Who remembers Ernie Kovacs? He came long before Monty Python, Saturday Night Live and MTV. Kovacs did a lot of fresh inovative work with the new medium of television. Pretty much all of his comedy was visual and this youtube clip is prime example of his work. Unfortunately, most of his shows were done live and only a few clips have survived. What little I have seen of his work, there is no dispute that Kovac was a genius.
By the way, many people donned the monkey suits for this sketch. Jack Lemmon was a friend of Kovac and is said to have been the monkey playing the piano in this skit. Toney Curtis, like Lemmon, also played in his skit from time to time.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Ernie Kovacs
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4 comments:
I have a two hour documentary on Ernie Kovacs. It is the most incredible piece of comedy I've ever seen when you take into account that there was no such thing as special effects at that time.
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Ernie did a 60 minute special for NBC and there was no dialouge in the entire piece....it was the funniest thing I've ever seen.
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David:
I enjoyed your post. I run the Ernie Kovacs Blog and mentioned it in my latest post. You're right on about Ernie's genius! I hope you and your readers will stop by and learn some other things about Ernie.
A couple of other Ernie sites I run:
An Ernie Kovacs Tribute Site
The Ernie Kovacs MySpace Fan Page
Yes, even Ernie has a MySpace page these days!
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for the mention at your blog. Great site by the way...I'll be checking you out often.
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