File under: Lovich, Lene - "Loving Lene Lovich" - Introduction

We wrote the first draft of this blog just after the 65th birthday of Lisa Loring, who has since passed away and was the first actor to portray "Wednesday Addams" in a media production.  If you're reading this, you probably know, too, that Loring could really tear up the (F)rug "Drewing" on the 1964-66 television horrorcom, "The Addams Family," the first non-print media presentation of the Charles Addams comic strip family. But who would this woeful but winsome child, this Wednesday in long, twin tail braids, one day become?  Let's share a strange interlude and consider some options.  

First, we have this child and she can really dance. Not sure if she can sing, but she's already showing some performance promise, so let's just go with it.

Aside from the dancing, she's got potential!

• On her mother's side, Aunt Ophelia Frump. Note the hair-braid action, the ecstatic beauty, the dipsy-daisy head-gear of an Alphonse Mucha model from Czechoslovakia, 188?

Local Goddess, Carolyn Jones, marvelously channeling Local Goddess Jean Simmons, as Ophelia Frump.

• Then we have, of course, Morticia, née Frump, herself. In Morticia, we have,
• Braids, check.
• Ozma of Oz bows, check
• Institutional yet mod black shift with white, flat, pointed collar, check.

Perfect attire for a playroom designed by Hjalmar Poelzig of THE BLACK CAT (G. Ulmer, 1934) 

 

Cheerfully morbid and serene: Carolyn Jones, the first Morticia Addams, née Frump.

So we know who dresses Wednesday, rightfully, and we know what happened to Morticia Frump: She married Gomez Addams and most certainly dropped the Frump. She was multi-talented, too, as at home playing the shamisen as she was knitting sweaters for some Cthulu-like relative, decades before that became a "thing." We've heard her vocalize, perhaps sing, so we might assume that Wednesday could do the same. And never forget: Morticia could dance!  Thanks to David Turner for this clip:

Thanks, David!

And Bernie Casey gives us this--thanks Bernie!

Thanks, Bernie!

But back to little Wednesday, our favorite child of woe. Sure, all is delightfully melancholic and spacey as a kid living in mom and dad's torture mansion, but what happens when you get a little older and just want to get away from the old manse and kick up your Mary Janes?

Ah! At last we come to LOVING LENE LOVICH!  Imagine that we're the most bored of all teens, ever, sitting in a condominium complex "laundromat" somewhere in Florida, US, too balmy and bright, late in 1979 CE, when we pick up a very localized buy/sell weekly "rag" that, aside from adverts contains the week's local television programming and record reviews.  

    There, suddenly, we're looking at Wednesday Addams, again!  Or is it?

    Maybe it's that Mucha model by way of Louis Feuillade's LES VAMPIRES (1915). Sort of?  

It's neither; and, even better, it's Lene Lovich dressed in a white pinafore knock-kneed, grim-pouting, black hair braided.

Instant intrigue. Instant 'Wow!' She's Wednesday Addams-like but, at the same time, totally original, maybe coming closest, in look, to that Mucha model of another time.  And she's become a sensation in the UK!

And what better tonic to come home to--home to gloomy, industrial Michigan, US, from yet another miserable vacation in Florida--and with thanks to all that's true and unique, than Lene Lovich singing "Angels" and "Bird Song" on Don Kirschner's Rock Concert!

"Angels" from Local Goddess, Supremus Ordo, Lene Lovich.

The metadata says "1980" but pretty sure we first saw it in very 

late 1979 because that's when THOSE vacations stopped.

Lene Lovich's "Bird Song." 

We think we've got some Siren and Harpy business going on here. 

Then all Hades breaks loose when the Furies swoop in. And when 

did Billy Idol's "White Wedding" come out? Oooh...about 4-years 

later. Just sayin'.

Finally! Someone we could relate to but by way of tv's Wednesday Addams of 1964-66, with some Morticia, and Ophelia tiptoe-ing in.  

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.  We know there's a 9-year age difference between Lisa Loring/Wednesday Addams and Lene Lovich, but if the Frump family line continued as it did, I don't think it would have made much difference. And this is all just a strange interlude anyway...

Okay, let's say, then, that we don't know what happened to Wednesday Addams. After all, she's a character of fiction, an imagining. But wouldn't it make some sense that, whatever she decided to do with her life (this is all probably covered by the Jenny Ortega Show, but we haven't watched it yet) she'd at least share a style sense with Lene? 

And, considering her background during the period 1964-1966 CE, isn't it all in the realm of possibility that Wednesday would one day head off to art school, seek out Salvador Dali, record a song about Santa Claus, be in the audience when Chuck Berry recorded, "My Ding-a-Ling," and work with Herman Brood? Arthur Brown? The Residents? Thomas Dolby? 

Or how about this: Lene is Wednesday's slightly older cousin from the Eastern European branch of the Frump family?  There has to be some Eastern European in Frump somewhere; how can there not be? 

    Thanks and peace to you, Lisa Loring, for first bringing Wednesday to life and giving her such                 awesome dance moves.   

We'll keep on LOVING LENE LOVICH (LLL) in these parts because she's out there performing and doing her thing as only she can, and that's just so beautiful and inspiring. More LLL posts to come but, for now, it's time to troupe on.  Thank you for your attention.  If you're LLL, we love you! --  KNIVES IN KNOTS