Ernie Kovacs -- Finishing First

Someone once told me that finishing best is more important than finishing first. Something to think about.

I remember that more than 50 years ago I was working my way through the University. Working on a show that starred Ernie Kovacs. In the days when television was enduring its “birthing pains,” one of the midwives who played a key role in creating the thing we know as “TV” was a kid from Hungary whose genius and impulse and vision were the driving force behind the emergence of a new medium of creative expression.           

Ernie Kovacs was something special. His show was a musical/comedy show. He had a backup of three musicians known as The Eddie Hatrack Trio, but the musical threesome most identified with The Ernie Kovacs Show was The Nairobi Trio. Each member wore a gorilla mask throughout the performance, and although Ernie could always be identified by the ever-present cigar hanging out of his mouth, the identities of the other two players were known only to an elite inner circle. Rumor had it that the young comedy actor Jack Lemmon and famed vocalist Frank Sinatra (both close friends of Kovacs’) would occasionally sit in. Ernie’s wife, actress Edie Adams was also rumored to have been a participant…but who knew?

Much of what Ernie did on the air was as unknown and unseen as the members of The Nairobi Trio. You see Ernie was on air in a spot wedged between NBC’s first airings of The Tonight Show with Steve Allen and the late night movie. He didn’t have a chance. Steve Allen was very popular, and his new show was beginning its meteoric rise to TV immortality. Ernie knew that there were not many watching…but the dearth of viewers early on, while not particularly inspiring, gave him a unique freedom to explore.

Ernie would show up every night, accompanied by his young bride and fellow performer/second banana Edie Adams and perform some of the most innovative, irreverent, ahead-of-their time comedy bits and sketches ever seen on the small screen.

Fresh. Crazy. Hilarious.

The show was shaped on the fly – always just before airtime…no second takes, all LIVE. Every night he and his erstwhile cast would perform without a net…doing things creatively and technologically that weren’t even close to being done by the big guys.  Ernie pioneered the art of blackout sketches. His comedy personalities, like the effete poet Percy Dovetonsils, Auntie Gruesome, and Mr. Question Man are enshrined in the hearts of his fans. He pushed the envelope because he couldn’t stand to be defined by it.

Ernie was among the first  (if not THE first) to explore the potential of the process known as the “green screen.” In common use today, it was prohibitively rudimentary in the early days of television. We started using a version of that long before it became a household word in technological circles, and Ernie soared with it. On a bench in front of the green screen, Ernie would lie down and pretend to be swimming, while the image of a fish tank, full of tropical fish, was superimposed over the live action of him doing the backstroke and various other antics. Primitive, yes, but so, so hypnotizing. We got a barrage of calls regularly from fans and casual watchers alike…lauding his creativity and “How’d he do that?” inventiveness.

To this day, I have never experienced a driving, insatiable creative force like Ernie Kovacs. He was unstoppable….no matter how far behind we fell in the ratings, the more enthusiastic and aggressively creative Ernie got. The show ran it’s course and Ernie went on to appear in a handful of feature films -- stealing every scene like he did on TV. The tragedy of his life is that there was so little of it. Ernie died at the age of 43 in a car crash on his way to the studio where he was to once more stun and amaze us with his comedic genius.

Inscribed on his tombstone: “Nothing in Moderation“

 And I gotta tell you that Ernie himself would be the first to tell you…finishing best is better than finishing first.