Ernie Kovacs

Largely forgotten today, Ernie Kovacs was one of the most innovative minds in television history. He had a series of comedy shows in the 1950 and early sixties, up until his death in a car accident in 1962. I had a faint memory of his stuff, though that seems impossible since was born in 1961--perhaps I saw repeats. I certainly remembered the Nairobi Trio, and the song that went with them, which has been running through my head for the last week.

After reading an appreciation of Ernie by Jonathan Lethem in Playboy, I rented a two-disc "Best of" collection. It's clear after watching them that he was way ahead of his time. Most early TV comedians were from radio or vaudeville, and thus were more verbal in approach, but Kovacs used visual gags. For example, a woman in a bath is surprised by a periscope rising from the bubbles. A skier in a painting heads down the hill and breaks through the frame. A man takes a copy of The Old Man and the Sea off the bookshelf and is hit with a spray of water. Dancers in gorilla costumes dance Swan Lake.

Kovacs influenced much of comedy that came after him, from Laugh-In to Saturday Night Live to Monty Python. Lethem calls him the link between Groucho Marx and David Letterman. His work is almost surreal, and seems much more sophisticated that what was on TV at the time, although certainly much of it was also completely silly (Kovacs was also a writer at Mad Magazine).

His show was constructed largely of short blackout sketches, accompanied to the tune of "Mack the Knife" in German. He loved music, and there are several silent sketches that show characters, or even office equipment, moving to the beat of classical music. One show, featuring his Chaplinesque character Eugene, was completely without dialogue.

He also had a stable of character. The most durable was Percy Dovetonsils, a fey poet with coke-bottle glasses. The character might seem stereotypically gay now, but it's done with affection. I loved his little shake of the head laugh, and the way he sipped his martini (on one show the crew slips a fish into his drink). The voice he used was hysterical, I can still hear the way he says, of his cameraman, "Norman, of the muscles and sinews."

The sketch he is probably best known for is the Nairobi Trio. It's simple, but as Lethem notes, is universally funny, both to small children and the elderly, from hillbillies to punks. It's three people in gorilla masks, overcoats, and derbies. They act like wind-up toys, playing instruments to the tune of an infectious tune called "Solfeggio." Everything basic about comedy is in the sketch, from the simple ridiculousness of men in monkey masks to the slow burn (one monkey hits the other over the head with xylophone mallets). I could watch this over and over again and never get tired of it.

Kovacs early death certainly deprived the world of a comic genius--Lethem compares his loss to Buddy Holly. Would he have gone on to make great comic films. The what-ifs abound. If you've never seen any of his stuff, look for it on YouTube, especially the Nairobi Trio.