The ubiquitous cigar, the thin mustache, the off-kilter toying with the new medium: Ernie Kovacs was a televisionary. With his experimental style and video boundary- pushing, he was TV’s first performance artist.
Whether curing his pet turtle of hiccups or orchestrating a symphony of kitchen appliances, Kovacs brought an offbeat sense of humor and an appreciation for the flexibility and intimacy of television to his on-screen efforts.
“The Ernie Kovacs Collection” ($69.97, Shout! Factory) — featuring more than 13 hours of material from his 1950s local and national morning shows, his NBC prime-time show and his early ’60s ABC specials — was released this week on DVD. Most of these sketches and videos haven’t been seen in more than 50 years. This is not just a collector’s item; it’s a window into how the medium, and American humor, developed.
Making jokes about the cheap cameras, knocking the network, sending up the idea of teaching the audience how to tune the horizontal and vertical hold buttons on a TV set by making faces, cracking what must be the very first joke about a “summer replacement” series, his were the earliest inside jokes about the young medium. They’ve been carried on since by everyone from Johnny Carson and Chevy Chase to Craig Ferguson.
Although many musical performances were edited out of this collection, for lack of copyright clearances, what remains is impressive.
Kovacs and his wife, Edie Adams, who co-starred in some of the bits and who worked to preserve the material, took the medium in unexpected directions. There he is in March 1951, dusting the lens of the camera, talking to his reflection. That was post-modern before anyone knew the term.
Kovacs was the original television improv artist. In the era when Sid Caesar was doing “Your Show of Shows” with his troupe of sketch artists, Kovacs was a one-man talk show, an alternately loony and progressive, kooky and cerebral comic pushing the limits of the new medium.
Long before Jonathan Winters vamped with an attic full of props, Kovacs had a table overflowing with oddities, toys and junk, which gave him plenty to play with. Long before Carson or “SNL” shaped the country’s self-image and relationship with the media, Kovacs was testing the airwaves.
“You mean this program is not just in Philadelphia?” he asks an off-camera hand. In fact, it was filmed in Philadelphia and fed to stations nationally by NBC. Talking to the guys in the control room, playing ridiculous characters, mocking the emerging television forms — from kids’ shows to soap operas to news and commercials — he’s a pro.
“From all over the place and the world,” he says with drums banging and cymbals crashing in an early news parody that still holds up, “covering events before they happen!”
Soft-spoken and gentle in both his delivery and the nature of his humor, Kovacs was a pioneer of the airwaves.
Certain bits are naive, or politically incorrect by today’s standards (as when a Scotsman rigs a parking meter to save money), but much is wonderfully timeless. When an opera singer tries to break a glass by hitting a high note, and instead breaks the camera lens, we have to remind ourselves it was a freshly absurd idea once.
A number of retrospectives have celebrated Kovacs’ absurdist art. PBS presented a tribute many years ago, Showtime ran a documentary about Kovacs, “Television’s Original Genius” some 25 years ago, and Chevy Chase noted Kovacs’ influence when he accepted an Emmy Award for “SNL.”
Now, the classic pieces and crazy sight gags are available unfiltered, without framing by outside observers.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
