“Racing came more naturally to Charlie [Addams] than to Philip [Hamburger] and me; he has always been a collector of fast cars and in his youth he used to take part in races out on Long Island. He likes both fast cars and very old ones: in the nineteen-forties, he received as a present from the playwright Philip Barry, then living in East Hampton, a 1928 Mercedes-Benz, which Ellen and Philip Barry had driven on the Riviera in the gaudy twenties (the car was sacred for having been occupied by, among others, Sara and Gerald Murphy, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Léger, and Picasso) and which eventually died, much mourned, in Charlie’s arms. Today [1975] he owns a 1926 Bugatti, a 1933 Aston-Martin, and, for purposes of ordinary transportation, a 1973 Alfa-Romeo.”

And yes, he did base Morticia on his wife.