FAMILY MATTERS is a generations long reckoning with family myth, loss and transformation from the end of the Civil War into the 1970s, showing how family suffering metamorphosized into comedy on an abiding public, cultural scale in the original The Addams Familytelevision series of 1964-1966 created by the author’s father, David Levy, from the original Charles Addams New Yorker cartoons. It is also the story of how the author’s parents though drawn from widely divergent backgrounds strove to realize the American Dream. Levy’s ancestors derived from Jewish Eastern Europe, Lucile Wilds’ from Germany and Anglo-Welsh aristocracy. The breakdown of that effort both as a slow ebbing and with an abrupt jolt provides the narrative drive and climax of FAMILY MATTERS.
David Levy rose to prominence in radio in We The People which in WWII reached half of America’s households, then after a detour in the wartime Treasury Department running War Bond drives, in television as one of its pioneers, eventually becoming Head of Programming at NBC and lifting that network to the first rank with shows like Dr. Kildare and Bonanza while bringing Hollywood to television with Saturday Night At The Movies. The Addams Family climaxed his career, one of the creation of fantasies publicly rewarded.
Lucille Wilds married him multiple times, publicly in 1942, a perfect match for a husband striving against antisemitism and for acceptance in the then largely WASP world of the great advertising agencies, the source of creative content for radio and early TV. She was ‘Queen of the Models’ in the 1930s and 1940s, ‘The Models’ Miss America of 1939, ‘ and the country’s ‘Dream Girl’ of 1940′ who became the supreme hostess David Levy needed at his side-and as time passed, the Ultimate Mother, Master Builder, and dominant force within her family she learned to shield from his…. That their union lasted nearly thirty years despite their divisions is a testament to the power of love to override glaring opposites, for a time….
FAMILY MATTERS traces the links between private and public, myth and fact, reality and the transformations we all make to understand ourselves and the ideals we raise from our warring strands of inheritance and experience.
Table of Content
CONTENTS
FLASH FORWARD 3
Foreword 4
Blueprints 6
One Evening in 1968 7
PART ONE: THE DREAM IN OPERATION 13
MY BIRTH, THEIR MARRIAGES 15
Arrival 16
What I Believed 17
My Parents’ Standard Versions 19
Revelations 23
The Real Story 31
Further Complications 37
Letters 42
THE WHIRLWIND AND THE BEAUTY 43
‘Gar’ 44
The Whirlwind 45
Dream Girl 52
First Flight 59
Return 67
AN EARTHLY PARADISE 71
Poseur 72
Tales of Great Neck and Washington, 1942-1949 73
Memory Awakens, 1946 78
Apples and Irises 81
Second Flight 83
What I Remember 83
What I Forgot 84
The Long Return 89
The Wolf 94
The Earthly Paradise 96
Night Solace/Mothers 101
MANHATTAN STORIES 103
Leaving Great Neck 104
Manhattan 106
42nd St. Drive 112
Machiavelli on Park Avenue 113
The Scurrilous Letter 113
A Struggle of Signs and Symbols 115
Aftermath 121
The Good Wife’s Guide 124
The World According to ‘The Correct Thing’ 126
Hairdresser 131
Master of the House 132
The Cat 137
MIDNIGHT IN MANHATTAN 139
War Games 140
Kidnapping 144
An Awkward Boy 146
Oscar 154
Linda, Memory, Destiny 155
Linda 155
Memory & Destiny 160
Waffles 163
Jonah in Manhattan 164
Shazzam 172
PART TWO: MAKING THE DREAMS 173
THE LEVY MYTH 175
Waldorf Astoria 176
Myth and Story 177
The Mouse 179
The Descent from Garchmarski 180
The Descent from Levy 185
The Potasch Addition 188
The Affair 193
Abner 194
A Trip to Philadelphia 196
Disowned 200
The Myth of a Golden Age 207
The Mustache 210
THE WILDS MYTH 211
Bananas 212
Where Do We Experience Experience? 213
The Woman Who Knows 215
Femme Fatale 216
Matron 222
A Welsh Lord 225
A Man Larger Than Life 226
Grandfather Daddy Wilds 233
Despite Clay Feet 236
Aftermath 240
Gown 242
PART THREE: SURVIVAL & REBELLION 243
SURVIVAL, WESTHAMPTON 245
A Dinner in Westhampton Village 246
One Spring Day in 1950 247
Police Chase 249
An Ocean House 250
Daluanda 254
Master Builder 257
Idylls 258
Unk & Jill 265
A Spring Day in 1958 269
On The Beach 271
REBELLION, WESTON PRELUDE 275
Washington vs. Weston 276
The Closet 282
Going to Extremes 283
King 289
Weston Idylls 290
An Old Barn in Weston 294
Weston Woods 295
REBELLION, WESTON OUTBREAK 297
The Lord’s Prayer 298
Another Ending, A New Beginning 301
Jeanne 303
A Stolen Car 309
A Long Walk 310
DAWN IN BOSTON 313
Arrival and Arrival and…. 314
Quantum Dreams and the Physics of Love 322
PART FOUR: FAILURE AND METAMORPHOSES 325
Debacle at NBC 326
The Chameleons 331
The Addams Family: An American Family 336
Genesis 336
Triumph 339
The Real Addams Family 344
Denouement 352
Anniversary Card 354
APPENDIX 357
FAMILY MATTERS IN 28 POEMS OF FAMILY AND FRIENDS 359
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 415
VISUAL ESSAYS: view at: lanceleeauthor.com/fmvisualessays.html
About the author
My poems, stories and articles have appeared widely in both American and English journals. Books of poetry include Wrestling With The Angel (1990), Becoming Human (2001), Human/Nature (2006), Seasons of Defiance (2010), which placed as a finalist in the 8th. National USA Book Awards, Transformations combining art and poetry (2013), and Homecomings (2015). Elemental Natures, selected lyrics, sequences, and prose, appeared in 2020. I am a recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and various other scholarships Among plays, Rasputin and Gambits were produced at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. Time’s Up and Fox, Hound, and Huntress were premiered in Los Angeles; publications include Time’s Up; Fox, Hound & Huntress; and Time’s Up and Other Plays.I founded graduate playwrighting and the graduate screenwriting programs at USC and California State University, Northridge, respectively. I have published a screenwriting textbook, The Understructure of Writing for Film & Television, and A Poetics for Screenwriters, as well as The Death and Life of Drama, reflections on writing and human nature.My works also include a novel, Second Chances (2001). A children’s novel, Orpheus Rising, is forthcoming in the fall, 2021, and a shorter children’s book, The Tale of Brian and the House Painter Mervyn in the spring, 2022.My family is split between Los Angeles, where I helped establish the California State Park System in the Santa Monica Mountains, and London, where a married daughter lives in Crouch End, the family seat for generations on my wife’s side
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