Ernie Kovacs - "Mack the Knife" Take 2

[From "Kovacs Corner" on YouTube.com] - Here is another rendition of one of Ernie's most remembered video "blackout" sequences involving the Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht song "Mack the Knife" (or "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer"). The late German comedian and actor Wolfgang Neuss is singing. Those "youngins" reading this may have seen the Kevin Spacey biopic based on the late singer Bobby Darin. His English version of this song was a smash hit in 1959.

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• Ernie
• Kovacs
• Classic
• TV
• kinescope
• Threepenny
• Opera
• Kurt
• Weill
• Bertolt
• Brecht
• magician
• Matzoh
• Heppelwhite
• Wolfgang
• Neuss
• Bobby
• Lauher
• Joe
• Mikolas
• Jolene
• Brand
• Maggi
• Brown
• golf
• surreal
• dada
• occiliscope

[Janster59]

who is singing this? Kovacs?

[rolko52]

@Janster59 The late German comedian and actor Wolfgang Neuss is singing.

[rolko52]

Kovacs apparently was way ahead of his time. He even predated Gary "Baba Booey" Dell'Abate though this video!

[Cupcakealex]

Does anyone have or remember the "girl in the bathtub" sequences. Mack the Knife was the music, I think,' and there were a series of excruciatingly funny happening" like a submarine periscope rising from the bubbles. What a genius! Thanks for posting this.

[rolko52]

Browse through "Kovacs Corner" and you will see these blackouts in various postings. "Seek and ye shall find!"

[mowwam]

what is this crazyness?

[rolko52]

One of the sources of inspiration for Monty Python's Flying Circus.

[4thekidsTV]

It is a sad loss that we lost Poor Ernie 50 years ago..but..if he didn't kill himself in

that damn car crash..he would have died from cancer or a heart attack from drinking

all of that booze or from smoking those damn cigars or from his unreal work scheduale.

[Janster59]

COOL! Thanx!

[elc1960]

You see, it IS possible to get culture and bizarre humor in the same place. Who says YouTube is a barren wasteland full of videos of teenage boys torturing their own nutsacks? The music is, of course, "Mackey Messer" from "The Threepenny Opera" by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill, who also wrote "The Alabama Song" (aka "Whiskey Bar"), recorded in 1967 by The Doors.

[Ragnemalm]

@rolko52 Certainly. The Cambridge gang was in their early university years when this was new. I even recognise one gag in the first take (elongated arms) from The Goodies "Gymnasium" sketch, and the golf gag at the end of this would fit MP pretty well.

[SenorZorrozzz]

@rolko52 Ernie was great!

[thevidiotkid]

This "crazyness" is Television's original genius making the impossible possible twenty years before the technology existed to actually do some of this stuff.

I first saw this episode in 1961 as a six year old and its still some of the inventive stuff ever broadcast anytime anywhere.

[popomatic1970]

I very much remember this from my childhood. I watched Kovacs reruns on PBS with my dad, who had a laugh that could clear a room ;-) Kovacs is timeless

[mowwam]

wow!!!