We got lots of emails after THIS POST about television comedy pioneer Ernie Kovacs asking for more examples of his work. So we’ll run more throughout the week.
Click on the You Tube below and see an example of the BRILLIANT closing credits he used on his show during the early 1960s, before his untimely death in an 1962 car crash. No one did what Kovacs did. Note how early television’s comedy genius took something as mundane as closing credits on his TV show and turned it into a work of video and comedy art. Footnote: the catchy ragtime music is actually a tune written in 1917 by George Gershwin. Recommended for ALL readers and ALL ages.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTgJTRoJj24
You can learn more about Kovacs online at the Encyclopedia of Television. His official website is here. Kovacsland (unofficial site) is HERE. The Ernie Kovacs blog is HERE. And you can buy a collection of his best bits below:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.