Ernie Kovacs centennial puts focus on TV genius' fuzzy but groundbreaking archive The name Ernie Kovacs may not be widely recognizable, but his brand of television humor instantly is: Fake commercials, blackout gags, bogus talk shows and satire. Even when viewed through grainy black and white, the gonzo trail he blazed for “Laugh-In,” Monty Python, “Saturday Night Live” and Johnny Carson and all his wannabes — especially NBC-era David Letterman — is plain to see. Born January 23, 1919, his death at age 42 preserved his largely unrealized genius in amber, leaving TV historians to gather the crumbs. Nine DVDs may not count as crumbs; in late 2018, Shout! Factory combined two Kovacs sets released earlier in the decade into one massive set to observe the 2019 Kovacs centennial. And kudos to them — his comedy palate was so varied, and his visuals remain so innovative, too much is never enough. Even the bits that fail to land offer more imagination than pretty much anything else airing on TV at the time, or, well, ever. Kovacs was the “Mad” magazine of the boob tube. His fourth-wall breaking showed TV’s "folks at home" the Potemkin village behind the facade of TV, which was akin at the time to pointing out the seams in America’s postwar dream as a whole. His handsomeness, genial demeanor and smooth emcee patter from his radio beginnings left audiences off-guard for his deep weirdness. Kovacs was a TV disrupter when disruption definitely wasn’t cool. How could someone so wholly understand the potential of such a new medium? Note how the camera gag prefigures Python.
Just got through watching "Our Man In Havana" with Ernie playing a crooked Havana Police Captain. The movies sure did him no good.
I'll never forget Jack Lemmon's comment: Ernie Kovacs was probably the funniest person I ever knew. Ernie thought so, too" The show that opened with Kovacs walking down the street was literally started that way out of necessity. He was notoriously late, and they had seconds before air time and someone saw him coming down the street. They stuck the camera out the window, filmed him coming in, ran the credits, went to commercial, and on with the show
For his movies, Operation Mad Ball is pretty good. Wake Me When It's Over - the title can be taken literally.
A very unique guy, his comedy still stands up I think! So many memorable visuals! The only comic mind that compares to Kovacs is Pete Cook, and really they are nothing alike except in surprising originality. YMMV but Andy Kaufman is up there too in my humble opinion, also very unpredictable and surprising. Maybe Gracie Allen too from what I have been able to see/hear of the old Burns & Allen shows. I'm glad people remember Ernie Kovacs and that I got a chance to see a lot of his tv work. So much good stuff has been lost.
Geez, what perfect timing for this thread. My wife and I just watched two episodes of the Ernie Kovaks show we had recorded from cable . Funny stuff. The first thing that struck me is how “out there” the shows were for 1961 or 1962. ( One of them was the posthumous show run in January 1962) The shows struck me as really ahead of their time when I consider the other shows of the era and the video tape editing seemed pretty advanced for that era. I can imagine a family used to watching the typical sitcom fare of the era scratching their heads watching these shows . Reading about Ernie and the shows afterward on Wiki, apparently the shows were admired by critics but never did great ratings -wise . And, I can certainly see the shows influence on Laugh In , etc., and in a coincidence Laugh In’s creator George Schlatter was, and still is married to one of Ernie’s cast members, Jolene Brand.
Always loved Ernie Kovacs. The two multi-DVD sets released in the past few years thanks to his late widow Edie Adams' careful curation of his archive are an absolute blast. Hard to believe he's been dead for 57 years, some of his surreal innovations on TV have never really been bettered. Here's a link to a 4 hour special commemorating what would have been his 100th birthday this year featuring some items not included in the DVD sets. https://www.newsfromme.com/2019/03/17/todays-video-link-2879/
I think his death, driving a Corvair on a rain-slickened LA street, did more to kill that car brand than Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed book did, especially when you look at the picture they ran on the extra of the LA Times announcing the news. Such a tragic end to such a funny guy.
Ernie was a BLAST! I remembered being very saddened to hear that he;d been killed in a car accident back in 1962!
