Character Spotlight: Cousin Itt

I have to be honest: I'm not completely comfortable with this post. I'm going through with it based on much less concrete information than my usual standard, but the information I do have comes from the Paley Center for Media, and I'm willing to trust them.

The Addams Family is a franchise I'm sure you're all familiar with. Everyone knows the hit 60s tv show and its famous theme song, along with the two movies. Fewer people, but still many, know about the two cartoons, the 90s tv movie and series, and the pinball machine (and yes, as the best-selling pinball machine of all time, it deserves a mention). But relatively few people know that these characters originated as a series of New Yorker cartoons by Charles Addams, which debuted in August 1938.

Over time, the two characters presented in this panel - I hesitate to call them Morticia and Lurch because almost none of the characters have names in the comics - were joined by the patriarch of the family, the two children, the grandma, and the bald man. They didn't feature in every Charles Addams panel, but all of his work had a similar air of the strange and macabre that felt like it belonged in the same world.

One of the most memorable Addams Family members is Cousin Itt, who debuted in the episode "Cousin Itt Visits the Addams Family" (February 1965). He's a small, hirsute character who talks in squeaks and is apparently quite the ladies' man.

In The Paley Center's "We're Gonna Pay a Call on...The Addams Family", they write about Itt's creation:

Two more characters were added at [producer David] Levy’s suggestion: a disembodied hand. . .and a hair-covered relative who spoke total gibberish. The first became Thing, a reference to a previous New Yorker cartoon that had warned a worried mailman to “Beware of the Thing.” (This sign, in fact, appeared in the pilot episode). . .The latter creature was dubbed “Cousin Itt” and would not be a weekly regular but show up on an erratic basis. His sporadic appearances, however, quickly made him a favorite. Approximately three feet in height, his hair ran to floor length covering him entirely. He sometimes sported a hat and a pair of sunglasses just to offset the shag look. In anticipation of his appearance on the show, Addams drew a cartoon starring the hirsute creature answering the telephone with “This is It speaking” for the October 12, 1963, New Yorker issue. (For the series the furry cousin added an extra “T” to his name). 

Here's the comic in question:

As you can see, this panel was published over a year before the episode that introduced Cousin Itt. But as I said, I'm inclined to believe the Paley Center. For one thing, they're the Paley Center. But for another, this is the only character in the entire series of New Yorker cartoons that gets a name. And I think it makes a lot of sense if that's because the character originated on the tv show, where the rest of the characters got their names.