{"id":11233,"date":"2024-04-10T15:46:29","date_gmt":"2024-04-10T15:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11233"},"modified":"2024-04-21T13:07:12","modified_gmt":"2024-04-21T13:07:12","slug":"the-sad-fate-of-carolyn-jones-the-original-morticia-addams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11233","title":{"rendered":"The sad fate of Carolyn Jones, the original Morticia Addams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

The Ringwood Music and Dramatic Society production of the hit Broadway musical \u2018The Addams Family\u2019 this week is the latest in a long run of versions of the original one-panel cartoon series created by cartoonist Charles Addams that first appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 1938 and ran for years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The tales of a wealthy family who are not aware that their macabre tastes are unusual spawned a hit 1960s television series that has remained a cult favourite, sequels and specials, two feature films and the successful Broadway musical that will be staged by the RMDS at The Barn, Ringwood School, April 10-13.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The central character of Morticia, glamorous and imperious, witty and witchy, was played on the TV show by American actress Carolyn Jones opposite John Astin as her husband Gomez. ‘I loved that show,\u2019 she told me. \u2018I was sorry to see it go. Morticia was the perfect role for me because my sense of humour is just slightly off-centre.\u2019<\/p>\n

That extended to her attitude to life. When I interviewed her in late 1982, she told me she had been sick but she did not tell me she was dying. She described a terrifying incident on a plane trip one year earlier.’It was like something from a horror movie where you see the knife go in and bright red blood spurts out,\u2019 she said. On a night flight from Dallas to Los Angeles, Jones told her then fianc\u00e9, Canadian actor Peter Bailey-Britton, ‘Honey, I don\u2019t feel too well. I think I\u2019m gonna go to the bathroom.’<\/p>\n

She made it just inside the door. \u2019Suddenly, the whole wall in back of that little john was bright red,\u2019 she said. \u2018I spent the rest of the flight throwing up blood. I was so scared, I didn\u2019t know what the hell was going on. They rolled me out of the airport and into the hospital and took out most of my stomach.’<\/p>\n

Jones told me the cause had been bleeding ulcers but the truth was that she had been diagnosed with colon cancer. She had more surgery when she was working on her last TV series, ‘Capitol’, in the week she married Bailey-Britton. She died aged 53 on August 3, 1983.<\/p>\n

She made many movies and TV shows and in 1958 she starred with Elvis Presley in ‘King Creole’, the last film the king of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll made before he reported for military duty. Jones had a terrible cold and was running a temperature of 103. ‘It was good that I was supposed to be dying in the film,\u2019 she said, \u2018because I felt like I was. I think I looked like it, too. I asked him, \u201cIsn\u2019t there some way you can get around kissing me because I\u2019m so germy that I\u2019m gonna kill you.\u201d He said, \u201cThat\u2019s alright; maybe it\u2019ll get me out of the army\u201d and he necked away like crazy. He went off to the army and I took to my bed for two weeks.\u2019<\/p>\n

Caolyn Jones died young but she said she had always loved her work and it was her child, her baby. ‘I didn\u2019t have kids and I need this. I need to work,\u2019 she said. \u2018When I work, I feel better. When I work, I can do anything. When I\u2019m not workiing, I\u2019m facrumpsing around like an old biddy, snarling at everything. This, I like. I understand it. It\u2019s my life. As they say on those tee-shirts: showbiz is my life.<\/p>\n

Tickets for the RMDS show are available here\u00a0https:\/\/www.ticketsource.co.uk\/rmds<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett The Ringwood Music and Dramatic Society production of the hit Broadway musical \u2018The Addams Family\u2019 this week is the latest in a long run of versions of the original one-panel cartoon series created by cartoonist Charles Addams … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263,8,2257,15,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-music","category-recalling","category-television","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11233"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11257,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11233\/revisions\/11257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}