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Grandmama Addams is one of the main characters from The Addams Family. She is the grandmother of Wednesday and Pugsley. In 1992 cartoon series and 2019 film, she is the mother of Gomez and Uncle Fester and the paternal grandmother of the Addams' children. She is a disrespectful old witch and mother who willingly helps with the dishes, cheats at solitaire, and is completely dishonest. She and Granny Frump are two different characters that have, overtime, been swapped, composited, and often used interchangeably.

Background[]

Grandmama Addams is an aged witch who concocts potions and spells, and dabbles in fortune telling and knife throwing. Grandmama first appeared along with the then-unnamed Addams family in Charles Addams' original cartoons published in The New Yorker, in which she was regularly illustrated with shoulder-length frizzy hair and a fringed shawl. Addams described Grandmama in a 1963 character synopsis as "a disrespectful old hag" and "foolishly good-natured ... a weak character [who] is easily led." In the original cartoon strips, the character was referred to as Grandma Frump, therefore making her Morticia's mother. For the original television series, her relationship to the family is retconned and she becomes Gomez's mother with a different Granny Frump remaining as Morticia and her sister Ophelia's mother. However, both the feature films conform to Charles Addams' original concept of Grandmama as Wednesday's and Pugsley's maternal grandmother. In the first film, Morticia and Fester discuss how "Mother and Father Addams" were killed by an angry mob, removing any possibility that Grandmama could be Gomez and Fester's mother. She also appeared as Fester's mother for the first time in the 1998-99 television series The New Addams Family.

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