Lisa Loring, the actress who played Merlina Addams in the iconic television adaptation of The Addams FamilyHe died at the age of 64.
Loring died Saturday night (January 28) at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Calif.
His daughter Vanessa Foumberg told The Hollywood Reporter that Loring died from complications of a stroke caused by high blood pressure.
“He left in peace while his two daughters [Vanessa y Marianne] they held her hand,” he told the publication.
Loring’s friend Laurie Jacobson also reported her death on Facebook, writing that Loring was “embedded in the tapestry of pop culture and in our hearts forever as Merlina Addams.”
Loring is best known for her role as Merlina, the pale, pigtailed character obsessed with death, on the ABC sitcom the addams family. She took over the role at age six in 1964 and played the character for two years.
The actress laid the foundations for the character that would inspire subsequent adaptations of the addams family. Recently, she was praised as an inspiration for Jenna Ortega’s performance in the hit Netflix series merlin.
Loring’s dance called “The Drew,” in an episode where he teaches Largo to dance, was featured on the Netflix series when Ortega performed his own version of Merlina’s dance.
Lisa Ann DeCinces was born on February 16, 1958 in the Marshall Islands and moved to Los Angeles with her mother when she was very young. She received the stage name of Lisa Loring and began modeling when she was three years old.
His first television appearance was in 1964, in an episode of the NBC medical drama Dr Kildare.
Lisa Loring and Félix Silla, who played Uncle Thing in ‘The Addams Family’, together in 2001
(Getty Images)
After what the addams family finished its second season, a total of 64 episodes, Loring joined Phyllis Diller’s sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton (1966-1967).
He later participated in a variety of series including The Girl From UNCLE (1966-67), Fantasy Island Y barnaby jones (both from 1978). He landed a role as Cricket Montgomery in As the World Turns from 1980 to 1983.
Almost the entire original cast of the adams family reunited in 1977 for the NBC TV movie Halloween with the new Addams family.
With Loring’s death, John Astin, who played Homer Addams, Merlina’s father, is the last surviving member of the original cast of the addams family.
Later in the 1980s, he was cast in a series of films at the end of the decade, starring in Blood Frenzy Y Savage Harbor (both in 1987) and iced (1988). She is believed to have worked as a make-up artist on adult films under the name “Maxine Factor”.
He is survived by two daughters, Marianne and Vanessa.
