Ernie Kovacs

lifetime achievement award for morbz for keeping this thread going, kovacs 4ever

happy 100th, Ern

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfB3jj8vKlo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=416o9b_pjQk&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=416o9b_pjQk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqJMPLcNDs4

Tonight TCM is celebrating Kovacs' centennial: http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/1462735|0/Ernie-Kovacs-Centennial-1-23.html

I haven't seen a ton of the films, but if anyone thinks anything besides Our Man in Havana is essential...

(not that i have TCM)

Kovacs on Percy Dovetonsils: "He's a beautiful soul who hasn't quite made it over the line into this rude, virile world."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj2JzNd7wuE

"The Ernie Kovacs Centennial Exhibit" will debut in August 2019, during the National Comedy Center's annual Lucille Ball Comedy Festival. The installation will showcase never-before-exhibited creative papers, rare audiovisual content and original, screen-used artifacts from Kovacs' influential 1950s and early 1960s television shows and specials. The Festival week (August 7-11) will also feature a panel event honoring Kovacs' art and legacy.

"We are so pleased to partner with the National Comedy Center to celebrate Ernie Kovacs' centennial," said Josh Mills, executive for the Kovacs estate and son of actress/comedienne Edie Adams, who was Kovacs' wife, co-star, and creative collaborator. "Most of this material has never been exhibited before, so it's an unprecedented, first-hand look at Ernie's comedic genius and his unique approach to his work."

https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwtv/article/National-Comedy-Center-To-Celebrate-Ernie-Kovacs-with-Centennial-Exhibit-20190124

Percy joins "the AA"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPfe8TGBwgY

I'm watching discs 7-9 of the Centennial Collection (previously Volume 2) and it's almost all NBC morning shows. Damn, there are a lot of "Kapusta Kid in Outer Space" puppet sketches. They are not especially funny, but they revel in being bizarre.

very thorough career appraisal

He contemplated at least two movie “properties,” one based on “Eugene” as a vehicle for friend Alec Guinness as well as his own novel Zoomar (see illustration), a TV industry satire based on his dense knowledge and experience of the business.

Otherwise disappointed by Our Man in Havana, Guinness later recalled in his memoirs: “There were two great and unexpected pleasures in making that film.” The second was spending an evening with Ernest Hemingway. The first? “Getting to know Ernie Kovacs . . . Kovacs was as different as could be; outrageously extrovert, wild, rash, gipsy-like and, in a Goonish way, just about the funniest man I have ever met.”...

Given another decade or more, could Ernie have produced film gems equivalent to Preston Sturges’ best comedies, or have challenged Jerry Lewis as American cinema’s primary comedy “auteur” in the early to mid-1960s by whatever term then used for such an all-in-one film clown?

https://brightlightsfilm.com/wp-content/cache/all/ernie-kovacs-american-secret/#.XFht-al7lBw

he's quite excellent in a more serious, somewhat self-mocking part in "strangers when we meet"

those morning shows are precious -- not much off-the-cuff (or somewhat off-the-cuff) live morning TV from that era survives, for obvious reasons.

afaik the main Kovacs tribute in NYC this summer will take place on August 13, with panelists including Hal Willner and Chris Stein:

http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=08&year=2019#showing-51308

https://www.silentfilmmusic.com/kovacs-compilations/

free Kovacs screening/panel in NYC tomw night, sponsored by the Hungarian Cultural Center

http://www.newyork.balassiintezet.hu/en/ernie-kovacs-100/

dang, cool! wish i wasn't spoken for already