The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Uncle Fester From The Addams Family

Of all the many adaptations of "The Addams Family," based on Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons about a delightfully ghastly family of kooks and weirdos, the character who truly stands out is Uncle Fester, a monstrous vampire-meets-zombie-looking fellow: pale, hairless, and with bulging eyes, dressed in all black. He possesses an unrepentant taste for death and destruction and can turn on light bulbs with his mouth. Fester is also extremely friendly, and he adores his niece and nephew, Wednesday and Pugsley, and that warmth — along with all the other nuances and quirks — really came to define and flesh out the character thanks to the portrayal of Jackie Coogan. He co-starred as Uncle Fester in the perpetually rerun ABC sitcom version of "The Addams Family" from 1964 to 1966, playing him as the ultimate wacky uncle figure.

His work as Uncle Fester capped a long and storied career for Coogan, one of Hollywood's first stars and first child stars at that. His life took many tragic, improbable, and heartbreaking turns after those early successes and after his time on "The Addams Family," events far darker than way more soberingly serious than anything macabre that his TV family could ever enjoy or satirize. Here's a look into the saddest moments in the life of the late Jackie Coogan.

In 1923, according to the Los Angeles Times, the top-grossing movie star, the actor who filled up the most theaters the most consistently, was Jackie Coogan, who, at the age of nine, headlined films that outgrossed those starring older and better-remembered cinema idols like Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino. After co-starring with Charlie Chaplin in "The Kid," he acted in silent film-era hits like "Peck's Bad Boy," "Oliver Twist," and "Long Live the King." He was famous in every country that had movie theaters and it was hard for him to go out without attracting a crowd, he traveled in a private train car, and his face appeared on merchandise. But as quickly as success had come, Coogan's star fell quickly and hard. As he segued into adulthood, he aged out of the kid roles that made him famous and popular, and so Coogan was no longer offered big roles.

And there was also the matter of his parents squandering his fortune. For publicly criticizing his mother in the form of suing her for stealing the money he earned as an underage actor, MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, a staunch champion of the virtues of motherhood, according to Boyhood Studies, blacklisted Coogan. He had difficulty finding work at any of the major Hollywood studios. Coogan appeared in just three films between 1927 and 1935, and settled into a career as a bit player in B-movies.

While living in San Jose, California, and briefly attending Santa Clara University in the early 1930s (from which he'd later drop out over poor grades), according to "Jackie Coogan: The World's Boy King," Jackie Coogan befriended 22-year-old Brooke Hart, son of a local wealthy department store owner. One night, according to his family, he left the store, and then never came back. Hours later, the Hart family received an anonymous call announcing that Hart had been kidnapped, and they demanded a ransom for his safe return.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Hart kidnapping occurred during the midst of the case of the missing baby of aviator Charles Lindbergh, and tensions and emotions were high over that high-profile crime. That fear, and the public's demand for swift and brutal justice, led to violence. Brooke Hart didn't survive the ordeal, and he was later found murdered. San Jose police subsequently arrested two men, Thomas Thurmond and John M. Holmes, and once the community learned of their capture, a group of about 10,000 people descended on the jailhouse where they'd been detained, pulled the men out, and lynched them in a public park over the course of three hours. Coogan participated in the mob — spotted by eyewitnesses manning and doling out the ropes that would be used to issue a death by hanging to Thurmond and Holmes. He was never tried for any crime.

Just two years after his public divorce from mega-star Betty Grable in 1939, Jackie Coogan romantically regrouped and married for the second time, to dancer and actor Flower Parry. They met in 1941, when Coogan was a patron of the nightclub where Parry, seven years his junior, was working as a scantily clad, circulating "flower girl," according to "Jackie Coogan: The World's Boy King." The couple quickly married later that year in Nevada, just months after their meeting and just a few months before the birth of their son, John Anthony Coogan, per IMDb. A little over a year after welcoming their first and only child, Parry filed for divorce, in June 1943, according to the Los Angeles Times. The divorce decree was granted by a judge when Coogan was in Europe, flying combat missions for the U.S. Army Air Force in World War II.

In 1961, according to the Valley Times, Coogan was still legally obligated to pay $100 monthly child support to Parry for the benefit of their son, who was over the age of 18 by that point. Coogan successfully petitioned a judge to lower the monthly sum to $70, on account of how he was too destitute to pay the full amount.

Marijuana possession is perfectly legal in many states in the 21st century, but in the early 1960s, it was treated by law enforcement agencies across the United States as an extremely serious crime, and if a celebrity was linked to the use of the drug, it could seriously tarnish both their image and career. 

According to "Jackie Coogan: The World's Boy King," Jackie Coogan, post-childhood stardom but before his comeback vehicle with "The Addams Family," was investigated by police for suspicion of drug possession. A friend visited Coogan at his Malibu, California, home and left his car parked outside. Inside the glove compartment, investigators found a negligible amount of marijuana, prompting police to raid the home proper, where they found a trove of drugs said to be enough to be made into 200 joints. Coogan and two friends in the house at the time (a female sex worker on the premises was dismissed without being charged) were arrested and detained, while Coogan was released after making his $2,625 bail. The actor avoided jail time in a highly publicized trial that was delayed after Coogan contracted a severe case of the mumps.

Two months after Coogan evaded prison, his son with Flower Parry, John Anthony Coogan, was arrested in southern California on a charge of suspicion of immoral conduct involving two underage women. Like his father, the younger Coogan escaped jail and paid a small fine.

Per "Jackie Coogan: The World's Boy King," Jackie Coogan may have inherited his father's tendency toward alcoholism, and his drinking ramped up considerably after the kidnapping and murder of his friend, Brooke Hart, and his role in the deaths of the two men arrested for the crimes. His life would be marked by periods of heavy alcohol consumption, some of which held major consequences. In 1959, according to "Jackie Coogan: The World's Boy King," Coogan crashed his roadster into two other vehicles — parked cars — and wound up in the hospital to be treated for multiple abrasions about the head and face. After submitting to a breath test, police ruled his blood-alcohol level to be 0.24, well above the legal limit in California at the time, and Coogan paid a large fine.

Alcoholism is among many health problems Coogan suffered. In the early 1980s, according to the Associated Press, he endured a series of strokes and then experienced kidney failure, which meant he had to undergo routine kidney dialysis for the remainder of his life. According to The Telegraph, Coogan died of cardiac arrest at Santa Monica Hospital in California in 1984. He was 69 years old.