Category: Ernie Kovacs

  • Ernie Kovacs Meets Florence Foster Jenkins

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    It’s a sustained three-minute shot of three people, just sitting, listening to a singer, for a nearly three minutes before the joke has a payoff. That’s how Ernie Kovacs opened one of his prime time shows for NBC in the summer of 1956. Who else had the chutzpah to start a comedy show like that?…

  • Eugene: The Movie!

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    Ernie Kovacs played one version of “Captain Buzzkill” or another in most of the movies he made for Columbia. He was being cast for what he looked like, his “type”. Kovacs made two attempts to upend this: one we know about and one that may be more conjecture on my part, but I think the…

  • Kovacs Centennial Celebration Held in Trenton

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    “I went to high school with Ernie Kovacs!” is one thing you never expect someone to say to you at an event. But that is precisely what a woman who attended the Ernie Kovacs Day event last month said to me. She was 100, and came to the program with her high school yearbook. I…

  • Stringing Along With Ernie Kovacs for Dutch Masters

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    I’ve seen the famous Ernie Kovacs commercial for Dutch Masters a few dozen times, at least, and never noticed the string quartet. Not that they were in the commercial, the one known as “Haydn”, the one that won Kovacs and co-director Joe Behar an award the first year the Clios were given out in 1959.…

  • Singer Peter Hanley – Under-Documented Kovacs Ensemble Player

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    Ernie Kovacs show ensemble cast members turn up out of seemingly nowhere in the TV-ography of the shows. Ernie’s penchant for casting or hiring people through unusual channels and based on a personal reaction runs throughout his career. The trajectory of singer Peter Hanley is harder than most to identify. Peter Hanley was hired as…

  • How Do You Replace Kukla, Fran and Ollie?

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    The Nation’s First Exposure to Ernie Kovacs Was in a Summer Replacement In 1951 After hosting a daily 7-9am wake-up show as well as a number of other programs — cooking, fashion, quiz — for local NBC affiliate WPTZ, Ernie Kovacs got the chance at a network show. He’d been on the air a few…

  • The Nairobi Trio: Behind the Masks

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    The best-known and most-seen version of Ernie Kovacs’ famous “Nairobi Trio” sketch is one shot on videotape. It was used in an episode of the 1977 series “The Best of Ernie Kovacs”, and it’s on YouTube. I’d always thought the trio members were Ernie, Jolene Brand (keys) and Bobby Lauher (mallets) on that ABC special.…

  • Just You And Ernie Kovacs…And a Theatre Full of Fellow Fans

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    Ernie Kovacs hated working with a live audience for his TV shows. His TV shows feel like you’re having a visit with him. Having spent 8 years in radio before starting in TV, in its own nascent years, Ernie carried over the practice of performing to an audience of one to his TV work. He…

  • Kovacs and Kapusta Puppets by Larry Berthelson

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    Ernie Kovacs must have had an inkling that his viewership on the half-hour comedy-variety show he did late mornings on NBC in 1955-1956 would include children. Why else would a puppet show have been a staple of the program’s regular sketches right from the start? Kovacs had certainly been no stranger to the mid-morning time…

  • George Fiala — Make-up Artist for Uncle Gruesome, Soaps, Santa and Soupy

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    Ernie Kovacs made a point of bringing make-up artist George Fiala out on camera in what may his only TV appearance. It was not to show Fiala off or pay tribute to his craft, but as a reassuring gesture a parent or child educator might do. Ernie’s morning show on NBC that ran from December…