Tuesday night, instead of teaching a college TV History class about Ernie Kovacs, I went to New York to attend a Paley Museum presentation ABOUT Ernie Kovacs -- moderated by Keith Olbermann, who, even before opening his mouth, honored the spirit of Ernie Kovacs by delivering a memorable, visual ad lib...
Olbermann, seated in the front row of the small auditorium, was being introduced from the stage, and was credited as being about to resurface as the news editor, and a new program host, on Current TV. Still seated, with his back to the rest of the audience, Olbermann acknowledged the crowd's warm reaction to that announcement by thrusting an arm in the air and offering a big thumbs up.
Then, a few seconds later, he raised the same arm again -- but this time, at the end of it, his fingers were crossed. The audience laughed heartily, for the first of many times.
The panel assembled to salute Kovacs featured Kovacs repertory cast member Jolene Brand; her husband, George Schlatter, creator of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In; Joel Hodgson, creator and original star of Mystery Science Theater 3000; Robert Smigel, creator of TV Funhouse and the "operator" of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog; and Ben Model, curator of Shout Factory's superb Ernie Kovacs Collection DVD box set, which comes out next week, and was the occasion for this tribute.
The set, though far from definitive in a quantitative sense, is deliciously definitive in terms of representing the various facets of Ernie Kovacs' TV career and creative development. The collection begins with a pair of 1951 live shows from his days hosting a local Philadelphia program, It's Time for Ernie, and follows his career all the way to his posthumously presented 1962 special, with an absurdly generous amount of extras.
Kovacs, for the uninitiated, was the first true visual artist of the new medium of television -- a triple-threat artist who would have deserved his status as an iconic TV figure if all he had done was generate the inventive visual and aural gags that turned television on its head. But Kovacs also was brilliant at creating characters, from prissy poet Percy Dovetonsils to horror-movie host Uncle Gruesome -- and equally brilliant, and amazingly at ease, at talking directly to the camera as himself.
Kovacs, Hodgson said admiringly, was "so GOOD on camera. You LIKE him." Model agreed, adding, "I always felt like the shows were visits with Ernie."
The best new insights into the show came from Brand, who was immortalized by Kovacs when she was placed in a bubble bath (see photo at top of column), in a bathtub that had a trick section with a secret entrance beneath it, allowing for the unexpected intrusion of everything from people to pets.
"That was really weird, wasn't it?" she said, laughing. Kovacs told her nothing about what, or who, would be exiting from the bubble bath as she soaked there, but specifically instructed her not to react to anything that might happen.
"What you didn't want to do is crack up and ruin the take," she said, recalling, "Almost everything was one take."
Given the complexity of the sight gags, that's amazing.
What else is amazing is the sheer variety of the bits themselves, as well as the subsequent TV shows and stars who appropriated or adapted them. Smigel remembers, when he and Conan O'Brien started work on the latter's first late-night NBC show, "Our goal was to rip off the part of Steve Allen that David Letterman HADN'T ripped off." It was only later, Smigel said, that he realized they all, including Allen, really were ripping off Kovacs.
Schlatter, whose Laugh-In was a blatant updating of Kovacs' blackout editing style and rapid-fire sight gags, said he credited Kovacs as his inspiration at every opportunity, and freely admitted, "We knew who we stole from."
I'll review The Ernie Kovacs Collection DVD set next week. But if you can't wait -- if you're pre-sold, and want to pre-order, click HERE.
Or, even better, order direct from Shout Factory by clicking HERE -- and get an exclusive bonus DVD of Kovacs' 'Tonight Show' appearances and other stuff.