77 Facts About Ernie Kovacs

Ernest Edward Kovacs was an American comedian, actor, and writer.

Ernie Kovacs has been credited as an influence by many individuals and shows, including Johnny Carson, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Saturday Night Live, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Jim Henson, Max Headroom, Chevy Chase, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Pee-wee's Playhouse, The Muppet Show, Dave Garroway, Andy Kaufman, You Can't Do That on Television, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Uncle Floyd, among others.

Ernie Kovacs has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in television.

Ernie Kovacs's father, Andrew John Ernie Kovacs, was born in 1890 and emigrated from Tornaujfalu, Hungary, which is known as Turnianska Nova Ves, Slovakia.

Ernie Kovacs worked as a policeman, restaurateur, and bootlegger, the last so successfully that he moved his wife Mary, son Tom, and his half-brother Ernest Edward Kovacs into a 20-room mansion in the better part of Trenton.

When Ernie Kovacs began drama school, all he could afford was a fifth-floor walk-up apartment on West 74th Street in New York City.

Ernie Kovacs used his class vacation time to pursue roles in summer stock companies.

Ernie Kovacs began work as a cigar salesman, which resulted in a lifelong tobacco-smoking habit.

Ernie Kovacs's first paid entertainment work was during 1941 as an announcer for Trenton's radio station WTTM.

Ernie Kovacs 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 and broadcasting from the cockpit of a plane for which he took flying lessons.

Ernie Kovacs was 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 1941.

Ernie Kovacs's first show was Pick Your Ideal, a fashion and promotional program for the Ideal Manufacturing Company.

When rain was in the weather forecast, Ernie Kovacs would get on a ladder and pour water down on the staff member reading the report.

Ernie Kovacs went outside of the studio for some of his skits, running through a downtown Philadelphia restaurant in a gorilla suit in one; in another, he looked into a construction pit, saying it was deep enough to see to China, when a man in Chinese clothing popped up, said a few words in the language, and ran off.

Ernie Kovacs once asked his viewers to send unwanted items to Channel 3; they filled the station's lobby.

Ernie Kovacs continued the EEFMS on his morning show when he moved to WCBS in New York in 1952.

Ernie Kovacs would walk through an imaginary neighborhood, talking with various characters such as Pete the Cop and Luigi the Barber.

Ernie Kovacs then began work for WCBS-TV in New York with a local morning show and a later network one.

At WPTZ, Ernie 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.

Ernie Kovacs was noted for abstraction and carefully timed non-sequitur gags and for allowing the fourth wall to be breached.

Ernie Kovacs liked talking to the off-camera crew and even introduced segments from the studio control room.

Ernie Kovacs frequently made use of accidents and happenstance, incorporating the unexpected into his shows.

Ernie Kovacs realized that he would be called upon to drink a shot of liquor for each successive gong.

Ernie Kovacs pressed on with the sketch and was quite inebriated by the end of the show.

Ernie Kovacs helped develop camera tricks still common decades after his death.

When Ernie Kovacs poured milk from a thermos bottle, the stream flowed in a seemingly unusual direction.

Ernie Kovacs constantly sought new techniques and used both primitive and improvised ways of creating visual effects that would later be done electronically.

An underwater stunt involved cigar smoker Ernie Kovacs sitting in an easy chair, reading his newspaper and somehow smoking a cigar.

Ernie Kovacs repeated the effect for a Dutch Masters television commercial on his ABC game show, Take A Good Look.

Ernie Kovacs 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 moving in sync to music.

Ernie Kovacs used extended sketches and mood pieces or quick blackout gags lasting only seconds.

Ernie Kovacs was one of the first television comedians to use odd fake credits and comments between the legitimate credits and, at times, during his routines.

Ernie Kovacs reportedly disliked working in front of a live audience, as was the case with the shows he did for NBC during the 1950s.

Ernie Kovacs 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.

The Miklos character wasn't always confined to a kitchen; Ernie Kovacs performed a parody of The Howdy Doody Show with "Buffalo Miklos" as the host.

Ernie Kovacs became a regular on NBC Radio's program Monitor beginning during late 1958, often using his Mr Question Man character in his radio monologues.

Ernie Kovacs never hesitated to lampoon those considered institutions of radio and television.

Ernie Kovacs had been dismissed by Godfrey the year before, together with fellow cast member, singer Julius La Rosa.

Bleyer and Ernie Kovacs were shown in split screen, with Ernie Kovacs wearing a red wig, headphones, and playing a ukulele in a Godfrey imitation, while talking with his guest.

Ernie Kovacs was the host of a program, Silents Please, which showed silent movies on network television, with serious discussion about the movies and their actors.

When Ernie Kovacs gave an interview admitting that he was absent from the show when he wanted to go out for dinner on a Sunday, his stint on the panel show was ended.

Ernie Kovacs 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 Ernie Kovacs was willing to have it.

Ernie Kovacs developed the Eugene character during the autumn of 1956, when hosting the television series The Tonight Show.

Kovacs and co-director Behar won the Directors Guild of America award for an Ernie Kovacs Special based on the earlier, silent "Eugene" program.

Ernie Kovacs allowed Kovacs total creative control in the creation of their television commercials for his programs and specials.

Ernie Kovacs 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.

Ernie Kovacs was introduced to the song in 1954 by Barry Shear, his director at DuMont Television Network.

Ernie Kovacs matched an unusual treatment of "Sentimental Journey", by Mexican bandleader Juan Garcia Esquivel, to video of an empty office in which various items come to life in rhythm with the music; it was a variation on several famous animations of a decade earlier.

The perfectionist Ernie Kovacs describes in minute detail what had to be done and how to do it.

Ernie Kovacs served as host on a jazz album to benefit the American Cancer Society in 1957, Listening to Jazz with Ernie Kovacs.

Ernie Kovacs wrote a novel, Zoomar: A Sophisticated Novel about Love and TV, based on television pioneer Pat Weaver; it took Ernie Kovacs only 13 days to write.

Ernie Kovacs intended part of the book's proceeds to benefit Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Ernie Kovacs wrote the introduction to the 1958 collection Mad For Keeps: A Collection of the Best from Mad Magazine.

For General Electric Theater's "I Was a Bloodhound" in 1959, Ernie Kovacs played the role of detective Barney Colby, whose extraordinary sense of smell helped him solve many seemingly-impossible cases.

Ernie Kovacs found Hollywood success as a character actor, often typecast as a swarthy military officer in such films as Operation Mad Ball, Wake Me When It's Over and Our Man in Havana.

Ernie 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.

Ernie Kovacs garnered critical acclaim for film roles such as the perennially-inebriated writer in Bell, Book and Candle and as the cartoonishly-evil head of a railroad company in It Happened to Jane, where he had his head shaved and his remaining hair dyed grey for the role.

Ernie Kovacs began August 2,1962, by claiming was her share of Kovacs's estate and charging that her ex-husband had abducted the girls in 1955; Kovacs had been granted legal custody of his daughters in 1952.

Ernie Kovacs was seriously taken with the beautiful and talented young woman, courting her with imagination and flair.

Ernie Kovacs continued this romantic quest after the show went out of town.

Ernie Kovacs was a regular partner on his television shows.

Ernie Kovacs usually introduced or addressed her in a businesslike way, as "Edith Adams".

The couple had one daughter, Mia Susan Ernie Kovacs, born June 20,1959.

Ernie Kovacs realized he was working too much in New York; in California he would be able to work fewer hours, do just as well or better and have more time for Edie and his daughters.

Ernie Kovacs claimed that he realized it was time for a change when he was telling his girls a bedtime story and found himself thinking of using it for a show instead.

Ernie Kovacs relocated his family there in 1957, after Edie finished work for the Broadway play Li'l Abner.

Ernie Kovacs was thrown halfway out the vehicle's passenger side and died almost instantly from chest and head injuries.

Ernie Kovacs would give them bizarre names, such as "The Bazooka Dooka Hicka Hocka Hookah Company".

In 1961, Ernie Kovacs was served with a $75,000 lien for back taxes; that same day he bought the California Racquet Club with the apparent hope of being able to use it as a tax write-off.

Ernie Kovacs filmed an unaired 1962 pilot episode for a proposed CBS series, Medicine Man.

Ernie Kovacs had purchased two insurance policies in 1951; his mother was named as the primary beneficiary of them.

Adams, who married and divorced twice after Ernie Kovacs' death, refused help from celebrity friends who planned a benefit for the purpose.

Ernie Kovacs succeeded in purchasing the rights to surviving footage with the proceeds from Kovacs' insurance policy and her own earnings after Kovacs' IRS debts were paid.

Adams first used some of the videotapes she had purchased for a 1968 ABC television special, The Comedy of Ernie Kovacs; to produce the show, she hired Kovacs's former producer and editor.

In 1961, Ernie 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.

Ernie Kovacs was inducted posthumously into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia's Hall of Fame in 1992.