Ernie & "Tonight!": Another "Nairobi Trio": EK DVD Box Set On Hold

Good morning Kovacsians. As the title of this post indicates I have several EK items to share with you today.

I receive emails from time to time asking about Ernie's stint as permanent guest host of "The Tonight Show", on Monday and Tuesday nights from October 1st, 1956, through January 22nd, 1957. Ernie replaced the venerated Steve Allen who was so exhausted from the rigors of hosting five nights a week AND hosting a Sunday night variety show that so NBC could compete with Ed Sullivan on CBS, that he informed the network he would need the first two days of the week off to recuperate and prepare material for the following Sunday's show.

There's an interesting article I found on The Kansas City Blog's TV Barn which discusses the fact that in anticipation of Conan O'Brien taking over "The Tonight Show" from Jay Leno on June 1st 2009, NBC has posted a timeline of "Tonight Show" hosts which skips right from Steve Allen to Jack Paar without bothering to mention Ernie. I've posted comments on the piece so that you can learn more about Ernie's involvement as a "Tonight Show Host." In my humble opinion NBC needs to acknowledge his hosting of the program.

The number one jazz group in New Zealand is named "The Nairobi Trio" but they didn't get their name from EK's iconic sketch. The writer of this piece mentions EK and then goes on to discuss how the band got the name. It's interesting to think there are two well known "Nairobi Trios", albeit completely unrelated. I wonder who swings more, the band or the apes?

Back in November, 2008, Ben Model (who contributes here regularly) announced that he had been hired to put together a box set of 15 hours of EK material not seen in years and never before available to the general public. This set was slated for release sometime late in 2009. On April 6th, 2009, Ben announced on his own EK website that the project has been put on hold. This is sad news as so many EK fans (myself included) were looking forward to this release. We never say never in Kovacsland, however, and Ben assures me that there is a contingent that really wants to get the EK material out. Keep your fingers crossed; when there is more news you will hear about it here.

We have some great EK items available directly from The Paley Center For Media. The Vision Of Ernie Kovacs T-Shirt and Book come from a retrospective the Center (formerly known as "The Museum of Broadcasting" and then "The Museum Of TV And Radio")did on Ernie back in the 1980s. They're one-of-a-kind and you can only get them here.

Thanks for stopping by folks. Until next time, "Its Been Real!"

EDITOR'S NOTE, Wednesday, April 15th, 2009: According to the book "Inventing Late Night: Steve Allen And The Original Tonight Show" by Ben Alba, the first time Ernie hosted "Tonight" was for two weeks in August 1955 and it was during this hosting stint that he introduced "The Nairobi Trio." According to Diana Rico's book "Kovacsland: A Biography Of Ernie Kovacs", "The Nairobi Trio" was introduced on "The Ernie Kovacs Show" on April 21st, 1954. "Kovacsland" states that it was during Ernie's hosting stint of October 1st, 1956, through January 22nd, 1957 that the character Eugene was introduced in a sketch called "Library Bit." This bit would be repeated throughout the stint and Eugene would eventually get his own 1/2 hour special, "The Silent Show", in both 1956 and 1961.

I wanted to present both sides of the story as I discovered this after I commented on the TV Barn's "Tonight" post; I generally go with Diana's book for anything related to Ernie Kovacs.

Ernie Kovacs DVD Box Set To Be Released In 2009

"Hold everything...don't nobody move!!" There's big news for Ernie Kovacs fans…real big news. A new DVD box set of Kovacs programs is slated for release in 2009.

Koch Entertainment and the Archive of American Television have banded together to launch a new series of DVD's called The Archive of American Television Presents. The first release is a box set called The Studio One Anthology, which contains 17 episodes of the landmark live drama series Studio One. The set came out last week, on November 8th. Their next release will be the 1959 TV adaptation of Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run. Click on the link above for the AAT to see more about these and to watch a trailer for the Studio One set.

Also in the works is a DVD box set of Ernie Kovacs programs. I have been hired to curate the set, which will contain 15 hours of Ernie Kovacs shows, plus bonus extras.

I've been involved with the project for about a year, although things have become more official and in motion in the last few months (that's why you're only hearing about this now). I've screened a lot of material, visited Edie Adams' film/tape storage facility in L.A. and inspected kinescopes, done research at the Paley Center in N.Y., and looked at rare Kovacs materials found by private collectors.

There is no "street date" slated for the DVD set, but the release will happen sometime during 2009, possibly as early as the middle of the year. It's a little early to talk about specifically what will be on the set at this point. I will post updates here and on my site erniekovacs.info as things are remastered, confirmed and locked in as DVD content.

Edie was to have had a creative hand in helping select the programs on the set, and I was really looking forward to working with her on this. I miss her and hope that the set does justice to all the hard work she put in (since the 1960s!) to save kinescopes, videotape masters, scripts et al of Ernie Kovacs' amazing work.

-- Ben Model

EDITOR'S NOTE, FRIDAY, APRIL 10 2009: I'm sad to report that this project has been put on hold. Click here to read more.-
Al Quagliata

Ernie The Grizzled Old Miner

Good afternoon my fellow Kovacsians. I'll start off by saying that the Ernie Kovacs My Space Fan Page is up to 680 friends, an increase of 4 since our last post. As always we thank everyone who requested an add or accepted a request from us.

I also need to mention that no one, not even my best "Kovacsian Trivia Answer-ers," has been able to answer all the question from our last quiz. Its a tough one; even yours truly couldn't get it. Give it a shot if you're brave enough. I'm going to let a few more weeks go by before I post the answers to give some more folks a chance to answer.

In our last entry I had a link to a blog post about the old TV western Shotgun Slade which starred actor Scott Brady in the title role. I found this post interesting because:

1. I'm a big fan of old TV westerns and had never heard of this one.
2. Ernie is the guest star in the pilot episode.

The pilot episode of this show was called "The Salted Mine" and it actually aired on March 27, 1959, as part of the "Schlitz Playhouse Of Stars," an anthology series of that era. In it Ernie plays a grizzled old miner named "Hack" (he tells Shotgun "Hack Berry's the whole of it." At least that's what I think he says...) who owns the "Hack Mine," which is located "over the hill a piece."

I'm not going to go into a long winded description of the series or the episode. That's because you can click on the links above to learn more about the show and its lead actor. And you can watch the actual pilot episode with Ernie below:

Its important to realize that before becoming a radio and then TV personality Ernie had trained to be a stage actor. His mentor was his high school drama professor Harold Van Kirk and he also acted in summer stock and studied drama in New York City. He was quite the excellent character actor as you can see from watching this program. Comics like Ernie have the ability to really inhabit and make you believe the characters they play, whether comedic or dramatic.

I sincerely hope you enjoyed the episode and I apologize for the quality. My goal in all the Ernie pages I run is to expose you to things about his career that you may not have known about or seen and I hope this has fit the bill!

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

An Interview With Adams, An Interesting Ad, And A New Dot Org

Good afternoon my fellow Kovacsians.

The Ernie Kovacs My Space Fan Page is up to 661 friends and pushing towards 700. Our thanks go out to anyone who requested us as a friend or who has accepted a friend request from us.

Here's something really great that I found on one of my recent Kovacs Internet searches. Its a fantastic collection of 10 interviews with Edie Adams conducted by the Archive Of American Television and recently posted by them on YouTube. There's a great deal of info about Ernie and how he worked along with Edie's reminiscences about her own career. All the interviews average about half an hour and were conducted on March 11, 1999 by Henry Colman. I've watched one already and hope to watch the others soon. I know you'll enjoy them!

I mentioned in my last post that I've been in touch with with Diana Rico who wrote Kovacsland: A Biography Of Ernie Kovacs" I've sent questions to Diana and hope to have an interview for you soon.

Yesterday I acquired the domain erniekovacs.org, which along with edieadams.org had been one of the URL’s for a website run by the Kovacs estate. Starting back in the summer of 2004 this site was set up as a tribute to Ernie and Edie's work along with a fan club and store. It was pulled down in early 2006 for reasons that were never explained. The domains were allowed to expire, eventually being purchased by one of those places that snaps up domains simply to use them as search engine portals. While edieadams.org is unfortunately still being used in this way I found out that erniekovacs.org had become available and so I purchased it. It now points to http://www.erniekovacs.net/ and it makes me very happy that its no longer being used to sully Ernie's good name. Now when you type in either address you'll be brought to the main site.

A fan sent me this interesting scan of an old 1950s ad from an entertainment magazine for one of the Kovacs' shows. Which show? Well it doesn't say, but I would guess whichever one was on that night or week. Hopefully the cigar won't ignite the paper:

Pretty cool and interesting, don't you think? It says it all without saying too much. Something today's overblown media ought to take a cue from. Thanks for sending it!

Until we meet again my fellow Kovacsians I bid you a fond "It's been real!"

Merry XMAS From Kovacsland

Merry XMAS my fellow Kovacsians. As a general rule I don't post clips here, but this one was sent to me and its rare so I figured I would share it as sort of a holiday gift. Its a commercial for "Dutch Masters" from Ernie's quiz show "Take A Good Look":



You'll notice the commercial doesn't actually feature Ernie, outside of his intro and outro. That's the rarity of it. Most of the spots for "Dutch Masters" had Ernie in them. I love the goofy background music and cheap animation. There's nothing quite so joyous at XMAS time as a corny old "retro-mercial" with a tag line like "man alive, take five!"

I've been in contact with Diana Rico who wrote my favorite biography of all time, "Kovacsland: A Biography Of Ernie Kovacs." You've heard me say in the past what a great book this is and how its the ultimate source on Ernie. I'm saying it again! It makes a great holiday gift so please pick up a copy. I'm hoping to interview Diana for the blog sometime in January so stay tuned. In the meantime learn more about this writer/producer by clicking on her link above.

I run two other blogs; "The Jazz Guitar Corner," which is a tribute to jazz guitar, and "GEOMOP," which is a satire blog. Click on either link to be brought to the posts I'm about to describe.

In the guitar blog I put up a tribute today to the late great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson who passed away Sunday at the age of 82. It has a great film clip that I know you will love. While this isn't Ernie related Oscar was a giant of jazz and a profound influence on me as a musician. Since Ernie was such a fan of this music I think he would approve. There's now another creative giant up in heaven to join him and unfortunately many less creative giants on earth than there used to be.

On my satire blog I've posted a short that I made called "Here Comes Hoyt!". Its a dig at so-called "reality shows" done as an old kinescope from the early days of television. I kept Ernie in mind as I was making it and I hope his influence is apparent.

The Ernie Kovacs My Space Fan Page is up to 592 friends and pushing towards 600. Our thanks go out to anyone who requested us as a friend or who has accepted a friend request from us.

Until we meet again Kovacsians, Happy Holidays to all and a fond "It's been real!"