Milton Berle "Mr. Television" - The Texaco Star Theater Intro

[From "Kovacs Corner" on YouTube.com] - On the evening of January 13, 1962, Ernie Kovacs arrived at the Beverly Hills California mansion of director Billy Wilder to celebrate with his fellow cigar-smoking card partner Milton "Mr. Television" Berle and his wife Ruth the adoption of their son. After arriving in his Rolls Royce after a long production day, Ernie and Edie spent the evening mingling with their friends. Upon leaving, Ernie made the fateful decision to drive home with the car that Edie had driven to the party - a 1962 Chevrolet Corvair Lakewood Station Wagon. Encountering an unusual Southern California rainfall, Ernie lost control of the vehicle and crashed driver's side into a utility pole at the corner of Beverly Glen and Santa Monica Boulevards. He died instantly from a fractured skull. After becoming concerned over Ernie's apparent delay in arriving at home, she received word of the accident. Edie called the Los Angeles Police and she quotes them as saying "It's Mrs. Kovacs, he's on his way to the coroner. What should I tell her?" Edie became so inconsolable upon hearing of Ernie's death that she requested that his best friend, actor Jack Lemmon, make the solumn trip the Los Angeles County morgue to identify the body. Ernie's funeral service was held at the Beverly Hills Presbyterian Community Church. He had requested no eulogy or fanfare. The mourners at that service would read like an elite list of old Hollywood. In addition to the Berles, it included Edward G. Robinson, George Burns, Jack Benny, Herbert Marshall, Samuel Goldwyn, Groucho Marx, Donna Reed, Kirk Douglas, Janet Leigh, Polly Bergen, James Stewart, Johnny Mercer, Kim Novak, Cesar Romero, Jayne Mansfield (who would also lose her life in an automobile accident five years later), Buster Keaton, Greer Garson, Charlton Heston, restaurateur Mike Romanoff, director Vincente Minelli, and producer William Wyler. His pallbearers were Jack Lemmon, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, directors Billy Wilder and Mervyn Leroy, and Ernie's on camera sidekick Joe Mikolas, Ernie Kovacs is buried in Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. Appropriately, his epitaph reads "Nothing in moderation". In another ironic twist of fate, his only child with Edie Adams, Mia Susan, was killed May 8, 1982 in an automobile accident not far from the same intersection where her father died 20 years earlier.

[Update May 22, 2010] Way before it had taken any other meaning, one of "Uncle Miltie's" shticks was to dress in drag. Here he dresses as a "June bride". Fast forward fifty years later!!!

[Update June 13, 2010] Almost thirty years later, and in the same Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, "Uncle" Miltie was a guest host on 'Saturday Nigh Live". Supposedly he was such an unbearable prick that Lorne Michaels vowed to NEVER rerun that episode ever again! Well, he did see fit to release it on DVD. Here is a link to the Amazon.com preview spoofing this exact intro... http://www.amazon.com/Milton-Berle-Ornette-Coleman-April/dp/B001OOGEPQ/ref=pd...

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• Ernie
• Kovacs
• Milton
• Berle
• Texaco
• Star
• Theater
• Classic
• TV
• kinescope
• drag
• cross
• dressing
• dressor

[rolko52]

Imaging the expression on the face of that "groom" when he later eyes the anaconda that's hiding under that wedding dress!

[fromthesidelines]

This was probably THE most famous opening in early television- every Tuesday night at 8pm(et), from 1948 through '53, viewers saw the "Texaco service men" [a vocal quartet] introduce the show, and pitch their sponsor's product, then introducing "Mr. Television" himself (ALWAYS entering in an outrageous costume).

[rolko52]

@fromthesidelines During his monologue there would always be a woman laughing histerically from the audience. Berle would always use her as as the butt of an insult joke. That woman was Milton's mother Sadie.

[tallpaul521]

Thank you for the details of the death of Mr. Kovacs. I'd heard that an unlit, new cigar was found in the car. The theory that was that Kovacs had reached into the glovebox (where he kept his cigars) and had lost control of the car.

[rolko52]

@tallpaul521 I have also read that. It's another sad aspect to an unfortunate event.

[431516020205]

fantastic buddy...thank you!!!

[rolko52]

@431516020205 Your welcome Mike.

[chumshot1]

@rolko52 Im reading his autobio now, its rlly good!! His mother reminds me of my grandmother..

[fromthesidelines]

That's right, 'rolko'. While reminiscing about his series on the 1971 album "The Golden Age of Television", Milton said, "There was one laugh that projected from the top of them all- and that was my mother...and if people didn't laugh, she used to shove them in the arm and, say, 'Laugh it up, that's my son!'....she was there at every show...".

[sandybfine]

@tallpaul521

[billyblackattacks]

back when commercials had their own shows