Ernie Kovacs plays games

I was searching YouTube for footage of Ernie Kovacs' character Percy Dovetonsils; I thought the comedian's portrayal of an effete poet might make for an amusing entry here. Turns out there's not much Dovetonsils material available, but what I did find was a small mind-blower: Footage from Kovacs'game show, Take A Good Look, which aired from 1959-61, a year before his death in an auto accident.

Now, I knew Kovacs' work from his startlingly surreal sketch show, but this gimpse of Take A Good Look shows Kovacs in fine, deconstructive form working in the game-show genre:

At the top of the show, Kovacs plays around with the audio in a disorienting, technologically sophisticated way for the era, playfully confusing the home viewer about who's talking. The opening credits verge on abstract art, fracturing famous faces by showing close-ups of only parts of them: noses, chins, ears. Ever genial, ever-puffing on a long cigar, Kovacs greets his panel of celebrity guests, Ceser Romero, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Jim Backus,  doing so in such a blithe, chipper manner, who almost don't catch Kovacs' throwaway insult: "We're going to explain the game to you at home, and to the panel, who aren't particularly bright." He nods to the era's game-show scandals by noting that the prize money is "three hundred dollars--not enough to be crooked."

You get the feeling the game was less important than the way in which the game was presented, a signature of Kovacs' delightfully self-conscious style.

Comments

[bill]

here's Percy...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfzMq7wS3p0&feature=related

[bill]

and another percy...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmEuK_UNwSs&feature=related

[Laura Orem]

How I miss the Nairobi Trio.

[ken]

Thanks, Bill! That first one is actually a Kovacs impersonator, believe it or not... wdn't think there'd be much of a market for that...

[bill hayward]

yikes! you are so right...thought it looked and sounded off but figured that it was just the vagaries of memory and age...and i grew up glued to watching kovacs..thanks for info

[mitch s.]

ernie kovacs was a true "mad hungarian." he died in a car crash, i believe after leaving a party at billy wilder's apartment on wilshire blvd. in LA. he left his wife edie adams with no money and some big debts. she got out of it by becoming the star of a series of very successful cigar commercials. ernie, of course, was a well known cigar smoker. i think edie adams died just a few weeks ago.

[Laura Orem]

My brother had a huge crush on Edie Adams.

[mitch s.]

i also had a crush on edie. she was so unthreatening.