Attempted Bloggery: Blog Post No. 5200: A Charles Addams Movie Theater Scream

Saturday, February 14, 2026

Blog Post No. 5200: A Charles Addams Movie Theater Scream

Original Charles Addams art published in The New Yorker issue of February 8, 1947 shows a theater full of moviegoers and their shared reaction to a big screen scream.

Charles Addams
Original art
The New Yorker, February 8, 1947, p. 27

Seventy years after publication, the artwork to this classic cartoon was sold at Swann Auction Galleries in the Illustration Art sale:

Charles Addams
Swann Galleries listing of December 14, 2017

https://www.swanngalleries.com/auction-lot/the-new-yorker-cartoons-charles-addams.-movie_2424b90934

Swann, it will be noted, did not provide the publication date in The New Yorker, or even the year. They did document the drawing's appearances in three Addams collections, but the 1947 book is correctly titled Addams and Evil.

Charles Addams
Swann Galleries item description

With such a classic original selling for $31,200 (including the 30% buyer's premium), well above the 2017 presale estimate of $12,000 to $18,000, one might wonder what an Addams rough drawing of the same subject might be worth in today's market. Well, thanks to Swann Galleries's recent Illustration Art sale, we actually can provide the answer. An unusually detailed pencil study from a Vermont collection went up on the auction block in December of 2025. Perhaps the owners were aware that Swann had sold the original finished drawing eight years earlier.

Charles Addams
Preliminary art
The New Yorker, February 8, 1947, p. 27

Charles Addams
Swann Galleries listing of December 4, 2025

https://www.swanngalleries.com/auction-lot/_C17DDFE222

Despite the above, the correct date of publication in The New Yorker is February 8, 1947, as I've already indicated.

Note that in the intervening years, Swann's top buyer's premium has come down from 30% to 27%. There's something to be said for competition. Still, $9,525 with said premium is a remarkable price for a New Yorker rough. Indeed, many Addams New Yorker originals in this blog's archives have sold for less than that. Today, though, Addams's work continues to appreciate and that seems to be carrying over even to the roughs.

Here's the relevant page from Addams and Evil (1947):

https://dn790006.ca.archive.org/0/items/HumorMagazines/Addams%20And%20Evil%20(1947).pdf

And here's a grouping showing how the drawing appeared in rough form, in the original art, and finally in the pages of The New Yorker:

Charles Addams
Preliminary art
The New Yorker, February 8, 1947, p. 27

Charles Addams
Original art
The New Yorker, February 8, 1947, p. 27

Charles Addams
The New Yorker, February 8, 1947, p. 27

With a spot drawing by Morris Neuwirth and a cartoon by Charles Addams

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1947-02-08/flipbook/026/

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I have a fair degree of confidence that the spot artist on the page opposite the Addams drawing is Morris Neuwirth (1912-1985) and that the toll lanes depicted here relate to something built by Robert Moses. Some of Neuwirth's work is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.