Carolyn Jones: 17 Finger-Snapping Facts About Morticia from ‘The Addams Family’
When she signed on to portray matriarch Morticia Addams on the classic 60s sitcom The Addams Family, actress Carolyn Jones did so because she was intrigued by the part, and not, as some assume, because her film career had been slowing down. For her, the driving force of life had always been the opportunity to act, and this seemed like a good opportunity to do exactly that.
The idea of typecasting — of her coming out of the show two years after its 1964 debut with Hollywood and the public only thinking of her as Morticia — wasn’t even a consideration. In fact, she still felt that way when the show concluded its run, though it wouldn’t be long before she would come to realize that it was actually a much bigger problem than she could have ever imagined.
Carolyn Jones was born on April 28, 1930 in Amarillo, Texas. And, as you’ll see in the facts below, it wasn’t an easy childhood, marred by family conflict and a severe asthma condition that forced her early years to be restricted
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filmography
FILM Midnight Lace (1981) with Mary Crosby, Gary Frank, Celeste Holm, Shecky Greene, and Susan Tyrrell The Dream Merchants (1980) with Mark Harmon, Vincent Gardenia, Morgan Fairchild, Howard Duff, Eve Arden, and Kaye Ballard Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff (1979) with Anne Heywood, Donald Pleasence, Robert Vaughn, Earl Holliman, Ronee Blakley, and Dorothy Malone Halloween with the New Addams Family (1977) with John Astin, Jackie Coogan, Ted Cassidy, Lisa Loring, and Ken Weatherwax Eaten Alive (1977) with Neville Brand, Mel Ferrer, Marilyn Burns, Stuart Whitman, and Robert Englund Little Ladies of the Night (1977) with David Soul, Louis Gossett Jr., Linda Purl, Clifton Davis, Paul Burke, Lana Wood, and Dorothy Malone Color Me Dead (1969) with Tom Tryon The Dance of Death (1969) with Laurence Olivier Heaven with a Gun (1969) with Glenn Ford, Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, Noah Beery Jr., Virginia Gregg, and Roger Perry A Ticklish Affair (1963) with Shirley Jones, Gig Young, Red Buttons, Edgar Buchanan, Edward Platt, and Billy Mumy •
Actress Carolyn Jones was born in Amarillo, Potter County, Texas on April 28, 1930 to Chloe Jeanette Southern and Julius Alfred Jones. Her parents separated during the early days of the Depression and her mother and younger sibling lived with her mother’s birth mother and her husband. Carolyn’s mother had been born in Texas and adopted by a family named the Southerns. The last name of Carolyn’s birth mother and her husband was Baker. As a child Carolyn is said to have suffered from asthma but did well in theater and speech in high school. Her love for films led her to go to California and be accepted into acting school, and she graduated in 1950. Some sources give her date of birth to be 1933 leading to the possible conclusion that she was underage when she left Texas for California to begin acting school. However, various newspaper accounts state that she graduated from Amarillo High School in 1947.
Her first feature film was a Paramount Pictures crime drama named “Turning Point” in 1952, a role in which she was uncredited, along with dozens of