Yesterday I shared Ernie Kovacs’ irreverent demolition of Victor Herbert at the hands of an inexperienced Italian television crew (on “Enna-B-C,” no less), with an orchestra of improbable musical instruments, like a Gerard Hoffnung cartoon brought to life.
Kovacs was born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1919. He got his start in radio there, on WTTM, in 1941. It was in Philadelphia that he first broke into television, at WPTZ, in 1950. It wasn’t long before he moved into the New York and national markets. Though none of his shows seemed to last very long (the network quashed his morning show to make way for “Today”), it seems like he was everywhere at once, reincarnated on show after show, doing freeform television specials, appearing as a panelist on “What’s My Line,” and filling in for Steve Allen on “The Tonight Show.” There was no one zanier or more surreal on American television.
As a young man doing summer stock in Vermont, in 1939, Kovacs became seriously ill with pneumonia and pleurisy – so ill, in fact, that he was not expected to survive. During his convalescence, he developed a lifelong love of classical music, thanks to broadcasts over the radio. Kovacs would go on to use or parody the classics in many of his silent skits and abstract visual routines.
Here, Ernie puts some of the zing back into Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture”:
PHOTO: Kovacs with Edie Adams, his wife
