when it comes to the absurd and the macabre, and I think Edward Gorey is a better artist and more daring in exploring the blacker sort of humor, but I cheerfully admit that Addams is the trailblazer here, the man who kicked open the doors for all the others.

I don't want to bore you with the same information you can get from any number of other sites. I have other things I want to bore you with. So let's be brief. Addams produced thousands of cartoons for The New Yorker and as illustrations for books and magazines, in a career lasting nearly six decades. He's famous for featuring the macabre and the absurd. Quite a lot of his cartoons involve ordinary-looking people calmly and nonchalantly plotting grisly murders or tidying up afterward. Many involve grotesque and surreal discoveries in everyday environments, like a man noticing that the guy sitting next to him on the subway has three legs.


They're Creepy and They're Kooky

What sets Addams apart from someone like Edward Gorey is the fact that much of his dark humor is laced with plain old silliness. In particular, he gradually created a family of campy horror characters in his cartoons that became the basis of the cult-classic television program, "The Addams Family" (1964-66). The show is a prime example of mid-60's monster chic, a phenomenon which serves as a handy way to classify the Haunted Mansion if you really must situate it within an immediate cultural context. (Other examples of the genre would be "The Munsters," "Milton the Monster," new cereals like Frankenberry and Count Chocula, and all those local "Creature Feature" shows in which a sepulchral host in heavy makeup cracks dreadful jokes and shows rotten old horror movies. And there is gobs of other stuff you would only know about if you grew up during that era.)

If I know anything at all about my readership, I recognize that I am now treading on holy ground.

I've now written a new post dealing exclusively with the television program and its influence on Davis. Read it HERE.

Some of you may be surprised to learn that there are only about 150 "family" cartoons in Addams' entire output, and even that number demands a great many debatable inclusions, like ones that feature an Uncle Fester-ish character as a medieval torturer or as a modern insurance salesman. If you are strict in your definitions, there are only a few dozen "family" cartoons. Nevertheless, they are the main reason Addams became famous beyond The New Yorker's readership. By the late sixties, if not earlier, he was truly a cartoonist superstar.

Seeing as how (1) the Haunted Mansion was being developed at just this time, and (2) the fact that "creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky" became the basic formula for the attraction, it would be surprising if there were no influence from Charles Addams in its development. So is there? Well, yes and no. As we shall see, Addams was indeed a direct inspiration for both Ken Anderson and Marc Davis, and yet there is nothing in the finished Mansion that is incontrovertibly inspired by Addams. That is probably no accident, as we shall also see.


Ken Anderson and Charles Addams

It seems that no one has ever noticed that some of Ken Anderson's concept sketches for the Haunted Mansion were directly inspired by Charles Addams cartoons. I realize that in the absence of written evidence, that's a strong claim, but I think the proof is there.

This important Anderson sketch is the granddaddy of all the HM concept art leading eventually to the Grand Ballroom. It's often reproduced, and many of you have long been familiar with it. We've posted it more than once ourselves:

Anderson had the following 1952 cartoon in front of him when he drew his ballroom sketch in 1957 or 58.

"The little dears! They still believe in Santa Claus."

Besides the general resemblance of the room, note especially the sliding doors, which are practically identical. Perhaps

you're impressed but still hesitant about claiming direct inspiration. In that case, let me call your attention to the chandelier.

Anderson has done little more than reposition a few elements in Addams' sketch. Even the freakin' cobweb is in the same place.

Anderson's organ neatly replaces the fireplace in Addam's sketch, but he didn't necessarily let it go to waste.
We find a fireplace with a shattered mirror overhead in a different Anderson sketch of a similar kind of
room, so it's possible that he appropriated that element of Addams' cartoon for use elsewhere.

By 1954 no less than four anthologies of Addams' cartoons had been published, so there was no problem
accessing even his oldest work. The next example features a cartoon that first appeared in 1939.

First, take a look at this Anderson sketch from the 1957-58 period:

It's safe to say that Ken had the following cartoon in front of him while he was executing that sketch:

The doors are virtually identical and in the same area in both sketches, and there is even something that looks
like a reflex of the tall, rounded windows in Ken's piece if you look closely. That's impressive, but once again,
is it really safe to claim with absolute certainty that Anderson did his sketch with this cartoon in front of him?

(  loving this . . . loving this  )

Mmmm...yeah, it's safe.

Anderson's interest in Addams was not confined to the "family" cartoons, since there are plenty
of macabre visuals elsewhere in the Addams oeuvre. A tip o' the hat goes to GRD for pointing out to
me that another well-known Anderson sketch was probably inspired in part by an Addams cartoon.

First, Ken Anderson:

Next, Charles Addams:

And here's the tell-tale detail that seals the deal.

We're getting used to this by now. You know, it's almost as if Anderson deliberately
left clues in these sketches indicating his source. Fun to think so, anyway.

Here's a sketch more typical of what Addams usually produced for the magazine. There's no trace
of the gothic; it's a completely modern setting. And yet it's still got a usable, macabre gag in it:

And Anderson (Alt):

If this pairing stood alone, I'd be a lot more cautious in my claims, but in light of what we have now learned, I'm

inclined to mark it down as another direct hit, even without a smoking-gun detail to confirm it beyond all doubt.

So much for Ken "Father of the Haunted Mansion" Anderson. Overall, he seems to have been more interested in borrowing ideas from Addams for the house itself than taking gags and jokes (although see the above). The other great idea man in Mansion history, Marc Davis, did exactly the opposite: he lifted gag ideas from Addams, not architecture.


Marc Davis and Charles Addams

When Alice Davis retells the story about how Walt told Marc what the Haunted Mansion should look like, she usually drops Addams' name. According to her, Marc asked Walt if he wanted a house like the sort of thing you find in Charles Addams, to which Walt replied that he did not. The inside of the place could be as musty and decayed as the Imagineers liked, but he wanted the outside looking nice. Whether or not Alice's recollection is precise on this point, there can be no doubt that Davis did indeed plan to use gag ideas inspired by Charles Addams.

(Incidentally, it seems as usual that Ken Anderson gets short shrift in these discussions. We know that Walt's desire for a pristine Mansion pre-dates Marc's involvement by the simple fact that the house was already built that way before Davis came on board with this project, and we now know that already in the fifties Anderson was visualizing an Addams-like interior for the attraction. Just giving credit where credit is due, folks.)

For our first example, let's take a look at Davis's well-known concept sketch of the ballroom table:

Check out the "table popper," as he's sometimes been tagged. I prefer to call him Kilroy.

New photo! (Aug 2018) Here's the maquette figure:

pic: Duckzz at Micechat

Eventually Kilroy made it into the actual ride, of course.

As usual, the cartoony Davis figures became more realistic humans in the actual ride:

It seems to me this figure may well be inspired by "The Thing," who appeared in about 30 Addams cartoons. He only acquired that name with the TV program, and in the show he was only a hand, but in Addams' cartoons he was an unexplained, funny little man peeping out of nooks and crannies in the sketches, often peering through the balustrade of the upstairs balcony.

The Thing bears at least a passing resemblance to the "table popper" in Davis's sketch:

(Apropos of nothing at all, really; be it noted that this type of gag is not new. Here's "the Thing" in an 11th c. Abbey):

Update, August 2016: We have found solid evidence that Kilroy was consciously modeled after the Addams figure. All the AA figures in the HM were assigned "figure" numbers and names, most of these being very generic labels, as can be seen in the sample below, but the table popper is  identified as "Small 'Thing'." The quotation marks are conclusive proof, in my opinion, that this figure is indeed identical with Addams' "Thing."

Davis has made him a ghost, but the basic gag is the same.  (I call him Kilroy, because in the late 40's

"The Thing" in Addams cartoons resembled the famous "Kilroy was here" graffitum, which was made popular by

American GI's during the second World War and which continued as a pop culture phenomenon throughout the '50s.)

Kilroy as nose art (top) and on the WW2 memorial in Washington DC (bottom)

The idea of "The Thing" as a hand only is believed to be derived from a solitary 1954 Addams cartoon showing human arms sticking out of a phonograph. It's fun to compare this same cartoon with Marc Davis's concept painting of the Brick-Arm Guy, even though we'll probably never know if there's a conscious connection between the two.

In this next example we are again on solid ground. Curiously enough, it represents an Addams gag noticed not only by Marc Davis but also by Chuck Jones over at Warner Brothers, and it ended up in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It's possible that Davis took the idea from Jones without knowing where it originally came from, and it's even possible that this is all coincidence, but I think it's most likely that Marc was inspired by the same Addams sketch as Chuck.

That cartoon appeared in 1952.  Jones' "Broom-Stick Bunny" came out in 1956.

You'll have to look quickly, though, as the bat cage is barely glimpsed in passing.

Marc's sketch we've seen before, but it's always a delight to look at.
Look how much closer Marc's bat is to the Addams originals:

Anything else that looks like a smoking gun; that is, proof that Davis stole ideas directly from Addams? I think yes. Davis drew a concept sketch of a ghostly granny, rocking and knitting a . . . what the hell is that, anyway?  Whoever (or whatever) it's for, it has three arms.

 

Charles Addams, in fact, invented the weird-knitted-item part of this particular gag.

Addams himself used the sweater gag more than once. In this one, he's got granny doing the knitting, which is how Marc does it.

*cough cough* Excuse me *cough* while I open the window. Too much smoke in here. *cough* 
In fact, Davis himself makes explicit reference to Addams in his discussion of the "knitting granny" sketch: "And 'Grannie' sitting at the
banquet table, knitting the sweater with the three arms. A lot of that was very 'Charles Addams' " (The "E" Ticket Magazine 16 [Summer 1993], 23).

There is an even more interesting and direct linkage between Marc Davis's crazy

sweater and the "Addams Family" television program. See the discussion HERE.

Like Anderson, Davis did not confine his researches to Addams' "family" cartoons. There is a striking resemblance in tone if not in subject matter between many of Davis's ideas for changing portraits and some of Addams' thought-bubble cartoons in which spouses plot each others' demise. Davis seems to have confined these jokes to homicidal women, while Addams spread the guilt more evenly between the two sexes.

(If you don't get that one, you really need to work on your biblical literacy.)

What strikes me about so many of these Addams cartoons is how easily they could be transformed into two-panel changing portrait gags

of the type Davis produced, or conversely, how easily a Davis concept like the one above could be redone as a thought-bubble cartoon like this:

.    Play that Funky Music, White Boys

.          Marc Davis, X Atencio, and Claude Coats all did concept sketches of a ghostly chamber quartet or trio.

They're obviously using Ken Anderson's pump organ, as we've noted before, and Anderson in his written plans describes floating musical instruments in the ballroom, so this is another case where Anderson should get credit at least for the basic idea. It's harder to say who first visualized a group of formal, classical musicians, but whoever it was may have been inspired by Charles Addams:

Another hat tip to GRD

.            Till Death Us Do Part

.                Here's something interesting.  Several Addams cartoons feature lethal brides.

( Most readers think that's a branding iron she's holding )

They make you think of Constance, don't they? Especially this one:

Actually, this brings us to the subject of why nothing distinctly Addamsesque made it

into the Mansion, despite his demonstrable influence on the Mansion's two main idea men.

Beware of the Dark Side

It's common enough for discussions of Addams or of Gorey to content themselves with saying things like, "exploring the darker side of human nature" or "black humor" and letting it go at that, as if the simple use of qualifiers like "black" or "dark" had sufficient explanatory power. Unanswered is the question why we think such dreadful stuff is funny at all. I can only give my opinion, for what it's worth.

I think it's because it portrays an ironic distance between the world as we think it is, or more accurately, would like to think it is, and the way it often seems to actually be. Most of us, most of the time, are confident in the basic decency of the random people we come into contact with every day. If you didn't feel that way, you'd never leave your house. After all, there are dozens of opportunities—maybe hundreds—for someone to murder you every day, and it doesn't happen. You don't really expect the guy sitting next to you to be calmly planning your dismemberment any more than you would expect him to have three legs. So Addams shows us that he does indeed have three legs, reminding us how much our belief in a universe that is generally hospitable to good and peace loving people is a matter of faith, not proof. Or take Edward Gorey's most (in)famous work, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, a rhyming abecedarian resembling any number of other childrens' A-B-C books except that it calmly depicts children meeting sudden and often grisly deaths.

How does this manage to be funny? (And of course, not everyone thinks it does.) I think it's because it stands in contrast to the usual childrens' abecedarians, which depict a sunny, harmless world only marginally more true to life than Gorey's gory one. We teach our children to accept by faith the one as the norm and conceal the reality of the other one until they're able to handle it. And so we should, since so far the balance does tip in favor of the bright side. After all, the majority of our kids will manage to survive and will not meet the fate of Gorey's tykes. But we're haunted by the fact that the other is true to life at all, even if it's true less than 50% of the time. Humor is all about irony, the perception of a gap between appearance and reality. Is it not ironic that we must present only part of reality to our children as they grow up if we want them to be mentally and emotionally healthy? If we teach them to be utter realists right from the get-go, they'll end up as whimpering paranoiacs. In fact, it would be cruel not to withhold certain realities from them. Strange, if you think about it. Strange enough to be funny, in a sick sort of way.

As we discussed in Two Taboos, Disney is all about portraying the universe as a place generally hospitable to goodness. In any Disney story, if you're brave and true and keep plugging, things may look bad for awhile but you will come out on top in the end. Always. Walt once said that he himself was not a cynical person and didn't want cynical people working for him. That's much the same thing as what I'm saying here. So the point that Gorey wants to make is a point that Disney will not make, and even when that point is softened by silliness as in Charles Addams, he was still too far out of the light for Disney in the sixties.

In view of all that, it makes sense that those Davis gag ideas for the Mansion that give tacit recognition to the fact that sometimes the Devil wins were precisely the gag ideas that in the end were not used. The closest thing to an exception is the merry and murderous widow in the stretching portrait. Ironically, Walt said it was his favorite! Not ironically, it was the only element in the original Mansion that worked as a gateway for the Constance addition (as the widow is now identified as she).

But it's possible to take even the widow as a deluded fool who will not escape justice in the end, as we have argued elsewhere. You can partner up with Death, dear lady, but only for a time. It's a Faustian deal. He'll come for you too eventually. Maybe that's why Walt didn't read it as being too cynical, too "unDisney"?

But times do change, and a certain degree of recognition that the universe is not quite so consistently stacked in favor of the good guys as we would like to believe has become more and more accepted as appropriate information even for children. Like it or not, we have to take steps to protect them from molesters and abductors, so . . . whispers of Gorey reality will have to be part of their pre-K education. We sacrifice some of their innocence earlier than we used to.

This means that modern kids even at a very young age have been made at least vaguely aware of the dark side. Not surprisingly, this in turn means that even in entertainment venues, little kids routinely see stuff today that would have scared teenagers yesterday and even their parents a few days before that. What passed for "horror" in 1950s films wouldn't cut it as Halloween decorations today.

Cultural changes like this are probably why, for example, some of Tim Burton's edgy stuff is now provisionally admitted to the Magic Kingdom. And that's also why Constance is in the Haunted Mansion, a sour note in an otherwise seamless universe where genuine evil turns out to be an appearance and not a reality.

As a matter of fact, the story of Constance and her husbands seems like exactly the sort of thing Charles Addams might have cooked up, back in the day. So here's an unsettling thought (for some of us, anyway). If kiddie world has caught up with Charles Addams, can The Gashlycrumb Tinies be very far down the road? "Sesame Street has been brought to you today by the letter K . . . ."

Leftovers

I should acknowledge a couple of Addams cartoons that could conceivably be linked with things that are actually in the Mansion, even if it's not possible to claim anything more than that. Some of you will be convinced that there's a link, some not.

I don't even get the joke in this Addams cartoon (not an uncommon reaction to a lot of New Yorker cartoons, by the way). The eagle has got some money in his bill. That must mean something. Anyway, I have to admit that the general appearance of the sketch reminds me vaguely of the Mansion's graveyard, or concept art for it, or something. [Edit: Commenter mirdreams thinks it's a reference to death and taxes, the two certainties. Sounds right.]
 

In this next one, some may see inspiration for Marc Davis's Corridor of Doors concept sketches. It's possible.

Yet another hat tip to GRD

I have no doubt that other candidates could be found among the thousands of Addams sketches and cartoons.