Ernie Kovacs Weitere Stars
Ernie Kovacs; eigentlich Ernest Edward Kovacs war ein US-amerikanischer Schauspieler, Komiker und Musiker. Ernie Kovacs; eigentlich Ernest Edward Kovacs (* Januar in Trenton, New Jersey; † Januar in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Kalifornien) war ein. motorcycle-gloves.eu - Kaufen Sie Best of Ernie Kovacs günstig ein. Qualifizierte Bestellungen werden kostenlos geliefert. Sie finden Rezensionen und Details zu einer. This collection of material from Ernie Kovacs television shows is by no means complete. There are full episodes of his NBC morning show, (which were rerunned. Ihre Suche nach "ernie kovacs" ergab 16 Treffer. Sortieren nach: Bitte auswählen, Interpret A-Z, Interpret Z-A, Titel A-Z, Titel Z-A, Preis aufsteigend, Preis. Finden Sie perfekte Stock-Fotos zum Thema Ernie Kovacs sowie redaktionelle Newsbilder von Getty Images. Wählen Sie aus erstklassigen Inhalten zum. Das Beste von Ernie Kovacs: Der amerikanische Filmschauspieler Ernie Kovacs ist in Deutschland als Partner von Alec Guiness in „Unser Mann in Havanna“ .

Ernie Kovacs Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter Video
Ernie Kovacs - \While working in Vermont in , he became so seriously ill with pneumonia and pleurisy that his doctors didn't expect him to survive.
During the next year and a half, his comedic talents developed as he entertained both doctors and patients with his antics during stays at several hospitals.
By the time he was released his parents had separated, and Kovacs went back to Trenton, living with his mother in a two-room apartment over a store.
He began work as a cigar salesman, which resulted in a lifelong tobacco-smoking habit. Kovacs's first paid entertainment work was during as an announcer for Trenton's radio station WTTM.
He spent the next nine years with WTTM, becoming the station's director of special events; in this job he did things like trying to see what it was like to be run over by a train leaving the tracks at the last minute and broadcasting from the cockpit of a plane for which he took flying lessons.
Kovacs was also involved with local theater; a local newspaper published a photograph of him and the news that he was doing some directing for the Trenton Players Guild in early The sponsor was a local propane company.
Hosting these shows soon resulted in his becoming host of a program named Three to Get Ready , named for WPTZ's channel 3 spot on television dials.
Premiering in November , Three to Get Ready was innovative because it was the first regularly scheduled early morning 7—9am show in a major television market, predating NBC's Today by more than a year.
Prior to this, it had been assumed that few people would watch television at such an early hour. When rain was in the weather forecast, Kovacs would get on a ladder and pour water down on the staff member reading the report.
Kovacs once asked his viewers to send unwanted items to Channel 3; they filled the station's lobby. The only character no one ever saw inspired more gifts; he was Howard, the World's Strongest Ant.
From the time of his WPTZ debut, Howard received more than 30, gifts from Kovacs's viewers, including a mink-lined swimming pool. There were membership cards with by-laws and ties; the password was a favorite phrase of Kovacs's: "It's Been Real".
WPTZ did not begin broadcasting Today when it premiered on January 14, ; network influence caused the station to end Three to Get Ready at the end of March of that year.
Kovacs would walk through an imaginary neighborhood, talking with various characters such as Pete the Cop and Luigi the Barber. As with Three to Get Ready , there were some special segments.
The show made its debut on January 4, , with Kovacs losing creative control of the program soon after it was begun.
Both programs were canceled; Kovacs lost the local morning program for the same reason as Three to Get Ready —the broadcasting time was confiscated by the station's network in At WPTZ, Kovacs began using the ad-libbed and experimental style that would become his reputation, including video effects, superimpositions, reverse polarities and scanning, and quick blackouts.
He was also noted for abstraction and carefully timed non-sequitur gags and for allowing the fourth wall to be breached. Kovacs also liked talking to the off-camera crew and even introduced segments from the studio control room.
In one of Kovacs's Philadelphia broadcasts, Oscar Liebetrau, an elderly crew member who was known for often sleeping for the duration of the telecast, was introduced to the audience as "Sleeping Schwartz.
Kovacs's love of spontaneity extended to his crew, who would occasionally play on-air pranks on him to see how he would react. The sketch called for the magician to frequently hit a gong, which was the signal for a sexy female assistant to bring out a bottle and shot glass for a quick snort of alcohol.
Stagehands substituted real liquor for the iced tea normally used for the skit. Kovacs realized that he would be called upon to drink a shot of liquor for each successive gong.
He pressed on with the sketch and was quite inebriated by the end of the show. Kovacs helped develop camera tricks still common decades after his death.
His character Eugene sat at a table to eat his lunch, but as he removed items one at a time from a lunch box, he watched them inexplicably roll down the table into the lap of a man reading a newspaper at the other end.
When Kovacs poured milk from a thermos bottle, the stream flowed in a seemingly unusual direction. Never seen on television before, the secret was using a tilted set in front of a camera tilted at the same angle.
He constantly sought new techniques and used both primitive and improvised ways of creating visual effects that would later be done electronically.
One innovative construction involved attaching a kaleidoscope made from a toilet paper roll to a camera lens with cardboard and tape and setting the resulting abstract images to music.
Used on a camera and turning it could put Kovacs seemingly on the ceiling. Removing it from his mouth, Kovacs was able to exhale a puff of white smoke, all while floating underwater.
The trick: the "smoke" was a small amount of milk which he filled his mouth with before submerging. One of the special effects he employed made it appear as if he was able to look through his assistant, Barbara Loden 's, head.
The illusion was performed by placing a black patch on Loden's head and standing her against a black background while one studio camera was trained on her.
A second one photographed Kovacs, who used the studio monitor to position himself exactly so that his eye would appear to be looking through a hole in her head.
He also developed such routines as an all-gorilla version of Swan Lake , a poker game set to Beethoven 's Fifth Symphony , the skit Silent Show , in which Eugene interacts with the world accompanied solely by music and sound effects, parodies of typical television commercials and movie genres, and various musical segments with everyday items such as kitchen appliances or office equipment moving in sync to music.
Kovacs used extended sketches and mood pieces or quick blackout gags lasting only seconds. Kovacs reportedly disliked working in front of a live audience, as was the case with the shows he did for NBC during the s.
He found the presence of an audience distracting, and those in the seats frequently did not understand some of the more elaborate visual gags and special effects, which could only be appreciated by watching studio monitors instead of the stage.
Like many comedians of the era, Kovacs created a rotation of recurring roles. In addition to the silent "Eugene," his most familiar characters were the fey, lisping poet Percy Dovetonsils , and the heavily accented German radio announcer, Wolfgang von Sauerbraten.
Question Man, who answered viewer queries, was a satire on the long-run —56 radio series, The Answer Man. Question Man character in his radio monologues.
Kovacs never hesitated to lampoon those considered institutions of radio and television. Stage, screen, and radio notables were often guests.
Archie Bleyer , head of Cadence Records, came to chat one evening. Bleyer had been the long-time orchestra director for Arthur Godfrey 's radio and television shows.
He had been dismissed by Godfrey the year before along at the same time as fellow cast member, singer Julius La Rosa.
In La Rosa's case, he hired a manager, defying an unwritten Godfrey policy. Bleyer and Kovacs were shown in split screen , with Kovacs wearing a red wig, headphones, and playing a ukulele in a Godfrey imitation, while talking with his guest.
Kovacs had a brief stint as a celebrity panelist for the television series What's My Line? An example: Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser , the founder of an automobile company, was the program's "mystery guest.
He also did several television specials, including the famous Silent Show , featuring his character, Eugene, the first all-pantomime prime-time network program.
Lewis opted to use only 60 minutes, leaving the network 30 minutes to fill; no one wanted this time slot , but Kovacs was willing to have it.
A series of monthly half-hour specials for ABC during —62 is often considered his best television work.
Produced on videotape using new editing and special effects techniques, it won a Emmy Award. Kovacs's last ABC special was broadcast posthumously, on January 23, The Dutch Masters cigar company became well known during the late s and early s for its sponsorship of various television projects of Ernie Kovacs.
The company allowed Kovacs total creative control in the creation of their television commercials for his programs and specials.
He produced a series of non-speaking television commercials for Dutch Masters during the run of his television series Take A Good Look which was praised by both television critics and viewers.
While praised by critics, Kovacs rarely had a highly rated show. He was too zany, too unrestrained, too undisciplined.
Other shows had greater success while using elements of Kovacs's style. Laugh-In made frequent use of the quick blackout gags and surreal humor that marked many Kovacs projects.
From —, Wendell was the announcer for David Letterman , whose show and style of humor were greatly influenced by Kovacs. Kovacs was also known for his eclectic musical taste.
His main theme song was named "Oriental Blues" by Jack Newton. In the TV special Ernie Kovacs: Television's Original Genius , Edie Adams recalled that when Kovacs first heard the melody, he immediately knew what he wanted to do with it, creating a music-box-like trio that moved in time to the tune.
The perfectionist Kovacs describes in minute detail what had to be done and how to do it. The memo ends with this: "I don't know how the hell you're going to get this done by Sunday — but 'rots of ruck.
He may have been known best for using Joseph Haydn 's "String Quartet, Opus 3, Number 5" the "Serenade," actually composed by Roman Hoffstetter for a series of —61 commercials he created and videotaped for his sponsor, Dutch Masters.
For the show of May 22, , Kovacs on Music , Kovacs began by saying, "I have never really understood classical music, so I would like to take this opportunity to explain it to others.
Both the Library of Congress and the National Library of Canada have copies of this recording in their collections. In a interview, Edie Adams related that the novel was written after Kovacs's experiences with network television while he was preparing to broadcast the Silent Show.
Medium Rare by its London-based publisher, Transworld. While he worked on several other book projects, Kovacs's only other published title was How to Talk at Gin , published posthumously in He intended part of the book's proceeds to benefit Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
According to Adams, Ball and Arnaz 'avoided contact and barely talked to each other in rehearsals and in-between scenes'. Adams also said that they were not told their episode was the last or that the famous couple were to divorce Ball entered the uncontested divorce request March 4, Kovacs also appeared in roles on other television programs.
For General Electric Theater 's "I Was a Bloodhound" in , Kovacs played the role of detective Barney Colby, whose extraordinary sense of smell helped him solve many seemingly impossible cases.
Colby was hired by a foreign country to recover their symbol of royalty, a baby elephant, who was being held for ransom.
After a few hours of work, someone came up to Kovacs and remarked that he had been having quite a good time chasing starlets all night. Kovacs told the stranger to go to hell, since he was following the script; he later learned the stranger was Harry Cohn , head of Columbia Pictures.
He garnered critical acclaim for movie roles such as the perennially inebriated writer in Bell, Book and Candle and as the cartoonishly evil head of a railroad company who resembled Orson Welles ' title character in Citizen Kane in It Happened to Jane , where he had his head shaved and his remaining hair dyed grey for the role.
His own personal favorite was said to have been the offbeat Five Golden Hours , in which he portrayed a larcenous professional mourner who meets his match in a professional widow played by Cyd Charisse.
Kovacs's last movie, Sail a Crooked Ship also , was released one month before his death. Kovacs and his first wife, Bette Wilcox, were married on August 13, When the marriage ended, he fought for custody of their children, Elizabeth "Bette" and Kip Raleigh "Kippie".
The court awarded Kovacs full custody upon determining that his former wife was mentally unstable. Wilcox subsequently kidnapped the children, taking them to Florida.
These events were portrayed in the television movie Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter , which garnered an Emmy Award nomination for its writer, April Smith.
Kovacs was portrayed by Jeff Goldblum. Kovacs's first wife made a legal attempt to gain custody of her two daughters soon after his death.
Now I can smile. A classically trained singer, she was able to perform only three popular songs. Edie said later, "I sang them all during the audition, and if they had asked to hear another, I never would have made it.
Later on I did have something to say and I said it, 'Let's get married. After the couple's first date, Kovacs proceeded to buy a Jaguar car, telling Adams he wanted to take her out in style.
He was seriously taken with the beautiful and talented young woman, courting her with imagination and flair. Adams booked a six-week European cruise which she hoped would let her make up her mind whether or not to marry Kovacs.
After only three days away and many long-distance telephone calls, she curtailed her trip and returned to say "yes". She later said about Kovacs, "He treated me like a little girl, and I loved it— Women's Lib be damned!
Adams also aided Kovacs's struggle to reclaim his two older children after the kidnapping by their mother. She also was a regular partner on his television shows.
Kovacs usually introduced or addressed her in a businesslike way, as "Edith Adams". Adams was usually willing to do anything he envisioned, whether it was singing seriously, performing impersonations including a well-regarded impression of Marilyn Monroe , or taking a pie in the face or a pratfall if and when needed.
The couple had one daughter, Mia Susan Kovacs, born June 20, Kovacs and his family shared a room apartment in Manhattan on Central Park West that seemed perfect until he went to California for his first movie role in Operation Mad Ball.
At the time he was working most of the time and sleeping about two or three hours a night. Kovacs relocated his family there in , after Edie finished work for the Broadway play Li'l Abner.
Kovacs was killed in a car accident in Los Angeles during the early morning hours of January 13, , 10 days shy of his 43rd birthday.
Kovacs, who had worked for much of the evening, met his wife Edie Adams at a baby shower given by Billy Wilder for Milton Berle and his wife, who had recently adopted a newborn baby boy.
The couple left the party in separate cars. He was thrown halfway out the passenger side and died almost instantly from chest and head injuries.
A photographer managed to arrive moments later, and images of Kovacs' dead body appeared in newspapers across the United States. After attending funerals for Hollywood friends, Kovacs had expressed his wishes to Adams that any funeral services for him be kept simple.
Kovacs's father and brother, Andrew and Tom, respectively, served as honorary pallbearers. I've been smoking cigars ever since. His epitaph reads "Nothing in moderation—We all loved him.
Kippie, his second daughter, died on July 28, , at the age of 52, after a long illness and a lifetime of poor health.
Kippie and her husband, Bill Lancaster — , a screenwriter and the son of actor Burt Lancaster , are the parents of Kovacs's only grandchild.
A frequent critic of the U. His tax woes also affected Kovacs's career, forcing him to take any offered work to pay his debt.
Kovacs's role was that of Dr. Crookshank, a traveling medicine salesman in the s selling Mother McGreevy's Wizard Juice, also known as "man's best friend in a bottle".
CBS initially intended to broadcast the show as part of a summer replacement program, The Comedy Spot , but decided against it due to problems with Kovacs's estate.
Some of the issues regarding Kovacs's tax problems were still unresolved years after his death. Kovacs had purchased two insurance policies in ; his mother was named as the primary beneficiary of them.
The IRS placed a lien against them both for their cash value in To stop the actions being taken against her, Mary Kovacs had to go to Federal court.
The court's early ruling resolved the issue, with the last sentence of the document reading: "Prima facie, it looks as if, within the limits of discretion permitted the government by the relevant statutes, an injustice is being done Mary Kovacs.
Adams, who married and divorced twice after Kovacs's death, refused help from celebrity friends who planned a benefit for the purpose.
Most of Kovacs's early television work was performed live: few kinescopes have survived. Some videotapes of his ABC specials were preserved; others, such as his quirky game show, Take a Good Look , were available mostly in short segments until recently, with the release of some complete, videotaped episodes.
She succeeded in purchasing the rights to surviving footage with the proceeds from Kovacs's insurance policy and her own earnings after Kovacs's IRS debts were paid.
Adams first used some of the videotapes she had purchased for a ABC television special, The Comedy of Ernie Kovacs ; to produce the show, she hired Kovacs's former producer and editor.
The hour-long program was sponsored by Kovacs's former sponsor, Dutch Masters. The television movie Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter helped return Kovacs to the public's attention, though the show emphasized his bid to retrieve his kidnapped children instead of his professional life.
Edie Adams appeared in a cameo in this movie, playing Mae West ; it was one of the impressions she performed in shows with Kovacs.
The series was narrated by Jack Lemmon. By , there were no broadcast, cable, or satellite channels broadcasting any of Kovacs's television work, other than his panel appearances on What's My Line?
On April 19, , Shout! The company's website also offers an extra disc with material from Tonight! In , Kovacs recorded a record album of poetry in the character of Percy Dovetonsils named Percy Dovetonsils Thpeakth , but was unable to release it due to contractual obligations with other record companies.
After he was given the masters, Kovacs donated them to a Los Angeles area hospital. Adams was able to re-acquire the tapes in , and they remained part of her private collection until her death in The tapes were labeled as movie material and were thought to be such until further examination proved they were Kovacs as Percy reading his poems with no music background.
The album was finally released in From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Ernie Kovacs Kovacs on the set of his television show, Bette Lee Wilcox.
Edie Adams. Shortly before his death, Kovacs was negotiating with Colgate-Palmolive to produce silent commercials for the company's products.
After Kovacs's death the trade magazine Printers' Ink wrote that Kovacs's silent Dutch Masters commercials proved that creativity can be compatible with commercialism and that pioneering with regard to sponsorship can pay.
March 8, The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 13, Retrieved January 7, TV Guide : 39— November 17, Retrieved February 5, The Ernie Kovacs Phile.
Bright Lights Film Journal. Cathedral City, CA. Retrieved January 19, TV Guide: the official collector's guide , Bangzoom Publishers. Gazette and Bulletin.
Retrieved July 11, Beaver Valley Times. June 19, Retrieved July 14, Reading Eagle. Lawrence Journal-World. May 30, Archived from the original on September 28, Retrieved October 28, Petersburg Times.
Retrieved October 16, CBS News. October 16, Retrieved August 16, February 12, Retrieved September 25, — via Newspapers. Retrieved March 23, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Archived from the original on December 18, Retrieved July 9, Hollywood Walk of Fame. Retrieved July 12, Milwaukee Journal.
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Up 3, this week. Author, actor, comedian, composer and producer. Joining the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers ASCAP in , he composed a number of songs and themes, a number of which were used in his famed television comedy sketches including " Filmography by Job Trailers and Videos.
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Known For. Bell Book and Candle Sidney Redlitch. The Ernie Kovacs Show Eugene. The Ernie Kovacs Show Writer. Show all 7 episodes.
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Ernie Kovacs. Gefällt Mal. Ernie Kovacs was undeniably one of the great pioneers of television comedy. Kovacs made the medium of TV an integral. Ernie Kovacs wurde mit einem Stern auf dem Hollywood Walk of Fame geehrt. Zurück. © Martin Tschanett I Schoellergasse 10 I A Bregenz I E-Mail. View and license Ernie Kovacs pictures & news photos from Getty Images. Ernie Kovacs, Mit mir nicht, meine Herren. Bild Ernie Kovacs. 2/ James Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon, Elsa Lanchester, Ernie Kovacs, Meine Braut ist. Ernie Kovacs - Alle Bilder, Filme, TV Serien und Fakten finden Sie hier zum Star auf TV Spielfilm. Jetzt hier informieren!
Zeig Mir Filme March 23, — via Newspapers. For the show Ernie Kovacs May 22,Kovacs on MusicKovacs began by saying, "I have never really understood classical music, so I would like to Hentai Kamen Stream this opportunity to explain it to others. He had shows running on four commercial TV networks and had appeared in The Expendables 3 Streamcloud than half a dozen movies since moving to California in Heritage Auctions. January 16, Character comedysurreal comedyimprovisational comedyKino Forchheim Programm comedyspoofsketch. Stage, screen, and radio notables were often guests. Smaragdgrün Kkiste began commuting the Türkisch Für Anfänger Axel miles between his home near Trenton and Philadelphia. Neuman Maria Reidelbach. March 29, Aller Ambitionen und toller Schauspieler zum Trotz erschöpft es sich in einem Zusammenschnitt prächtiger Bilder. Die Versandkosten Ernie Kovacs nicht berechnet werden. Der nervenzerfetzende Gänsehaut-Horror mündet in eine Fortsetzung - "Conjuring 2" ist ebenfalls bei Netflix und sehenswert! Words cannot express the humor and creativity. Bitte geben Sie eine gültige PLZ ein. Der gefeierte Horror-Thriller setzt mehr auf eine hochspannende Atmosphäre als auf Schockmomente und überzeugt damit auf ganzer Linie. This anthology is a collection of sketches, clips, and interviews that demonstrate the comedian's unforgettable and often imitated style. Creep Wer von Jumpscares längst Spielfilme Heute Abend Im Fernsehen Schnauze voll hat, ist mit diesem spannungsvollen Found Footage-Vertreter gut bedient. Alle Zustandsdefinitionen aufrufen — wird in neuem Fenster oder Tab geöffnet. Was will man mehr! Creep Wer von Jumpscares längst die Schnauze voll hat, ist mit Kino Neitersen spannungsvollen Found Footage-Vertreter gut bedient. Nichts für schwache Nerven, dafür beklemmende Spannung in tollem Design! Zahlungsmethoden Kreditkarte. Ernie Fluch Der Karibik 1 Online Anschauen Geburtstag: Versand nach:. Mai Kovacs realized that he would be called upon to drink a shot of liquor for each successive gong. He pressed on with the sketch and was quite inebriated by the end of the show.
Kovacs helped develop camera tricks still common decades after his death. His character Eugene sat at a table to eat his lunch, but as he removed items one at a time from a lunch box, he watched them inexplicably roll down the table into the lap of a man reading a newspaper at the other end.
When Kovacs poured milk from a thermos bottle, the stream flowed in a seemingly unusual direction. Never seen on television before, the secret was using a tilted set in front of a camera tilted at the same angle.
He constantly sought new techniques and used both primitive and improvised ways of creating visual effects that would later be done electronically.
One innovative construction involved attaching a kaleidoscope made from a toilet paper roll to a camera lens with cardboard and tape and setting the resulting abstract images to music.
Used on a camera and turning it could put Kovacs seemingly on the ceiling. Removing it from his mouth, Kovacs was able to exhale a puff of white smoke, all while floating underwater.
The trick: the "smoke" was a small amount of milk which he filled his mouth with before submerging. One of the special effects he employed made it appear as if he was able to look through his assistant, Barbara Loden 's, head.
The illusion was performed by placing a black patch on Loden's head and standing her against a black background while one studio camera was trained on her.
A second one photographed Kovacs, who used the studio monitor to position himself exactly so that his eye would appear to be looking through a hole in her head.
He also developed such routines as an all-gorilla version of Swan Lake , a poker game set to Beethoven 's Fifth Symphony , the skit Silent Show , in which Eugene interacts with the world accompanied solely by music and sound effects, parodies of typical television commercials and movie genres, and various musical segments with everyday items such as kitchen appliances or office equipment moving in sync to music.
Kovacs used extended sketches and mood pieces or quick blackout gags lasting only seconds. Kovacs reportedly disliked working in front of a live audience, as was the case with the shows he did for NBC during the s.
He found the presence of an audience distracting, and those in the seats frequently did not understand some of the more elaborate visual gags and special effects, which could only be appreciated by watching studio monitors instead of the stage.
Like many comedians of the era, Kovacs created a rotation of recurring roles. In addition to the silent "Eugene," his most familiar characters were the fey, lisping poet Percy Dovetonsils , and the heavily accented German radio announcer, Wolfgang von Sauerbraten.
Question Man, who answered viewer queries, was a satire on the long-run —56 radio series, The Answer Man. Question Man character in his radio monologues.
Kovacs never hesitated to lampoon those considered institutions of radio and television. Stage, screen, and radio notables were often guests.
Archie Bleyer , head of Cadence Records, came to chat one evening. Bleyer had been the long-time orchestra director for Arthur Godfrey 's radio and television shows.
He had been dismissed by Godfrey the year before along at the same time as fellow cast member, singer Julius La Rosa.
In La Rosa's case, he hired a manager, defying an unwritten Godfrey policy. Bleyer and Kovacs were shown in split screen , with Kovacs wearing a red wig, headphones, and playing a ukulele in a Godfrey imitation, while talking with his guest.
Kovacs had a brief stint as a celebrity panelist for the television series What's My Line? An example: Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser , the founder of an automobile company, was the program's "mystery guest.
He also did several television specials, including the famous Silent Show , featuring his character, Eugene, the first all-pantomime prime-time network program.
Lewis opted to use only 60 minutes, leaving the network 30 minutes to fill; no one wanted this time slot , but Kovacs was willing to have it. A series of monthly half-hour specials for ABC during —62 is often considered his best television work.
Produced on videotape using new editing and special effects techniques, it won a Emmy Award. Kovacs's last ABC special was broadcast posthumously, on January 23, The Dutch Masters cigar company became well known during the late s and early s for its sponsorship of various television projects of Ernie Kovacs.
The company allowed Kovacs total creative control in the creation of their television commercials for his programs and specials. He produced a series of non-speaking television commercials for Dutch Masters during the run of his television series Take A Good Look which was praised by both television critics and viewers.
While praised by critics, Kovacs rarely had a highly rated show. He was too zany, too unrestrained, too undisciplined. Other shows had greater success while using elements of Kovacs's style.
Laugh-In made frequent use of the quick blackout gags and surreal humor that marked many Kovacs projects. From —, Wendell was the announcer for David Letterman , whose show and style of humor were greatly influenced by Kovacs.
Kovacs was also known for his eclectic musical taste. His main theme song was named "Oriental Blues" by Jack Newton.
In the TV special Ernie Kovacs: Television's Original Genius , Edie Adams recalled that when Kovacs first heard the melody, he immediately knew what he wanted to do with it, creating a music-box-like trio that moved in time to the tune.
The perfectionist Kovacs describes in minute detail what had to be done and how to do it. The memo ends with this: "I don't know how the hell you're going to get this done by Sunday — but 'rots of ruck.
He may have been known best for using Joseph Haydn 's "String Quartet, Opus 3, Number 5" the "Serenade," actually composed by Roman Hoffstetter for a series of —61 commercials he created and videotaped for his sponsor, Dutch Masters.
For the show of May 22, , Kovacs on Music , Kovacs began by saying, "I have never really understood classical music, so I would like to take this opportunity to explain it to others.
Both the Library of Congress and the National Library of Canada have copies of this recording in their collections. In a interview, Edie Adams related that the novel was written after Kovacs's experiences with network television while he was preparing to broadcast the Silent Show.
Medium Rare by its London-based publisher, Transworld. While he worked on several other book projects, Kovacs's only other published title was How to Talk at Gin , published posthumously in He intended part of the book's proceeds to benefit Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
According to Adams, Ball and Arnaz 'avoided contact and barely talked to each other in rehearsals and in-between scenes'.
Adams also said that they were not told their episode was the last or that the famous couple were to divorce Ball entered the uncontested divorce request March 4, Kovacs also appeared in roles on other television programs.
For General Electric Theater 's "I Was a Bloodhound" in , Kovacs played the role of detective Barney Colby, whose extraordinary sense of smell helped him solve many seemingly impossible cases.
Colby was hired by a foreign country to recover their symbol of royalty, a baby elephant, who was being held for ransom. After a few hours of work, someone came up to Kovacs and remarked that he had been having quite a good time chasing starlets all night.
Kovacs told the stranger to go to hell, since he was following the script; he later learned the stranger was Harry Cohn , head of Columbia Pictures.
He garnered critical acclaim for movie roles such as the perennially inebriated writer in Bell, Book and Candle and as the cartoonishly evil head of a railroad company who resembled Orson Welles ' title character in Citizen Kane in It Happened to Jane , where he had his head shaved and his remaining hair dyed grey for the role.
His own personal favorite was said to have been the offbeat Five Golden Hours , in which he portrayed a larcenous professional mourner who meets his match in a professional widow played by Cyd Charisse.
Kovacs's last movie, Sail a Crooked Ship also , was released one month before his death. Kovacs and his first wife, Bette Wilcox, were married on August 13, When the marriage ended, he fought for custody of their children, Elizabeth "Bette" and Kip Raleigh "Kippie".
The court awarded Kovacs full custody upon determining that his former wife was mentally unstable. Wilcox subsequently kidnapped the children, taking them to Florida.
These events were portrayed in the television movie Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter , which garnered an Emmy Award nomination for its writer, April Smith.
Kovacs was portrayed by Jeff Goldblum. Kovacs's first wife made a legal attempt to gain custody of her two daughters soon after his death.
Now I can smile. A classically trained singer, she was able to perform only three popular songs. Edie said later, "I sang them all during the audition, and if they had asked to hear another, I never would have made it.
Later on I did have something to say and I said it, 'Let's get married. After the couple's first date, Kovacs proceeded to buy a Jaguar car, telling Adams he wanted to take her out in style.
He was seriously taken with the beautiful and talented young woman, courting her with imagination and flair. Adams booked a six-week European cruise which she hoped would let her make up her mind whether or not to marry Kovacs.
After only three days away and many long-distance telephone calls, she curtailed her trip and returned to say "yes". She later said about Kovacs, "He treated me like a little girl, and I loved it— Women's Lib be damned!
Adams also aided Kovacs's struggle to reclaim his two older children after the kidnapping by their mother. She also was a regular partner on his television shows.
Kovacs usually introduced or addressed her in a businesslike way, as "Edith Adams". Adams was usually willing to do anything he envisioned, whether it was singing seriously, performing impersonations including a well-regarded impression of Marilyn Monroe , or taking a pie in the face or a pratfall if and when needed.
The couple had one daughter, Mia Susan Kovacs, born June 20, Kovacs and his family shared a room apartment in Manhattan on Central Park West that seemed perfect until he went to California for his first movie role in Operation Mad Ball.
At the time he was working most of the time and sleeping about two or three hours a night. Kovacs relocated his family there in , after Edie finished work for the Broadway play Li'l Abner.
Kovacs was killed in a car accident in Los Angeles during the early morning hours of January 13, , 10 days shy of his 43rd birthday. Kovacs, who had worked for much of the evening, met his wife Edie Adams at a baby shower given by Billy Wilder for Milton Berle and his wife, who had recently adopted a newborn baby boy.
The couple left the party in separate cars. He was thrown halfway out the passenger side and died almost instantly from chest and head injuries.
A photographer managed to arrive moments later, and images of Kovacs' dead body appeared in newspapers across the United States.
After attending funerals for Hollywood friends, Kovacs had expressed his wishes to Adams that any funeral services for him be kept simple.
Kovacs's father and brother, Andrew and Tom, respectively, served as honorary pallbearers. I've been smoking cigars ever since.
His epitaph reads "Nothing in moderation—We all loved him. Kippie, his second daughter, died on July 28, , at the age of 52, after a long illness and a lifetime of poor health.
Kippie and her husband, Bill Lancaster — , a screenwriter and the son of actor Burt Lancaster , are the parents of Kovacs's only grandchild.
A frequent critic of the U. His tax woes also affected Kovacs's career, forcing him to take any offered work to pay his debt. Kovacs's role was that of Dr.
Crookshank, a traveling medicine salesman in the s selling Mother McGreevy's Wizard Juice, also known as "man's best friend in a bottle". CBS initially intended to broadcast the show as part of a summer replacement program, The Comedy Spot , but decided against it due to problems with Kovacs's estate.
Some of the issues regarding Kovacs's tax problems were still unresolved years after his death. Kovacs had purchased two insurance policies in ; his mother was named as the primary beneficiary of them.
The IRS placed a lien against them both for their cash value in To stop the actions being taken against her, Mary Kovacs had to go to Federal court.
The court's early ruling resolved the issue, with the last sentence of the document reading: "Prima facie, it looks as if, within the limits of discretion permitted the government by the relevant statutes, an injustice is being done Mary Kovacs.
Adams, who married and divorced twice after Kovacs's death, refused help from celebrity friends who planned a benefit for the purpose.
Most of Kovacs's early television work was performed live: few kinescopes have survived. Some videotapes of his ABC specials were preserved; others, such as his quirky game show, Take a Good Look , were available mostly in short segments until recently, with the release of some complete, videotaped episodes.
She succeeded in purchasing the rights to surviving footage with the proceeds from Kovacs's insurance policy and her own earnings after Kovacs's IRS debts were paid.
Adams first used some of the videotapes she had purchased for a ABC television special, The Comedy of Ernie Kovacs ; to produce the show, she hired Kovacs's former producer and editor.
The hour-long program was sponsored by Kovacs's former sponsor, Dutch Masters. The television movie Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter helped return Kovacs to the public's attention, though the show emphasized his bid to retrieve his kidnapped children instead of his professional life.
Edie Adams appeared in a cameo in this movie, playing Mae West ; it was one of the impressions she performed in shows with Kovacs.
The series was narrated by Jack Lemmon. By , there were no broadcast, cable, or satellite channels broadcasting any of Kovacs's television work, other than his panel appearances on What's My Line?
On April 19, , Shout! The company's website also offers an extra disc with material from Tonight! In , Kovacs recorded a record album of poetry in the character of Percy Dovetonsils named Percy Dovetonsils Thpeakth , but was unable to release it due to contractual obligations with other record companies.
After he was given the masters, Kovacs donated them to a Los Angeles area hospital. Adams was able to re-acquire the tapes in , and they remained part of her private collection until her death in The tapes were labeled as movie material and were thought to be such until further examination proved they were Kovacs as Percy reading his poems with no music background.
The album was finally released in From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Ernie Kovacs Kovacs on the set of his television show, Bette Lee Wilcox.
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Show all 7 episodes. Foglemeyer aka The Captain. Maximilian Frederick Krob. Charlie Stark. Hack Hackberry. Kovacs quickly nicknamed it "Dead Lion for Breakfast" and turned the show's format to his own devices3 making visiting chefs straightmen for his antics.
The show became an instant success and ran for more than two years. Kovacs moved his residence from Trenton to Philadelphia because of the extra hours and the commuting problem.
Viewers of TTGR soon learned to expect anything on the program and tuned in by the thousands. There were Polish versions of the song "Mona Lisa," and Yiddish interpretations of "The Call of the Wild Goose," and the off-beat became a regular feature, with Kovacs improvising either impromptu or just seconds ahead of the camera with all manner of props and sight gags.
It was during TTGR that Percy Dovetonsils, the smoking-jacketed, martini-drinking, cross-eyed, lisping poet was invented.
Kovacs' madcap antics, from attempting to "de-pants" a strait-laced newsman while he was on the air, to imitating warped records to filming live in the streets outside the studio, were blazing new trails in a relatively new medium.
At first sponsors stayed away from the show, but after it had been on for several weeks and was averaging a high rating for a program at that hour, there were more than 50 sponsors advertising on its seven-and-a-half hours per week run.
Kovacs did his last show there on March 28, and moved to New York where CBS had hired him for a mid-morning local weekly program.
He took most of the talent from TTGR with him and - as a parting gesture - nailed a woman in a trunk and smashed up the set with the hammer, on camera.
It was soon moved from mid-day to early mornings, and then the network gave him a national slot against Milton Berle, whose program in was running on another network from 8 to 9 P.
Kovacs' morning show held is own, but the evening program could not overcome Berle's audience ratings lead, so it expired. It was at Dumont that the Nairobi trio --nonspeaking, derby-hatted apes that perform mechanically to music and bop each other on the head -- was born.
At Dumont, there were takeoffs on network commercials, mock celebrity interviews, pans of hit movies, commercials and anything else that was timely, topical or seemingly a "sacred-cow.
Kovacs had met Edie Adams, who was later to become star of the Broadway hit, "Li'1 Abner," in Philadelphia, where she appeared on several of his shows.
They were married in Mexico in , and in obtained custody of his two daughters. A third daughter, Mia, was born in While his mid-morning show was still running, NBC offered him his biggest break yet — a spot in prime time on Saturday night, January 19, Kovacs' birthday following an hour-long show by comedian Jerry Lewis.
It was said that no one but Kovacs would have dared accept the challenge, Lewis had such stature in prime-time television.
Kovacs did, and the so-called Jerry Lewis "fill-in" was a smash success.
Museum of Broadcast Communications. His character Eugene sat at a table to eat his lunch, but as he removed items one at a time from a lunch box, he watched them inexplicably roll down the table into the lap of a man reading a newspaper at the other end. Self - Moderator. Related Videos. Lewis opted to use only 60 minutes, leaving the network 30 minutes to fill; no one wanted this time slotbut Kovacs Ernie Kovacs willing to have it. There were membership cards with by-laws and ties; the password was a favorite phrase of Kovacs's: "It's Been Puls Tv. Gaines — Bythere were no broadcast, Soy Berlin, or satellite channels broadcasting any of Kovacs's television work, other than his panel appearances on What's My Line?
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