SING A PRETTY SONG. . .

by Edie & Robert Windeler Adams ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 23, 1990

Well-told life of singing Broadway and TV star Edie Adams, wife of ground, breaking comedian Ernie Kovacs (who died in 1962). Adams was born in Kingston, Penn., the daughter of a trained dramatic soprano and a knockabout hardware salesman. She first thought she might be a seamstress but found her niche in singing when she fell into Gilbert and Sullivan musicals in high school, then went on to Manhattan's Juilliard for voice training in the classics. Back in Philadelphia, she was hired by a wild Hungarian comedian who was doing the first morning show in the history of infant TV, and began to learn pop songs for the first time while helping Kovacs fill two hours of air time daffy. Tall, open-spirited, big-mustached, cigar-smoking Kovacs, a master of mimicry and a flashy dresser who kept no feeling hidden, sent an incredible tingle through the ""insufferably serious"" Adams, and she spent the next 11 years with him, marveling at the surreal inventiveness that filled him top to toe night and day. Called to New York to replace Dave Garroway on the Today show for the summer, Kovacs brought Adams with him. Aside from working with Kovacs, she landed leading roles with Rosalind Russell in Wonderful Town and went on to Li'l Abner, did a smash act at the Stork Club, became famed as the sexy Murial Cigar spokeswoman. She also developed her own mimicry and did a Marilyn Monroe specialty using Marilyn's own dresses. Aside from ever bigger houses and the lavish life with Kovacs and his friends such as Jackie Gleason, Adams describes Kovacs' madcap devices for the tube, details her later falling-out with Roz Russell, Ernie's gambling addiction and troubles with the IRS, the uncannily similar driving deaths of Ernie and, 20 years later, of their daughter Mia, and the maze of financial disasters revealed by his death. She ends in 1964, with a new marriage in the wind. Lively and heartwarming, a vivacious companion to Diana Rico's Kovacsland (p. 247).

Pub Date: July 23, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1990

Categories: NONFICTION