Biography
Ernie Kovacs earned recognition during his era as one of comedy’s most inventive practitioners. Serving as actor, writer, and producer, he brought a surreal comic outlook and an enthusiastic willingness to explore television’s expanding expressive range, becoming a major influence once the medium gained broad audiences throughout the 1950s. His unconventional narrative methods and visual tricks that relied on camera techniques to produce impossible pictures gave him almost no predecessors at the height of his initial popularity. Although his death in 1962 at an early age cut short a still-developing career, numerous experimental comedians have pointed to his programs as a formative example, and his material continues to circulate through home-video editions and occasional television revivals.
Kovacs entered the world in Trenton, New Jersey, on January 23, 1919. While the Prohibition era lasted, his father accumulated modest wealth through bootlegging, allowing the boy to enroll at an exclusive private elementary school. There he first cultivated an interest in performance, his mother encouraging the pursuit by ordering specially fitted outfits for his roles in school productions. Once he reached high school, the family’s prosperity had vanished. In the public system he proved an inattentive student despite evident intellect, failing nearly every subject. He nevertheless stood out in drama classes, and after finally completing twelfth grade in 1937 following a repeat year prompted by weak grades, he spent several months in summer stock before earning a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While balancing coursework and jobs, he contracted pneumonia and pleurisy, leading to two years of hospitalization. Dissatisfied with prolonged, unhelpful care and doubtful of the original diagnosis, he simply left the facility and joined Trenton’s Contemporary Players theater troupe. With that company he produced, directed, and starred in numerous productions until a backer absconded with the receipts, leaving him suddenly unemployed.
He returned to his mother’s Trenton home and took work in a drugstore. A fortunate opportunity then placed him behind the microphone at local radio outlet WTTM. From 1941 to 1950 he advanced from staff announcer to host of a late-night music program and director of special broadcasts, gradually shaping the distinctive comic voice that would define his later work. He also performed in area stage productions, contributed a newspaper column, and supplied color commentary for weekly wrestling events. A tape of one such wrestling call reached Philadelphia television station WPTZ-TV, which soon employed him on both the Trenton and Philadelphia outlets. At WPTZ he joined the on-air team, hosting the cooking program Deadline for Dinner. His frequent humorous asides turned the show into a regional favorite. That success prompted the station to give him his own morning vehicle, Three to Get Ready, on which he ad-libbed routines, staged chaotic sketches, and introduced the lisping, martini-loving poet Percy Dovetonsils. The program thrived until the NBC affiliate was required to clear the network’s national morning offering, Today, forcing Three to Get Ready off the schedule.
Kovacs returned quickly when CBS offered him a mid-morning slot titled The Ernie Kovacs Show. Although the daytime edition performed solidly, an added evening edition scheduled against Milton Berle’s dominant comedy hour drew poor ratings. He therefore moved to the fledgling Dumont Network in 1953. There he enjoyed wide creative latitude, freely exercising his talent for satire and arresting visual gags. Financial instability eventually doomed Dumont, which ceased operations in 1956, and NBC signed him to a generous contract in 1955. The network supplied a mid-morning program, and in January 1957 he filled a half-hour slot immediately following a Jerry Lewis special. Lewis had shortened his own ninety-minute booking to sixty minutes, and Kovacs was among the few performers willing to cover the remaining time. The resulting wordless half-hour delighted audiences and reviewers alike, securing him a Columbia Pictures contract. His screen debut came later that year in the comedy Operation Mad Ball. He also published the novel Zoomar, drawn from his television experiences, and contributed numerous magazine articles, among them several early pieces for Mad Magazine. Around the same period he issued his first album, Ernie Kovacs Presents Buddy Weed … And Introduces Lynn Taylor, on which he supplied brief spoken interludes between pianist Tad Weed and vocalist Lynn Taylor.
For the next two years he alternated between motion-picture assignments and sporadic NBC specials and guest appearances. In 1959 the network broadcast one of his most ambitious projects, Kovacs on Music, featuring Andre Previn and a gorilla-suited staging of “Swan Lake.” Dutch Masters cigars sponsored the program, and the cigar company later backed many subsequent Kovacs ventures, including the short-lived ABC series Take a Good Look, the summer silent-film showcase Silents Please, and a series of monthly ABC specials that contained some of his most intricate and inventive television pieces. He received an Emmy for one of those specials, though he never collected the award; the final installment aired weeks after his fatal automobile accident on January 13, 1962, at age forty-two.
Twice married, Kovacs left his second wife, singer and actress Edie Adams, who spent considerable effort preserving his television legacy. She acquired rights to most surviving programs, enabling ABC to air the 1968 compilation The Comedy of Ernie Kovacs. Later excerpts appeared in series on PBS and the Comedy Channel, while full episodes were issued on VHS and DVD. Columbia Records released The Ernie Kovacs Album in 1976, a collection of spoken routines taken from his broadcasts, and Varese Sarabande issued Ernie Kovacs’ Record Collection, a 1997 anthology of music he had featured on air. Omnivore Recordings produced an expanded edition of The Ernie Kovacs Album in 2019; the label had previously issued the previously unreleased 1960 comedy album Percy Dovetonsils … Thpeaks in 2012 and Ernie Kovacs Presents: A Percy Dovetonsils Crithmath in 2013.
Kovacs entered the world in Trenton, New Jersey, on January 23, 1919. While the Prohibition era lasted, his father accumulated modest wealth through bootlegging, allowing the boy to enroll at an exclusive private elementary school. There he first cultivated an interest in performance, his mother encouraging the pursuit by ordering specially fitted outfits for his roles in school productions. Once he reached high school, the family’s prosperity had vanished. In the public system he proved an inattentive student despite evident intellect, failing nearly every subject. He nevertheless stood out in drama classes, and after finally completing twelfth grade in 1937 following a repeat year prompted by weak grades, he spent several months in summer stock before earning a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While balancing coursework and jobs, he contracted pneumonia and pleurisy, leading to two years of hospitalization. Dissatisfied with prolonged, unhelpful care and doubtful of the original diagnosis, he simply left the facility and joined Trenton’s Contemporary Players theater troupe. With that company he produced, directed, and starred in numerous productions until a backer absconded with the receipts, leaving him suddenly unemployed.
He returned to his mother’s Trenton home and took work in a drugstore. A fortunate opportunity then placed him behind the microphone at local radio outlet WTTM. From 1941 to 1950 he advanced from staff announcer to host of a late-night music program and director of special broadcasts, gradually shaping the distinctive comic voice that would define his later work. He also performed in area stage productions, contributed a newspaper column, and supplied color commentary for weekly wrestling events. A tape of one such wrestling call reached Philadelphia television station WPTZ-TV, which soon employed him on both the Trenton and Philadelphia outlets. At WPTZ he joined the on-air team, hosting the cooking program Deadline for Dinner. His frequent humorous asides turned the show into a regional favorite. That success prompted the station to give him his own morning vehicle, Three to Get Ready, on which he ad-libbed routines, staged chaotic sketches, and introduced the lisping, martini-loving poet Percy Dovetonsils. The program thrived until the NBC affiliate was required to clear the network’s national morning offering, Today, forcing Three to Get Ready off the schedule.
Kovacs returned quickly when CBS offered him a mid-morning slot titled The Ernie Kovacs Show. Although the daytime edition performed solidly, an added evening edition scheduled against Milton Berle’s dominant comedy hour drew poor ratings. He therefore moved to the fledgling Dumont Network in 1953. There he enjoyed wide creative latitude, freely exercising his talent for satire and arresting visual gags. Financial instability eventually doomed Dumont, which ceased operations in 1956, and NBC signed him to a generous contract in 1955. The network supplied a mid-morning program, and in January 1957 he filled a half-hour slot immediately following a Jerry Lewis special. Lewis had shortened his own ninety-minute booking to sixty minutes, and Kovacs was among the few performers willing to cover the remaining time. The resulting wordless half-hour delighted audiences and reviewers alike, securing him a Columbia Pictures contract. His screen debut came later that year in the comedy Operation Mad Ball. He also published the novel Zoomar, drawn from his television experiences, and contributed numerous magazine articles, among them several early pieces for Mad Magazine. Around the same period he issued his first album, Ernie Kovacs Presents Buddy Weed … And Introduces Lynn Taylor, on which he supplied brief spoken interludes between pianist Tad Weed and vocalist Lynn Taylor.
For the next two years he alternated between motion-picture assignments and sporadic NBC specials and guest appearances. In 1959 the network broadcast one of his most ambitious projects, Kovacs on Music, featuring Andre Previn and a gorilla-suited staging of “Swan Lake.” Dutch Masters cigars sponsored the program, and the cigar company later backed many subsequent Kovacs ventures, including the short-lived ABC series Take a Good Look, the summer silent-film showcase Silents Please, and a series of monthly ABC specials that contained some of his most intricate and inventive television pieces. He received an Emmy for one of those specials, though he never collected the award; the final installment aired weeks after his fatal automobile accident on January 13, 1962, at age forty-two.
Twice married, Kovacs left his second wife, singer and actress Edie Adams, who spent considerable effort preserving his television legacy. She acquired rights to most surviving programs, enabling ABC to air the 1968 compilation The Comedy of Ernie Kovacs. Later excerpts appeared in series on PBS and the Comedy Channel, while full episodes were issued on VHS and DVD. Columbia Records released The Ernie Kovacs Album in 1976, a collection of spoken routines taken from his broadcasts, and Varese Sarabande issued Ernie Kovacs’ Record Collection, a 1997 anthology of music he had featured on air. Omnivore Recordings produced an expanded edition of The Ernie Kovacs Album in 2019; the label had previously issued the previously unreleased 1960 comedy album Percy Dovetonsils … Thpeaks in 2012 and Ernie Kovacs Presents: A Percy Dovetonsils Crithmath in 2013.
Albums
