[For a more complete bio of Ernie and Edie, visit the "Kovacs Corner Blog" at http://kovacs-corner.blogsp... ]

Ernie Kovacs was an early US television personality who was known for an uninhibited, visually experimental, and often ad-libbed comedic style. He directly influenced numerous TV comedy performers and programs for many years after his untimely death from an automobile crash on January 13, 1962.

Kovacs' shows were products of a time when television was in its infancy and such experimentation was still possible on commercial broadcasting. He was one of the first to use elements of a style that would later come to underline his reputation which included video superimpositions, reverse image polarities and quick "blackout" scenes among many others. These are writing and production elements which are still used over fifty years later!

Besides the wielding his ever present cigar, he was also noted for his sense of comedic abstraction, carefully timed non sequitur gags, and for allowing the "fourth wall" be breached. His wife, the late actress-singer Edie Adams, lovenly referred to him as "the mad Hungarian."

As a true music aficionado, Ernie would inevitably incorporate that love into his work. Many of his video segments were thematically influenced by the works of such composers as Richard Strauss, Gioachino Rossini, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Béla Bartók among many others.

It is doubtful that Ernie would find a place on network television today. He would be too cerebral, zany, unrestrained and anarchistic. Perhaps columnist Jack Gould writing in The New York Times descibed the general feeling at the time: "The fun was in trying."

To Ernie, the trying was indeed fun and it eventually succeeded far beyond what he could ever imagine.

"It's Been Real!"

DORF