Herb Powell

The Simpson family are the fictional characters featured in the animated television series ''The Simpsons''. The Simpsons are a nuclear family consisting of married couple Homer and Marge and their three children, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. They live at 742 Evergreen Terrace in the fictional town of Springfield, United States, and they were created by cartoonist Matt Groening, who conceived the characters after his own family members, substituting "Bart" for his own name. The family debuted on Fox on April 19, 1987, in ''The Tracey Ullman Show'' short "Good Night" and were later spun off into their own series, which debuted on Fox in the U.S. on December 17, 1989.

Alongside the five main family members, there are a number of other major and minor characters in their family. The most commonly recurring characters are Homer's father Abraham "Grampa" Simpson; Marge's sisters Patty and Selma Bouvier; and the family's two pets, Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II. Other family members include Homer's mother Mona Simpson, Homer's half-brother Herbert Powell, Marge's mother Jacqueline Bouvier, and other minor relatives.

Concept and origins

Creation

Groening conceived of the idea for the Simpsons in the lobby of James L. Brooks's office. Brooks had asked Groening to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts, which Groening initially intended to present as his ''Life in Hell'' series. However, when Groening realized that animating ''Life in Hell'' would require the rescinding of publication rights for his life's work, he chose another approach and formulated his version of a dysfunctional family. He named the characters after his own family members – his father Homer, his mother Margaret, and his younger sisters Lisa and Maggie. He substituted "Bart", an anagram of "brat", for his own name, and modeled the character after his older brother, Mark.

The five family members were given simple designs so that their facial emotions could easily be changed with almost no effort and so that they would be recognizable in silhouette. Groening submitted only basic sketches to the animators and assumed that the figures would be cleaned-up in production. However, the animators merely re-traced his drawings, which led to the crude appearance of the characters in the initial short episodes. The Simpson family made their debut on April 19, 1987, in ''The Tracey Ullman Show'' short "Good Night". In 1989, the shorts were adapted into ''The Simpsons'', a half-hour series airing on the Fox Broadcasting Company. The Simpson family remained the main characters on this new show.

Casting

Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, and Yeardley Smith all began voicing their characters on ''The Tracey Ullman Show''. Nancy Cartwright was the only one of the group who had been trained to be a voice actor while Castellaneta had done some voice over work in Chicago. Castellaneta and Kavner had been part of the regular cast of ''The Tracey Ullman Show'' and voices were needed for the shorts, so the producers decided to ask them to voice Homer and Marge rather than hire more actors. The producers decided to hold casting for the roles of Bart and Lisa. Yeardley Smith had initially been asked to audition for the role of Bart, but casting director Bonita Pietila believed her voice was too high. Smith later recalled, "I always sounded too much like a girl. I read two lines as Bart and they said, 'Thanks for coming!'" Smith was given the role of Lisa instead. On March 13, 1987, Nancy Cartwright went in to audition for the role of Lisa. After arriving at the audition, she found that Lisa was simply described as the "middle child" and at the time did not have much personality. Cartwright became more interested in the role of Bart who she found more fascinating because he was described as "devious, underachieving, school-hating, irreverent, ndclever." Matt Groening let her try out for the part instead, and upon hearing her read, gave her the job on the spot.

The Simpson family

The Simpsons are a family who live at 742 Evergreen Terrace in the town of Springfield in the United States. The state in which in this town is located is never specified, however they do have snow and sometimes wear sweaters in the fall. It's a running joke in the show to be as vague and ambiguous as possible whenever hinting at which U.S. state the town of Springfield might be located in. Homer, the father, works as a safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, a position at odds with his careless, buffoonish personality. He is married to Marge Simpson, a stereotypical American housewife and mother. They have three children: Bart, a ten-year-old troublemaker; Lisa, an eight-year-old child prodigy; and Maggie, a toddler who rarely speaks, but communicates by sucking on a pacifier. The family owns a dog, Santa's Little Helper, and a cat, Snowball II. Both pets have had starring roles in several seasons. Despite the passing of yearly milestones such as holidays or birthdays, the Simpsons do not physically age and still appear as they did at the end of the 1980s. Although the family is dysfunctional, many episodes examine their relationships and bonds with each other and they are often shown to care about one another.

Homer Simpson

Homer Jay Simpson (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) is the protagonist of the show and the father of the Simpson family. He embodies several American working class stereotypes: he is crude, overweight, incompetent, clumsy, thoughtless and a borderline alcoholic. He has occasionally displayed flashes of great intellect and fitness whenever the situation calls for it, and an integrity reflecting his own values, including a fierce devotion to and protectiveness of his family. His voice started out as an impression of Walter Matthau but eventually evolved into a more robust voice during the second and third season of the half-hour show, allowing Homer to cover a fuller range of emotions. Homer has since become one of the most influential fictional characters and has been described by the UK newspaper ''The Sunday Times'' as the greatest comedic creation of modern time. He has inspired an entire line of merchandise, and his catchphrase, the annoyed grunt "D'oh!", has been included in the ''Oxford English Dictionary''. During the production of the episode ''Insane Clown Poppy'' the writers toyed with the idea of giving Homer a long lost illegitimate biological daughter, but when the shows showrunner and writer Mike Scully, as well as Matt Groening rejected the idea, the writers changed the story so the clown Krusty would be the one who finds he has a lost daughter.

Marge Simpson

Marjorie Jacqueline "Marge" Simpson (née Bouvier, voiced by Julie Kavner) is the well-meaning and extremely patient wife of Homer and mother of Bart, Lisa and Maggie. She often acts as the voice of reason, but displays exaggerated behavior traits of stereotypical mothers and takes the blatant dysfunctionality of her family for granted, unlike the other family members, who are aware that they are eccentric. Her most notable physical feature is her blue hair, styled into an improbably high beehive. Julie Kavner received a Primetime Emmy Award in 1992 for voicing Marge in the episode "I Married Marge". For her performance in ''The Simpsons Movie'', Kavner received a nomination for "Best Voice Acting in an Animated Feature" at the 2007 Annie Awards, but lost to Ian Holm in ''Ratatouille''. Kavner's emotional performance in the movie got positive reviews and one critic said she "gave what must be the most heartfelt performance ever". Part of Kavner's contract says that she will never have to promote ''The Simpsons'' on video because she does not want to "destroy the illusion for children". In 2008, CityNews published an article entitled "Top 10 Greatest TV Moms of All Time", and placed Marge in eighth spot.

Bart Simpson

Bartholomew JoJo "Bart" Simpson (voiced by Nancy Cartwright) is the eldest child and only son in the family—at age 10. Bart's most prominent character traits are his mischievousness, rebelliousness, disrespect for authority and sharp wit. During the first two seasons of ''The Simpsons'', Bart was the show's main character. The name "Bart" is an anagram of the word "brat". Groening conceived Bart as an extreme version of the typical misbehaving child character, merging all of the extreme traits of characters such as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn into one person. Groening's older brother Mark provided most of the inspiration for Bart. Bart's catchphrase "Eat My Shorts" was an ad-lib by Cartwright in one of the original table readings, harking back to an incident when she was at college. In 1998, ''Time'' magazine selected Bart as 46th of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, and the only fictional character to make the list. He had previously appeared on the cover of the December 31, 1990 edition. Bart is rebellious and frequently escapes without punishment, which led some parents' groups and conservative spokespeople to believe he provided a poor role model for children. This prompted George H. W. Bush to rally, "We're going to keep trying to strengthen the American family. To make them more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons." Bart, and other Simpsons characters, have appeared in numerous television commercials for Nestlé's Butterfinger candy bars from 1990 to 2001, with the slogan ''"Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger!"''

Lisa Simpson

Lisa Marie Simpson (voiced by Yeardley Smith) is the eldest daughter and middle child of the family. She is an extremely intelligent 8-year-old girl, one of the most intelligent characters on the show. Lisa's political convictions are generally socially liberal. She is a vegetarian, and a supporter of the Free Tibet movement,Lisa yells "Free Tibet!" after winning the school spelling bee. and while still supportive of the Christian church in which she was raised, Lisa became a practicing Buddhist following her decision to follow the Noble Eightfold Path. She is musically proficient on the saxophone; besides the occasional riff during the opening credit sequence Carole King's Jazzman and Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street have been prominently placed during episodes. In the ''Tracey Ullman Show'' shorts, Lisa was more of a "female Bart" and was equally mischievous. As the series progressed, Lisa began to develop into a more intelligent and more emotional character with "Krusty Gets Busted

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