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2024: A New Book Brings Back Memories of a 50s Talent Who Died Young

posted 9 months ago by roger1 (4046)
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A new book is out on Ernie Kovacs. It is called "Ernie in Kovacsland."

This comedy "auteur"(who wrote and directed and performed most all of his own material for TV in the fifties) was one of the few TV talk show hosts to actually "make it in movies" in a particular era -- what I call "the fifties/sixties cusp."

It was a time in American movies when censorship at the movies was still in place, but starting to give way. It was a time in American movies when Frank Sinatra was a giant in BOTH the movies and on records, when John Wayne and Elvis were peaking as stars, when Doris Day and Liz Taylor were diametrically opposed screen queens, and when movie directors like Alfred Hitchocck, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger and Howard Hawks were making movies like Psycho, North by Northwest, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Anatomy of a Murder, and Rio Bravo

Ernie Kovacs, while formed as a star in TV, made it to the movies right on that cusp:

His first movie was in 1957: Operation Mad Ball (paired with Jack Lemmon; they were "Columbia contract players.") His last movie was in 1961 ("Five Golden Hours" in which he actually played the romantic lead.)

And he DIED in January of 1962. At the age of 42, shortly before his 43rd birthday, in a single car crash driving home from a party in Beverly Hills/Hollywood.

Think about that: as 50s/60s cusp stars went, Ernie Kovacs was pretty much "captured" TOTALLY in the cusp and DIED before the cusp was over.

Meanwhile, cusp stars like Hitchcock and Billy Wilder ...and Elvis...and John Wayne...and Janet Leigh...and Anthony Perkins...and Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton(he, more of a 40s movie star) had to sort of keep on living life and trying to stay in the spotlight as well as they could into the 70s. (When Jackie Gleason turned up outta nowhere in the 1977 hit Smokey and the Bandit, it was like he was an alien from another time.)

It was interesting about Ernie Kovacs. He spent the end of the 40s and all of the 50s as a TELEVISION star -- and often as a talk show host -- but unlike Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Dick Cavett and any of today's political talk show hosts...Ernie Kovacs actually DID have movie star quality.

He started out in Philadelphia, secured his TV career in NYC, and moved to Los Angeles in the late fifties with two goals: carving out a MOVIE career(more bucks) AND still being the eccentric, unique and creative TV personality(AND writer AND director) that he'd always been.

It was working just fine until that car crash killed him. Well, maybe not so fine. I've now read three books on the man and evidently he was a free-spending gambler who either rarely or never paid taxes and the man who died in that car crash in 1962 was haunted by all sorts of demons -- his financial house was about to fall, the IRS was all over him. There were issues of mental and physical fatigue attendant to that car crash, and his "friend" Tony Curtis said "It was drinking that killed Ernie Kovacs." Maybe.

Why am I thinking of Ernie Kovacs just now? Well, I was in a bookstore the other day and I found a NEW, rather sizeable tome -- a collection of scrapbook mementoes from his entire short career -- called "Ernie in Kovacsland" and -- I couldn't BELIEVE that Ernie Kovacs had somehow managed to generate a book for sale in 2024 -- 57 years after his death -- and I bought it and I've been reading it, and it flashed me back to two "eras":

The 1960s. Ours was a TV/movie/music family(fans, not participants) and I recall my parents shocked reaction to the morning paper news of Ernie Kovacs sudden death by auto. I recall the photos of the moustachied man. I thought it was Tennessee Ernie FORD who had died -- and when I was told, "no, Ernie KOVACS" I was like -- who?

Over the years, I found out. My mother sang the praises of his various TV shows as she had watched them in the 50s(he was rather a forerunner of David Letterman, who was given morning show before he got his nightly show -- and Letterman's writers STUDIED Kovacs videos to get the mood for their show -- though I would say Steve Allen was an influence for that show, too.)

I watched some of Kovacs movies on TV. He WAS a funny foil -- big, with the moustache and the ever-present cigar -- as a comedy partner to Jack Lemmon in Operation Mad Ball(a big favorite in my military family) and Bell, Book, and Candle(that wild bit of 1958-mirror image movie making: James Stewart and Kim Novak in a romance with a HAPPY ending in the year of Vertigo.)

It has been said that had Ernie Kovacs not died, Walter Matthau never would have become a star: because -- in "Operation Mad Ball" and "Bell, Book and Candle," Lemmon and Kovacs had been a comedy team. Kovacs was born only a year before Matthau and likely (had he lived) been "name enough" to do the movies The Fortune Cookie and The Odd Couple with his pal Lemmon(who was first on the scene at home when Kovacs died.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 9 months ago

Of course, Matthau made his name in The Odd Couple on Broadway before getting The Fortune Cookie. One does not know if that might have still been the case -- Kovacs wasn't a serious stage actor.

Matthau and Ernie Kovacs appeared in one movie together. It was in the Psycho year 1960 adult soap opera "Strangers When We Meet," in which Kim Novak trades in frail James Stewart for Muy Mas Macho Kirk Douglas and poor Kim STILL doesn't look properly matched. (Douglas, playing an architect and Los Angeles family man, is wearing his Spartacus flattop and looks ready for sword combat at any time.)

Ernie Kovacs is billed "above the title" in Strangers When We Meet. He had earned it on TV AND in movies. Walter Matthau is below the title but his name is bigger than the others: Hollywood nabobs already had their eye on Matthau.

I don't believe they share a scene. Matthau is a villain in the picuture, which is about married Douglas affair(consummated, I think) with married Novak. As I recall, Matthau is the married but SWINISH suburban husband out to teach Douglas about cheating and making a move on Douglas' wife in the meantime.

Meanwhile, Kovacs has a fine, wry role in the movie. He is a wealthy author of bestsellers who hires architect Douglas to build him a "dream home" above the ocean near Malibu(lots of beautiful Technicolor shots.) He is a good friend to the macho Douglas, and advises him on affairs of the heart(while being a playboy himself.) And Kovacs gets the movie title line "You know, we are all just Strangers When We Meet" which is, when you think about it, a damn PROFOUND truth in this life. Outside our family members, everybody important in our life will first be strangers to us when met: our best friends, our lovers, our spouses...our bosses. And I'm always amazed at all the strangers AROUND me as I go about my daily business. If we don't work together or meet together...we will always be strangers. (I've met a friend or lover or two in my life who was working near me for years before we met...I've learned.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 9 months ago

Anyway, Strangers When We Meet might be Kovacs most serious movie, but ALSO in Psycho 1960, he did a "prestige" film with Alec Guinness called "Our Man in Havana" in which Kovacs(bedecked in a Castro beard) played a very dangerous Cuban police officer(the Bautista regime) who is capable of torture.

I read back in the 70's that Ernie Kovacs and Alec Guinness hit it off and proposed a joint movie-making production company to reflect their complimentary intelligence. They looked at some projects. It never happened.

And so, about The 70s and Ernie Kovacs. If I grew up vaguely aware of him around our house and vaguely aware of him "at the movies (he was also a comedy con man villain in John Wayne's North to Alaska, ALSO of 1960) it was in the 70's that he suddenly reappeared as a "great seminal figure of creativity."

When Chevy Chase won an Emmy for Saturday Night Live in 1976 or so, he thanked the late Ernie Kovacs for being an inspiration. Some of the Monty Python guys did, too. (Even though Kovacs TV shows didn't play in England..the Python guys found him.) Kovacs was heralded as a "predictor" of the more manic and "normal" Laugh-In of the hippy-dippy late sixties, and referenced AGAIN(people who worked on Kovacs TV show in the early 60s worked on Laugh In in the late 60s.)

So suddenly, this Kovacs guy -- heading for 20-years dead -- was never HOTTER.

PBS showed some specials with his TV work. A great biography called "Nothing in Moderation"(Kovac's requested tombstone marker) caught my imagination -- again for this man long dead and from "back in the 50s/60s cusp." For awhile there -- as I am wont to do) -- I was a total Ernie Kovacs fan. And then it faded.

But this new book sorta brought it back.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 9 months ago

Look, the guy was from the FIFTIES. Some of his stuff was mild, silly, dated. Lorne Michaels when launching the countercultural "SNL" in 1975 declared "no funny names" would be in his sketches. It was a somewhat snobbish directive that nonetheless made sense: those days of Red Skelton's Clem Kaddilehopper and Kovacs' Superclod were to be left behind for the hipper 70's.

Before getting to his REAL claim to fame (his Hitchcock-like mastery of camera and sound technology in the service of comic art) I'll note some bits I liked just from watching Kovacs TALK, waving his cigar around in some of his comedy specials on video in the 70's, from the 60s:

Kovacs: "You know, I love this TV work. The money means nothing....well, the money IS nothing..."

Kovacs: "You know...I like the cut of your jib." (Ever since I heard that line...I've used it.)

There is a movie trailer for "Operation Mad Ball" on the DVD and Kovacs did it, not Jack Lemmon. He is standing near a desk, smoking his cigar, and gets lines like:

Kovacs: Ernie Kovacs here...I'm here to tell you about a movie you will be seeing at this theater in the future. Because it wouldn't mean much to tell you about a movie that already played at this theater and left.

Kovacs: Stars, you ask? Stars? Well take a look at this clip with Glenn Ford(cut to shot of Glenn Ford in some movie.) Yes, that's Glenn Ford alright -- but I'm afraid he is not in this picture.

At some point, the "desk" near Kovacs reveals to be on the backs of men, who crawl out of the room with it on their backs.

THIS is the key to Ernie Kovacs -- a kind of surreal humor, very avant garde for TV...that turns out to be his claim to fame.

I tell you, its a bit too twee for me. Camera tricks, sight gags, "ideas." But it inspired a generation of hip comics.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 9 months ago

And it inspired 60's Hippie/Yippie Abbie Hoffman, too (recently played quite well by Sascha Baron Cohen in Sorkin's Chicago Eight movie):

This new Kovacs book quotes Hoffman in 1968 naming this people who influenced him: "WC Fields, Ernie Kovacs, Che Guevera, Antonin Artraud, Alfred Hitchcock, Lenny Bruce, The Marx Brothers."

And here's Ernie Kovacs making a list with such "bigger greats" as WC Fields, the Marx Brothers, and Hitchcock. Not to mention hip Lenny Bruce and designated hero Commie Che.

Meanwhile: Kovacs' big claim to fame -- broadcast a time or two in the 70's -- was a half hour TV special from 1957 called "Eugene," which isn't really my favorite Kovacs thing -- but pretty damn creative. His Chaplinesque sad sack character(a far cry from his more cool and charsimatic cigar smoker) wanders through rooms in which every TV camera trick and sound trick available is put to use. It was a magical show(to some) that got Kovacs bigger work and his Hollywood movie gig.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 9 months ago

Kovacs two most famous running gag sketches:

ONE: Solifeggio" was an instrumental novelty record. Look it up on Youtube. Better yet, look up "Nairobi Trio" on Youtube. Three guys in street clothes and gorilla masks. Miming to the music, moving like clockwork -- one keeps banging on the other's head with his drumsticks. Classic at the time -- and influential to Harry Nillson's OWN 1972 novelty song, "Coconut" ("You put a lime in the coconut, fill it all up") which in turn became the end credit song for QT's "Reservoir Dogs."

TWO: "Percy Dovetonsils." Kovacs put on extremely goofy-eyed glasses (they totally changed his face) to play this lisping, mild-mannered "poet." My mother had told me about how much she loved Percy Dovetonsils for years, but only in the mid-seventies did I get to SEE the character. Well...he's truly a funny creation. His poems are...silly. And the character is kinda/sorta maybe...gay? But hes really too sweet, twee and funny for that to be an issue. Maybe he is, maybe not.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 9 months ago

Wrapping up: Ernie Kovacs created his own masculine, cigar-smoking, moustachied presence on screen, but he was paired for much of his stardom with a very pretty blonde wife named Edie Adams. They made quite the pair -- the cool guy with the hot wife, but both of them on the same wavelength of comedy.

Edie was Ernie's second wife. The first one pretty much kidnapped Ernie's two daughters by him and it led to some horrible years of private detectives(seeking the kids) and courtrooms(trying to divorce the mother and keep the kids at a distance.) They made this into a TV movie with Jeff Goldblum valiantly trying to play Kovacs but...wrong guy.

I recall reading in one of the earlier Kovacs bios that when his daughters wanted him to show them how to fly(by themselves, no planes) he took them to a big swimming pool and told them to look down when they swam. It worked!

Anyway, soon Edie and Ernie were married. She bore him a child - Mia -- who died in her OWN single car crash years later, after Ernie's car crash death.

Edie and Ernie were announced to be part of the giant cast of Its A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Ernie got killed, Sid Caesar took his role.

I'm here to say that I had a big giant childhood crush on Edie Adams in movies like The Apartment, Mad Mad World, and Call Me Bwana(Bob Hope movie.) Ernie's unique genius and sense of humor won him a real babe. Word is that when Ernie died, he left Edie saddled with IRS and other debt. Hollywood tried to give her money, she refused and sought ROLES instead(that's why she is in so many early 60s movies and TV shows.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 9 months ago

OK, I guess that's enough. But its NOT really. The thing about me and Ernie Kovacs is that he died when I was very young(and I remember the news articles!) and then proceeded to sort of beckon me back to when he was SOMEBODY -- that infernal 50s/60s cusp, forever seen to me as a world in which I was there, but NOT. I have to live it vicariously. In the 70's, that past arrived: Ernie Kovacs retrospectives were all over the tube, and one great book(two more to come) sucked me into his life and his world.

And now in 2024, someone has put together a book from his "family collections"...and he is back.