Airdates Of Kovacs Sketches On Vol. 2

A fan of the two "Ernie Kovacs Collection" DVD sets wrote in recently, noting that the bonus sketches on Volume 2 do not have their airdates listed in the liner notes, and asked if we wouldn't mind divulging them.

Not at all! They should have made it into the liners, ideally, and so that everyone has the information, here are the sketches and airdates for Volume 2:

Disc 1 sketches
Interview: Algernon Gerard, Archaeologist - 1/24/56
Howard, the World's Strongest Ant: A Hot Date - 1/27/56
Strangely Believe It: Writers to Blame - 2/17/56
The Kapusta Kid in Outer Space Meets Olivia Scilloscope - 4/5/56
Charlie Clod in Brazil - 4/6/56
Ernie's Opening Monolog - 4/11/56 (K)
Miklos Molnar's Glue: 4/26/56 (K)
Percy Dovetonsils: "Ode to Electricity" - 6/11/56
Interview: The World at Your Doorstep - 6/18/56 (K)

Disc 2 sketches
Irving Wong, Tin Pan Alley Songwriter - 1/13/56
Percy Dovetonsils: "Ode to a Housefly" - 1/18/56
Rock Mississippi in The Umbrella Salesman of Ranchipur - 1/26/56
Howard the World's Strongest Ant: Howard's Campground - 2/23/56
Skodney Silsky, Hollywood Reporter - 4/11/56 (K)
Ernie's Opening Monolog - 4/18/56
Surprise Audience Member (Al Kelly) - 4/23/56
Audio Lost - 4/24/56
Matzoh Hepplewhite - 7/5/56

What the (K) stands for: on several dates, two shows were done back-to-back – one live, and then another direct-to-kinescope for air at a later date, when Ernie and Edie would be on vacation. 

Until next time…it's been real!

Ben Model
New York NY

Al Wein Sculpture Exhibit In Boston

Albert Wein (1915-1991), who did set design for some of Ernie's ABC specials, has a career retrospective at the Boston Athenaeum, running through the end of November. Entitled "Albert Wein: American Modernist," the exhibit showcases more than 50 of his classic sculptures, paintings and medals. The use of sculptures and special props like that are in quite a few of the 1961 programs, and I'm sure the sculpture of a woman with a hole in her stomach being carved by Miklos Molnar was one of Wein's creations. There's a link to an article on the retrospective here, and the museum's website is here.

The photograph is of a sculpture of Bacchus by Wein hung in Ernie's wine cellar.

Ben Model

EDITOR'S NOTE:

Ben, thanks for a great post. I want to add that back in December of 2006 sculptor Michael Keropian let me know about the website for Al Wein. Michael worked for Al and as far as I know is still involved with his art work. This is a great site and I strongly suggest that all Kovacs fans pay a visit!

Al Quagliata

Cooking Up Some "Hammes" With Miklos: Trivia!!

Good evening my fellow Kovacsians.

The Ernie Kovacs My Space Fan Page is up to 741 friends and as always we thank everyone who requested an add or accepted a request from us. I'd love it to hit 1,000 members by the end of the summer if possible; we're up 16 from our last post so we're on the way, albeit a small way.

Our fellow Kovacsian, friend and trivia buff, John Hammes of The UGA Science Library at The University Of Georgia, has sent us yet another fantastic trivia quiz. You may remember the last one which involved Ernie and Jack Benny; this promises to be even MORE difficult and of course I'm grateful to John as it means that I don't have to think of a new one myself! Thank you John!
This trivia involves that classic Kovacsian character, master Hungarian chef "Miklos Molnar" who, contrary to popular belief, did not always appear as a chef in Ernie's sketches. Here are John's questions:

1. Miklos Molnar was not restricted to a cooking show...name another genre "lucky" enough to claim him.

2. What then current show was Ernie lampooning?

3. Miklos kept a pair of shears handy; how did this help him interact with the show's co-star?

For Extra Credit: Give Miklos' version of this show's title and describe in what state Miklos interacted with members of the show's audience.

Here's a hint in case your having trouble; John saw this on the A&E Biography which was done on Ernie and broadcast almost exactly ten years ago; June 23, 1988 to be exact. The link will bring you to the one page I found where you can purchase the VHS which is Amazon; A&E's website was no help. Hopefully you have a copy.

You can submit answers to the questions in any one of the following ways:

1. Post your answers here in the comments section.
2. Send your answers to me through the Ernie Kovacs My Space Fan Page.
3. Email your answers to me by clicking HERE.

I'll announce the winner in a future post so get to it!

Before I leave you today I'd like to share a very interesting video clip I found of Ernie on a 1957 episode of the game show "What's My Line?"; Ernie was a frequent panelist and actually used to do his own spoof called "Where Do You Work-a John?" Unfortunately I've never seen that and I don't think anyone else in the present day has as its not on any video collections I've encountered.

Thanks once again for stopping by and until we meet again "Its Been Real!"

Miklos Molnar The Soccer Playing Danish-Hungarian Chef

Hello my fellow Kovacsians. I'm putting up the weekly post on Monday instead of the usual Wednesday because I have to go out of town.

Last week's trivia question was once again successfully answered by Ernie Kovacs My Space Fan Page friend and Kovacs trivia queen Barbara. We're not sure what's happened to trivia "King Brian" as we haven't heard from him in while.

I put a link to a Wikipedia entry for a European sports star and asked the following question:

In what way does this former Danish soccer player relate to Ernie Kovacs?

Here's the answer in pictorial form:
As usual, nice going Barbara! Go figure that a famous soccer star would be given the same name as a beloved sketch comedy chef. Perhaps his parents were Ernie fans, although the Wiki article doesn't mention this.

I'm hoping to have some new trivia in the next post, some of which may even be contributed by fans as I'm receiving a lot of messages from people saying they'd like to come up with questions. So we shall see! Can you stump the mighty Kovacs Trivia Queen Barbara or that potentate of Kovacs Trivia, King Brian? Actually Queen Barbara wants to contribute some questions. Who shall she stump? I'm sure those questions will be really tough! I'll probably have to come up with new titles for people, but what's higher than King and Queen? Why do you people have to make my life so difficult?!

But I digress. If you'd like to submit some trivia questions for a future quiz you can do it in the the following way:

1. Post them here in the comments section.
2. Send them to me through the Ernie Kovacs My Space Fan Page
3. Email them to me by clicking HERE.

Be sure to let me know who you are. Credit will be given next to each question whereby you will achieve immortal blog fame. Management (namely me) reserves the right to delete any question that management has already asked. And we've asked a lot of them so think hard! Remember Kovacsians, to make Ernie proud!

The Ernie Kovacs My Space Fan Page is up to 495 friends this week, an increase of 4 from since last Wednesday's post. As always we thank everyone who requested an add or accepted a request from us.

One of our new friends is Jeff of the "Vegas Film Critic" MySpace Page. You may recall that back in June I wrote a post with a trivia question about an episode of the "Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour" called "Lucy Meets The Moustache" in which both Ernie and Edie guest starred. In that post I mentioned the episode is hard to find and that supposedly a new DVD with all 13 episodes (the Ernie episode is # 13) would be coming out. Jeff let me know that it is out. Here's a link to it on Amazon. Its referred to as "I Love Lucy - The Complete Seasons 7-9" which is the reason I think I had trouble finding it for you in the past. Thank you Jeff and to you we say "Welcome fellow Kovacsian!"

That's it for this week folks. I didn't find any new Ernie news items or great blog posts so that feature will have to wait until next time.

We shall return on Wednesday, August 29 2007. Until then, "Its Been Real!!"