Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 10:11 pm
Oh, I liked it, and Ernie Kovacs was one of the funniest comedians ever.This was never much of a hit, though I thought it clever:
Television is called a medium because it's so rarely well-done --Ernie Kovacs
so we move along...
He and his wife, Edie Adams, were supposed to play the parts of Melville Crump, DDS and his wife Monica Crump in the comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but he died in a car accident before principle shooting began. Sid Ceasar took over the role Kovaks was to play, while Edie Adams kept her role as the wife.
I don't remember a lot of his programs first hand, but I do remember hearing the news on TV the day he died. I was fortunate to catch some of them on a special once. He was an incredible genius, both comic and technical in the way he used TV technology.
One episode featured a Western done in gibberish German; when the Bad Guy came out, Kovaks shouted "Schwarzes Bart!" The Nairobi Trio always had a special guest, often anonymous, in one of the gorilla suits.
Technically, at the start of one show, he kicked over a can of white paint, which ran down and spread into a white line near the bottom of the TV screen. He then laid down on his stomach, reached down into the line, and began to move his hands back and forth as the line turned into an oscilloscope trace and a sound began that changed pitch to match the sine wave pattern as he moved his hands back and forth.
As you may also know, the network, needing some videotape, decided to recyle some of his shows. When his widow heard this she rushed to buy whatever tapes were left, so we do not have a complete record of this man's genius.
"Nothing In Moderation" - The epitaph on his tombstone
