Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Ernie Kovacs Centennial Celebration with Josh Mills and Ben Model

Episode Date: January 13, 2020

To mark the centennial year of TV legend Ernie Kovacs, Gilbert and Frank welcome historian Josh Mills and Kovacs archivist Ben Model for a look back at the pioneering broadcaster's lasting impact and influence on David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Monty Python and The Kids in the Hall (among others). Also, Billy Wilder comes to dinner, Ernie shoots a pilot with Buster Keaton, Jack Lemmon joins the Nairobi Trio and Josh remembers his mom (and Kovacs' widow), Edie Adams. PLUS: Percy Dovetonsils! "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"! Josh meets Groucho Marx! Edie dates Peter Sellers! And Gilbert "inspires" a silent film score! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

DQ presents the sound of a genius idea with the new Smarties Cookie Collision Blizzard. It's the sound of the Smarties Blizzard plus cookie dough! Hurry in for the new Smarties Cookie Collision Blizzard for a limited time at DQ. Happy tastes good. At Bet365, we don't do ordinary. We believe that every sport should be epic. Every goal, every game, every point, every play. From the moments that are remembered forever to the ones you've already forgotten. We'll be right back. older ontario only please pay responsibly if you or someone you know has concerns about gambling visit connects ontario.ca hi this is gilbert godfrey and this is g this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and we are now part of the Starburns Audio Network. We are.

Does that mean we get free coffee? It's a totally different company. Oh, so what the fuck did we get free coffee? It's a totally different company. Oh. So what the fuck did we move here for? Take it up with Dan Harmon. Yeah. Tonight, we are, today, whenever you're listening to it, we have two guests with us tonight for our celebration of the 100th birth year of groundbreaking comedian and broadcaster Ernie Koufax. And Josh Mills is a producer, archivist, and public relations executive and the foremost scholar and expert on the legacy and work

of pioneering comedian Ernie Koufax. He also supervised the estate of Koufax as well as the estate of his late mother and actress, his late mother. Yeah yeah you'll get through it kovacs wife and frequent collaborator tony winning singer and actress edie adams he recently oversaw the production and release of the box set ernie k Koufax, the Centennial Edition, produced the reissue CD, the Ernie Koufax album, and he travels the country hosting and helping organize events celebrating Koufax's life and and work including recent events with

Monty Python legends John Cleese and Terry Gilliam he also says he met Herve Villages one time and he was packing heat

now Penn I will shoot you. Ben Modell is a producer, musician, composer, and film historian who created one of the first Ernie Koufax fan sites on the Internet. one of the first Ernie Kovacs fan sites on the internet. He's the archivist for Ernie Kovacs Edie Adams collection

and curated the Ernie Kovacs collection of DVD box sets for Short Factory. Or Shout Factory. Shout Factory. Fuck it all.

For Shout Factory. Ernie recorded for Short Factory. Shout Factory. Shout. Fuck it all. For Shout Factory. Or they record it for Short Factory. It's my new album for Shout Factory. Say it right or I'll shoot you. And he's also one of the nation's leading silent film experts and accompanist. Nobody can say that word. Accompanist. Good enough.

I play the piano. Accompanist, yes. He plays the piano. And performed live original scores on both piano and theater organ for hundreds of silent films which can be heard on TCM in museums historic theaters and on numerous DVD and blu-ray releases as well as his YouTube channel, and he's going to play me some live music from the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula, even if he doesn't know it yet. Please welcome to the show

Josh Mills and Ben Modell. Thanks. Woo-hoo! Wow. I was hoping you'd mispronounce my name. We got through that. Everybody else does. I spelled it phonetically for you. But accompanist...

Nobody can say that word. I think I said Ernie Koufax about 20 different pronunciations. Stick with the V. Not Sandy Koufax. We can talk about him too. Welcome, boys. Thank you. Do you have anything on Sandy Koufax. We can talk about him, too. Welcome, boys. Thank you.

Do you have anything on Sandy Koufax? No. And another Dodger, but no, no. Now, we've already done about five shows off mic just before, you know, just when Josh, just sitting here talking to Josh. Yes. To reiterate, Josh is the son of the late, great E.D. Adams, star of stage and screen. Indeed. Both big and small.

And he has all kinds of wonderful stories. But now that we mention it, at least let's get the Irving Villachess story out of the way. Yes. Before we get down to brass tacks. Yeah, well, my mom was in a Fantasy Island episode. It's already a good story. The world's most desirable woman. Yes.

And I did get to meet Hervé Villachez, and yes, he was packing heat. He did have a gun in a holster when I met him in his white suit from the show, and I found it incredibly scary and weird. So he walked around on the set of the show with a gun he evidently he was afraid that people were going to pick him up and kidnap him it's a reasonable fear yes now another story i heard yes is that people like looking at midget dick and they would follow him into the men's room. Well, Ron Friedman, we had a writer here. Did you know Ron Friedman?

He's a legendary character, and he wrote a lot of Fantasy Islands and told us that people would follow Irvay into the men's room to sneak a peek. So that's one of the reasons he carried a piece. Pardon the expression. One of the reasons he carried a piece. To insist that they looked? Yeah. Pardon the... You should pardon the expression. One of the reasons he carried a piece. Yeah, I just... To insist that they looked? Yeah.

As a 12-year-old... To ward them off. I found it really disconcerting to, you know, meet someone who is that short and also would just add a gun on set. It just... It seemed so weird. And he never looked like a stable character.

No, not at all. No, he wasn't a happy guy. No. I heard that that you know the two shows were fantasy island and uh magnum with uh tom sellick so tom sellick was the biggest star and most handsome star on the planet and herve villachez was really angry that tom selig was a bigger star and making more money and like you know why does tom selig get more pussy than i do well it's actually funny you mentioned that because a friend of mine in the in the 80s or

90s used to work for a company that represented people for voiceovers and she gave me a tape which i have to unearth and get to you where basically herve made a cassette and sent it into the guy and basically said things like you know i can sing you should let me sing more and then he did sing he did sang on on Merv Griffin and Dinah Shore. Yes. He cut an album, I think. It's like a karaoke recording and this song about, why do birds fly?

Yes, I remember that. Holy fuck. And I have this somewhere. So yeah, he was jealous of a lot of things. I think he wanted more. And he couldn't believe that tom selick who was like ridiculously handsome yeah and him that was a freak uh that tom selick was more popular with the ladies than he you show me one other ernie kovacs tribute that opens with hervey village 10 minutes of hervey

village as material this caps off the year just fine. Ben's thrilled. Ben, musically speaking, you are a musician. Have you heard the musical stylings of Herve Villachez? Only on this show. Only Gilbert's version? Yeah. You're in for a treat.

I'm going to send you. Okay, yeah. It was always like, I remember, yeah, like, Why do birds sing in the sky? Why don't you love me? We should all be friends. No one should fight.

Let's all be friends and live together. And his version was worse. Okay, here's something I want to do with you. All right. Okay, here's something I want to do with you. All right. Because you're an expert on the organ. Oh, I beg your pardon.

Much like Irving Villachess. Yeah, right, exactly. No one's ever done that joke with organists. I want to narrate a short movie and have you. Okay, it starts off with a farm boy working out in the field. Now he spots a beautiful girl picking daisies. He

builds up the courage to walk over to her. She looks at him lovingly. Now the evil land baron shows up. He wants to take the farm boy's farm from him. Now, for some unknown reason, they're now in the big city. Hotsy totsy. He went from the perils of Pauline to the crowd.

The land baron ties the girl to the train tracks. The farm boy is in a rush to save her. He saves her at the last minute. They throw their arms around each other and kiss. The end. Oh, that was terrific. Thank you. That's the shortest movie I ever played.

Come back when I do Intolerance. That was, you know, here's something. I assume, like, you know, there's this music, like, cliche music that you'd hear in cartoons. And I assume it was, like, back then in the silent movies, everyone had a variation on certain notes and it all came together like i always remember cartoons and kiddie shows the villain would show up and it would be i can't find it right now but i know That was it It's a piece called Mysterioso Pizzicato

It was published in 1916 And then beaten to death Look at this guy And then remember Impressive It was the famous And it became a hit on the radio The striptease music

Oh yeah Is that David Rose? That's it Yeah Yeah Yeah the striptease music oh yeah is that david rose yeah yeah yeah wow david rose david rose yeah gilbert gilbert will walk you through intolerance ben okay it'll feel like as long as we're on this subject and we'll get to ernie kovacs I promise eventually I'll try to pivot don't worry we'll all be pivoting how did you become a silent film authority and accompanist uh well I I went to film school I was I wanted to make comedy films but they were showing the silent movies in dead silence this is before William Everson uh I wound up playing for Bill Everson's classes, and he was a huge supporter of what I was doing. But I volunteered to play for the film history classes and wound up playing for two or three classes a week.

And I met a guy named Lee Irwin, who would have been a movie organist in the 1920s. Wow. He was playing the Wurlitzer organ at the Carnegie Hall Cinema, which is now where Zanko Hall is. But he became a friend and a mentor, and I just tried to absorb, you know, I would absorb stuff from him, and I'd go and play for Everson's classes and, you know,

try to make the best out of it. Yeah, we talked about William Everson, which we'll have our listeners look up the name William K. Everson. He was a legendary film scholar. Yeah, very important guy and wrote a lot of books. Yes, and he was my teacher, too, at the School of Visual Arts, although I was stupidly too young to appreciate at that age what he was showing. I saw intolerance and greed and sunrise and all of that stuff.

Now, Josh was telling us that he actually appreciated the people he met. Now, it's like so many times we meet people who were raised in show business and they go oh yeah i was sitting there i think it was like humphrey bogart and john barrymore i i don't remember yeah and and so you actually you would you'd meet or you were telling us all these stars, but you appreciated them. I was a complete comedy nerd and I loved autographs. So I was in a really unique position where I could have my mom go on to the love boat and she would get not only... Whose mom wasn't on the love boat?

Exactly. Is your mom on the love boat? Is your mom on the love boat? I don't think so. She was on a two-parter.ooned with uh john aston and uh i i was able to get uh autographs from you know gavin mcleod one of your guests we had aston too and then audra lindley and she was in the show was uh avery shriver so i i loved this stuff i I would make her, you know, get me any autograph where she was. Now, who is the biggest old-time star you were in awe of that you met?

Oh, gosh. They've all died before I could meet them because they're all from the silent era. So they're most of them died. Mabel Norman. Yeah. Well, yeah. Not as good a tennis player as you would think. Yeah, no.

Mary Philbin. Yeah, Mary Philbin. Yeah, Mary Philbin. Yeah. Yeah. No, I never met any of those people. The closest I could say, I have had a couple of phone conversations with Diana Sarah Carey, who was Baby Peggy, sort of the silent film version of Shirley Temple. She just turned 101.

Oh. Oh, so I was going to ask, are there any silent film performers still with us as far as i know diana quickly dwindling number yeah yeah no i uh i think it's just diana and what's his name who's still alive who works in tv and is 100 oh a norman lloyd yeah i don't think was norman lloyd in silence i don't think so i mean he's in Limelight. Yeah. Limelight. That was a talking film. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But how did you both, well, we know how Josh, let's start with Josh. Oh, geez.

Oh, geez. Good. I'll go out for coffee. Because we are here mostly. Mostly. And we'll get back to you. We know you have Victor Bono stories and some other goodies. We'll have some Josh Mills interludes. But let's talk about your famous-

Is there, oh, wait. Can you play Josh Mills interludes. But let's talk about your famous... Is there... Oh, wait. Can you play Josh Mills interludes? Now this I gotta hear. He's making the guy work. Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line. Is that you?

Such a fan. I'm so milquetoast. I want to say, too, that Josh is such a fan of comedy that he came bearing gifts he brought me a Joey Foreman album with Bill Dana and he brought me Ruggala no that was Ben Ben brought me

Josh brought me Josh gave me the Erwin Corey album and the very racist brought me, Josh gave me the... Erwin Corey. Erwin Corey album and the very racist and anti-Semitic record by Walter Brennan. He hated blacks and Jews, Walter Brennan. Thank you, Steve.

I'm a big fan. I thought you guys would like it. He does listen to the show. I love it like it. He does listen to the show. I love it. I think you both listen to the show. We're very flattered by that. So Josh was my favorite guest until Ben came in with the rugelach. From Zavar's.

You've been surplanted. So Edie Adams was your son. You did not know Ernie. Well, Edie Adams was my mom. Excuse me. Edie Adams. She was your son. It's going know Ernie. Well, Edie Adams was my mom. Excuse me. She was your son. It's going to be one of those nights.

When did she have the sex change? When birds were flying. No, I don't know. Edie was indeed your mom. She was her mafra. We are going there, I guess.

The train is rolling. Oh, it's, I guess. It is. It is. The train is rolling. Oh, it's left the station. Oh, it's going to be a long night. The train is rolling. Please. Oh, God. Let's do this again.

Son of Edie Adams. Son. Josh Mills. That was with Lon Chaney Jr. He was great in this. Oh, he was great, yeah. I'd like to see that movie. TCM.

I would too. I have a daughter, no son. So take us through it. Through what? Your birth. No, Josh. You've come to the world of Ernie Kovacs logically and authentically. Well, you grew up in the house.

You grew up in the house, for God's sakes. From about when I was born in 68 to about 77, we lived in the famed house on Beaumont Drive. The 20-room house. Yeah. In fact, when they moved in, it was so big it had a bowling alley. Oh, crazy. That they took out. But I remember the famous den that Ernie worked in, which was very manly, but very dark.

Ernie was a creative genius, but he also had a really super dark side to him. So the whole place was outfitted with like suits of armor and dueling pistols and- Isn't there a stuffed polar bear in there? Stuffed polar bear, trap doors for the wine. It was very interesting. But yeah, I did have a moment kind of going, well, wait a minute. My mom, mom i know my dad and mom are divorced so that's different who's ernie like how does this all

fit in so i had stepsisters and i had half sisters and i had sisters that weren't sisters and but mom left the den kind of intact his his inner sanctum yeah um i'll I'll throw one out there. In 1976, when Sylvester Stallone became Rocky, he rented our house. And I remember him coming up the driveway and I thought, oh, my God, you know, I'm seven, eight years old and here's Sylvester Stallone coming in. So he rents the house. We come back after the rental and the wine cellar had a lock, and it had been busted, and he drank all the wine. Oh, my God. That's news. Exactly.

Oh. Rambo drank all the wine. That's horrible. Sly Stallone raided Ernie Kovacs' wine cellar. Yeah. Wow. And typical. Making news.

I said to my mom, like, well, what did you do? She was like, nothing. I was like, you did nothing. Yeah. Wow. And typical. Making news. I said to my mom, like, well, what did you do? She was like, nothing. I was like, you did nothing. She goes, well, I... He's rocky. He's rocky. Beat her up.

What point did it dawn on you at what age? My mom is Edie Adams, star of stage and screen, and her previous husband was a comedy legend. Well, there were weird, weird moments.

One of them being on Halloweenlloween i was a huge fan of the three stooges and the marx brothers and um i wanted me and my two friends josh davis and tony davis who were sons of uh jerry davis who we were talking about sure the odd couple right uh we dressed up as the marx brothers and my mom got the great idea to take us over to Groucho's house and hang out with Groucho dressed as the Marx Brothers on Halloween. Wow. And I have this amazing picture in my house of the three of us. I'm Harpo, Josh is Chico, and Tony is Groucho, and he's right next to us hanging out. Oh, man. Very cool.

But that's when I kind of went, this is a weird life. That's magical. Yeah. I have friends who knew me much later who would go like, is that you with Groucho? And I was like, yeah, dressed as Harpo. Did Steve Stollier answer the door? No, but I do remember my mom told me that, was it Aaron, his wife?

Aaron. Well, she wasn't the wife. She was the- Whatever she was. Whatever she was. She was there and not a nice lady. My mom did not like her very much. No.

Yeah, because Steve told you, told the story that Groucho's there. He's like about a thousand. Yeah. And he just had another stroke. And everyone's panicking. Groucho had another stroke. And everyone's panicking. Groucho had a stroke. And she goes, fuck. And that was her reaction.

I don't think she had a very nice end either. She came to a very bad end. She shot herself. She lived out on the street and shot herself. This show runs the gamut. And she used Herve Villachez. lived out on the street, and shot herself. This show runs the gamut. And she used Herve Villachess. She was staring at Herve Villachess' cock,

and he goes, Hey, stop looking at my dick! Probably. Save the secret word! Now, I saw a quote. I think it was at the Comedy Museum. I saw a quote i think it was at the comedy museum i saw a quote and i'm pretty sure it was david letterman who said ernie koufax knew what to do with television before television knew what to do with itself yeah that's a great line that's accurate yeah i think it's actually in the dvd box set that we put out i'm not positive but yeah i think uh he was absolutely right i think ernie was creating uh the media the visuals for television before anybody knew what was going on it was usually a radio show that you would kind of take from radio and put on television

and you know there's cameras now or it was like a lot of people called it vaudeville in a box yeah very much so well letterman hired bill wendell to be his first announcer and bill wendell had had a history with ernie oh absolutely the answer man going way way back his straight the question man yeah mr question man and and it's funny because movies silent movies already realized hey film is magical you can do things with it. Yeah. TV hadn't realized that. No, and I think Ernie's genius, if you kind of think about it, is just how did he know that this would work? I mean, it had never been done before.

It's a brand new medium. It's really clunky machinery. I mean, it's giant cameras. And he was doing man on the street stuff and things in Philadelphia. Right in the beginning. Yeah. 51. Well, Indrid letting the audience see the crew. Oh, yeah things in Philadelphia. Right in the beginning, yeah. Well, Indrid letting the audience see the crew, which hadn't been done.

Oh, yeah. I mean, he was satirizing the conventions of television while they were being invented. But, yeah, I mean, there's a kinescope footage we have from the show in 1951. He's riding the camera dolly from one set to the next. I mean, it didn't matter it was that that you know he was on tv and you had to maintain this artifice if we're doing a show you know you're just having a visit with him he happened to be in a television studio what was your introduction to this ben what we know we know josh's but how did you fall in love a little

different uh uh it was the the best of vernie kovovacs television shows that aired on public television in 1977. And those were compilation shows. They were half-hour shows. But my folks had been huge fans, and they knew of my vapid interest in visual humor and weird stuff like that. I was a huge Buster Keaton fan, and they knew I would like this. So that's where I first saw Kovacs, and I went bananas. I was like, oh, I've never seen anything like this, but I love it. When I watch Kovacs stuff, it's like I had a weird connection.

Like when Disney re-released Fantasia, it was music and weird imagery, and people would get stoned and watch it. I could see people on drugs getting into Bernie Ernie Kovacs. I could see that. What, the kaleidoscope? Yeah. It's so

surreal. Yeah, I mean, even when he was in Philadelphia doing a two-hour wake-up show, they had to put something on the air, and he would tape a kaleidoscope to an orange juice can and tape that to the front of the lens and just play records and spin that around. There's stuff,

there's so much, Gilbert, like you were saying, that you watch it and you think, wait, this was on television? It looks like weird video art that you would see in Soho. It looks like a nightmare sequence yeah he was i mean he was very dark and a lot of his stuff didn't have a punch line it didn't have even humor sometimes there's a brecht piece that he does the street scene oh yeah that's beautiful and it's amazing but it's not comedy it's seven minutes of people moving and telling a story and

in sync to the the opening movement of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. And he did an entire sketch underwater. Yeah. And there's one part where he puts a cigar to his mouth and blows out smoke. Right. And you go, how the fuck did he do that? And I heard he had a mouthful of milk.

It was milk. And he put it and spit out the milk he's in a tank it was a commercial for one of his commercials for Dutch Masters and then there's an episode of Take a Good Look which is the bizarro quiz show we did

they run that commercial and they come out of it and he explains how they did it you know he's down there holding his breath with a mouthful of milk or cream. It's amazing. Yeah. But there was never an idea of, oh, you can't do this. You know, even at the beginning, they would find some way to make it look like the camera was pointed upside down so he could appear to be vacuuming the ceiling.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we know Letterman was a fan. And you and I were talking off mic that there was, you know, that somebody, and I don't know if this is provable, but that certainly Meryl Marko, who was doing a lot of the writing on the early Letterman shows, was a COVAX person. Yeah, there was an interview. Her influence is clear. at the American Cinematheque with Bob Odenkirk and Jeff Garlin, a bunch of people. But she was one that said, yeah, the writers all went to the museum of, well, it's the Paley Center now, and watched Kovacs,

and that's where they came up with a lot of, I mean, seriously, the pencil at the camera and all those things. The 360-degree show that they did. Do you remember that on Letterman? They revolved the image throughout the hour? Yeah. Or the one he did on a plane. He did a fourth anniversary show in flight.

Yeah. Yeah, but I think what I heard is that it wasn't so much Letterman, but certainly all the writers would go over and watch the Kovacs shows over and over and lift ideas from it. And just recently I was watching a documentary, and I didn't even think about this, I was watching a documentary, and I didn't even think about this, that both Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and Saturday Night Live both take a lot from Koufax. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Well, George Schlatter, who produced Laugh-In, his wife, Jolene Brand, was part of Ernie's ensemble cast from 1959 to 61. So he's certainly hanging around the set and they knew each other.

When you look at the ABC specials, the later specials, they're blackouts. And Laugh-In borrows liberally. Yeah, just faster. Just faster and with a different kind of pay. They would just say, da-da-da-da-da-da. And that made it there. Yeah.

Right. And also Monty Python. We just spent some time with John Cleese recently and we were watching. And also Monty Python. We were just spent some time with John Cleese recently, and we were watching a lot of Monty Python. And even though they didn't have that broadcast, there was a lot of blackouts in what they did in the 1970s. Yeah. And not always necessarily a punchline.

They would just go on to the next thing. And Ernie would, you know, often with Kovacs, it was the idea behind the whole sketch that was funny and not so much the execution or the structure of it, but it was the concept of what he was doing was hilarious. Terry Gilliam says, and you have this booklet that comes with the box set from Short Factory, from Shop Factory. Terry Gilliam says, the Kovacs show knocked me sideways into a world where the bizarre and the daft and the preposterous all lived happily alongside wisdom, wit, and perception. I had never experienced anything so visually absurd and inventive. So you were with Terry.

Me and Terry. Recently. Yeah. We did a Kovacs centennial event in London at the BFI for the Monty Python 50th anniversary. And I got to meet Terry Gilliam. And he couldn't have been nicer and couldn't have been more complimentary about Ernie. And I had never, Mad Magazine and Ernie Kovacs were the things that kept him going. Kurtzman. He got to work with Kurtzman later. Yeah. That's how he met Cleese.

Yeah. And he was totally influenced by it. It's funny, we were talking just about the blackouts. Ernie used music in a lot of ways and Python used Terry Gilliam's animation to kind of segue from one sketch to the next and bring things back and all that. So it's a very Kovacsian thing that I think that they were doing purely with Terry Gilliam because they had never seen it. So Terry Gilliam's a kid in Minnesota, grooving to Ernie Kovacs on the national show, obviously. He wasn't going to get the show from Philly. No.

Yeah. No. Yeah. No. Yeah. But look at the generations. Well, it's- The way this guy is influencing comedy for decades to come. To this day. To this day.

Yeah. Yeah. I love hearing that. Sort of in my mission this year, 100 years is centennial. You kind of, you got to make hay some way. And I really feel like this is Ernie's year to kind of make sure that people remember him. And what's scary, and I mean, Frank and I, I think the reason we do this show,

look, people don't remember who the Mox brothers and Jack Benny are. Yeah. You're lucky if they remember who Paul Newman is at this point. Yeah, yeah. Or Paulie Shore. Yeah. Wow. are yeah you're lucky if they remember who paul newman is yeah yeah or paul is sure and and i mean i i was we were talking to some 20 year old and he didn't know who david letterman was that's how quickly yeah it's like you're gone for a week. So Ernie Koufax, I mean, if you're going to remember anyone, you might remember Benny or Groucho.

Right. Ernie Koufax is like completely forgotten about. The thing that's crazy is that this year we've done all these events, and I kind of started to reach out to people besides comedians. So I reached out to some musicians, and Gerald Casal from Devo was a huge fan. And we did a panel with him and some other people. We also had Chris Stein from Blondie. I was surprised to find these Kovacs fans. Huge fan.

And Al Wilner. And it was really like Chris Stein had this moment where we were talking with him. We just said, I was so lucky to grow up in this era. I mean, I was in New York and I was a kid and I just thought this was like you know you're bringing me back to a moment and i think that is the interesting thing is that it actually elicits something in people that saw him at the time that uh you know reminds them of their youth or something that was really great about uh growing up and what interesting fascinates me about ernie kovacs what fascinated me about old movies and that was finding out how they would achieve special effects and they actually would get their hands dirty yeah and cut things and

paste things and that fashion now it's like if you ask how did you achieve this special effect well i press this knob and that makes fire appear and then i press this button, and that makes fire appear. And then I press this button, and a dragon comes on. But, Ben, he was always working without a budget, wasn't he? Yeah. That was key, actually. Yeah, it was either no budget, and even when he was— Or $15. Yeah, and then toward the end, the specials he was doing for ABC,

he had a budget, but he was still doing shows with dime store novelty toys and stuff like that and kitchen utensils dancing around to Esquivel but that's a thing where you know uh those music videos that he would do you look at those you think oh they would just take it one shot at a time but they were actually sustained performance takes so where every cut you see is happening in the control room which means he's got to lay out the entire studio with all the forks and knives and the blender and everything. And the people have to be all around pulling wires right on the beat and turning things on and off. And it was it's like you said, because, you know, somebody made this thing as opposed to somebody clicked on something. There's something about knowing it was done by a human.

Sure. That it makes this it's more of a connection and and nowadays like the most you know a star wars or jurassic park could be made by a two-year-old on their phone yeah it's like nothing yeah one of ernie's great things is that uh he trusted his crew and he had ideas but he basically would say you know you guys do it and i think the crew really loved him and wanted to work hard because they got to do these great things. He made them figure it out. Exactly.

And they got to do stuff that was much more involved than just, here's a living room set, now we're done. I mean, they got to play with toys and have fun with it. I think that's one of the main reasons that, besides the money, the old overtime they were getting, but they got to be creative and make like you said get their hands dirty he dumped water on somebody auditioned goats run through restaurants in ape suits i mean this sounds like the early letterman show it's in some ways it

sounds like conan's first show on nbc too because obviously conan i think has been on the record yeah as saying that he's a fan of there's a picture of ernie and edie on the back wall of his set i think on that show oh i think that's a fan of Ernie Kovacs. Well, there's a picture of Ernie and Edie on the back wall of his set, I think, on that show. Oh, I think that's true. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. What was Howard the world's strongest aunt?

Tell our listeners. Wow. Ben, you might have to jump in on this one. Howard the world's strongest aunt was a segment that Ernie did on a semi-regular basis on his daily half-hour show on NBC for a year and a half. And it was just a shot of a miniature, and Edie would do the voice of How Are the World's Strongest. And you'd see they'd manipulate it, of course, with magnets, the best they could with no rehearsal.

He's moving chairs around, and now he's going to play a game of pool, or here we are on a picnic. going to play a game of pool and or here we are on a picnic and and but it was all ed's uh he was doing that i'm partially improv improvised but it was her voice as the the world's strongest and people sent in gifts uh for howard the world's strongest and they would and then ernie would hold them up on the show and we got these gifts and then whoever it was would get a you know a watch or a radio in the mail as a thank you but people sent in gifts for the characters and now that you've mentioned it let's get your mom here into the act here how did how did they i mean she was discovered on arthur godfrey's talent scouts yes yes absolutely um and ernie would say i'd like to

take credit but he couldn't well his his producer basically said he had a show in Philadelphia and said to my mom, like, would you like to come down to meet this guy, you know, Ernie Kovacs? And she thought Kovacs. Here we go again. Kovacs and Kovacs. And they went and she went down there, thought she was going to work for a couple of weeks and turned into a pretty good partnership. And Ernie was married at the time and uh was not going well and at some point they got divorced and my mom and ernie then started dating and had a pretty whirlwind love affair for quite a while now now that marriage to say it didn't go well yeah is an understanding yeah yes yes uh she like uh he he gave her the kids for a while because they decided in court he was the better parent he won well yeah eventually yeah think

about that 1950s a man was given custody of his kids yeah two daughters didn't happen and then he uh hands them over to her to just take care of them for the day. And he doesn't see them for another two years. And the crazy thing is, if you think about it, he had to be funny for those two years. Yes. On a daily, live basis. Crazy. He had to.

He was spending money on private detectives. They would say, they're in, you know, wherever. They're in Texas. He'd get on a plane after a show, and he'd fly down there. Sorry, we can know, wherever. They're in Texas. He'd get on a plane after a show and he'd fly down there. Sorry, we can't find them. They're not here. He was spending, I mean, Ernie had a spending problem anyway. Yeah.

But he had spared no expense to find his girls. He was really just distraught about this. So he, eventually they found them in Florida, but he spent a long time and a lot of money and being very funny on television. And the funny thing, he's spending like millions on detectives who are not doing a goddamn thing. And they say the way it was tracked down, his mother, she was sending postcards every day to different areas. Have you seen these girls?

That actually doesn't sound too far off. You know, Gilbert, good job. We learned something. First time someone's praising me. Now it's an educational program. Well, you know, it was very sad. And, you know, the girls literally did not know how to use a knife and fork and they were you know my mom told me a story that when they

would be in a car and a police car would drive by they would duck because that's what their mom it's a miracle that he found them yeah yeah you know and and they said like the mother was just sending out a postcard a penny each and and saying have you seen they look like this have you seen and eventually someone said i i saw two girls i look like that yeah yeah and and ernie's mom you know god bless her there's a great there's many crazy stories about this mad famous mary played by chloris leachman in the tv movies and jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum, yeah. Yeah, Cloris Leachman is great in that. And Jeff Goldblum's great. But it was a weird situation for my mom because now she's got to like integrate herself into a whole new family.

I mean, she was fairly young. She was like not even 30 and she was basically all of a sudden a mom. What I love is reading in her memoir, which you were kind enough to send me uh sing a pretty song that the the way she talks about meeting him how she knew instantly how she got an electric charge up her arm when he shook her hand and yeah she says there's a video somewhere you can find it online where she says i'd never seen a person like that and i thought to myself i want one of those yeah yeah she knew she knew she instantly she was from a very white bread you know presbyterian pennsylvania background and she's you know when i saw kovacs i had never seen someone with a mustache and a cigar and look

like a gangster and she thought i want one of those it's it's sweet to read in the book too their courtship too how he was he he was lavishing attention on her. And lavishing money, of course. Oh, yes. Even when he had no money. Yeah, they definitely had a world. My mom was married three times, but even with my dad, I knew that, like Ernie, was the love of her life. It was pretty apparent.

What was that piece? He took her back to the house to listen to a classical piece. Oh, the... The one she had trouble listening to after he passed because it was too heartbreaking for her. That's not Eric Satie, is it? Yeah. I think it's a gymnopédie, which I can't play.

Oh, okay. I can make up anything, but don't ask me for Satie. Well, make something up and say it's that. He was a lover of music. Yeah. And it factored into his work. Yeah. And again, largely because of Edie, who, as she would often tell you, was a Juilliard graduate. But she introduced a lot of unusual sort of music that isn't Grand Canyon Suite and Rhapsody in Blue.

And you start hearing some of this music turn up in his shows. This music by Shostakovich, a piece that he used in a lot of his shows, that you hear the band playing even in the 1952 and 1953 broadcasts. And both their lives seem to center at different points around cigars. Oh, yeah. A lot of cigars. He has, what was it, old? Dutch Masters. Dutch Masters was his.

And then it was Muriel. Yeah. And then it was Muriel. Yeah. The story is that there was a guy named Jack Mogulescu who ran a company called Consolidated Cigar Corporation. And they wanted Ernie to plug the cigars. And there was a worry that Ernie wouldn't want to plug them because they weren't particularly great cigars. But, you know, Ernie smoked good Cubans and spent $10,000 a year on flying to Cuba and coming back with 500 cigars. And supposedly the story goes that they went to lunch and Jack Mogulescu had a Brecht play under his arm.

And Ernie thought, OK, I'll pay attention to this guy. And the cigar sales were great. So when Ernie passed away, he knew my mom was in real financial trouble because Ernie spent, and we can talk about that. But he said to my mom, we have this other brand, Muriel, would you want to do that? And she said, yes. And that was incredibly successful. A lot of football games and boxing matches and stuff like that. And he gave her a 20-year contract and in in a great commercial and in a time when there was no such a thing as sex back then in tv i remember and i think i wonder how many boys use this commercial because she would go why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime

do you know any of the jingles uh unfortunately yeah i don't know the lyrics but here we go There you go. Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime? Nice. Well, and she, boy, she put a double meaning into that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

I'm sure guys who are buying cigars like crazy. Yeah. And the murals were targeted for women, though, weren't they? Well, no. But there was some, because I remember your mom invented a ring. She did. She invented a cigar ring for women that you could put it on your finger so you could look feminine. Wow. While you're

smoking a cigar. Yes, she had a patent. She was very proud of that, but I'll tell you, this is a very Gilbert story. Talk about... It has a midget and a dick. No, but the dick part, yes. Yeah, okay. Okay, good.

My dad, when I was growing up and going through puberty, had a lot of Playboys and Penthouse and those kind of things and some other magazines. And when I was looking at one of them, they had something that said, the 10 most fuckable women. And my mom was number nine. Oh my God. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha That'll scar a boy Somewhere between Angie Dickinson and Juliet Prowse

Juliet Prowse But I just thought oh my god I can never look at this again Did you ever have the courage To bring that up to her? Years later I did because in my brain at that time I literally thought to myself I was like did they send someone to the house?

I mean how did they How did they know that she's one of the most- Well, Gil's mom was five. That's how I turned out the way I am now. There you go. Yes. Wowee. That has to be beyond traumatic. It was.

It was a boner killer for sure. But the crazy thing was I did bring it up to her years later. And I said, OK, Mom, I just I got to ask you this. And she thought it was one of the funniest things she'd ever heard. She thought it was hilarious. She was she was terrific. She was just like, oh, Josh, come on. I was like, what did they said?

Chad Everett to your house? I don't understand. How does this work? We're going to do a couple of grill the guest questions these are get uh questions from our patreon followers and patreon patrons and we'll we'll mix them in luke simon has a question for josh uh being kind of avant-garde was ernie paying attention to early european art cinema cocteau or truffaut i don't think he could have seen it. It was still...

I don't know that he might have seen it. Maybe... It's weird because it does look a lot like that, but I don't know where he might have seen it. I know he got exposed to a lot of culture as a kid. Yeah. He was a Keaton fan and a Chaplin fan. But our house was filled with art and books and all sorts of classic, you know.

Was he into surrealism? Because you'd almost think that somebody like Marcel Duchamp would appeal to. Oh, yeah. Well, the whole Eugene show just is a surrealist nightmare. Yeah, Eugene. Did you see the silent show? Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah, Eugene. Did you see The Silence Show, Gilbert? Yes, yes. Yeah. And there was also, they said, in his early struggling days, he almost died. Yeah. Yeah. Like, he got pneumonia first.

He had pleurisy. I mean, do you want to? Well, no. I mean, yeah, he had gone to an acting school and was living on no money and got really sick. And they put him in a TBb ward and he's watching people around him perish and uh but eventually got and he got out tb from that from being in the war he was there for a good 11 months and and they said that was like a place where they put like derelicts and crazy people yeah he was i don't think i don't think he was 20 i mean he was very young

and he had no money he had not graduated uh college and uh he i my theory is that he like um bobby darren got a feeling that i'm not going to live very long and i can see how precious life is and he literally lived i mean on his tombstone is nothing in moderation. I mean, he really just lived his entire life. Like, you know, he only lived to 42. And they said that I think some acting teacher heard he was living in this sanitarium. Harold Van Kirk. Yeah. From his high school. His high school drama team mentor. It's like he saved his life. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. You hear a lot of those stories too of show business of people, you know people on their deathbeds or people very sick who have this kind of epiphany. George Lucas is one. People who suddenly realize that—

Yeah. I got to do it now. Do it now. Everything now. Or Gary Shandling was another guy who had a turning point, saw his own death. But it somehow— I think everything sped up. Inspires them, galvanizes yeah and it

really also made him not want to listen to authority or have anyone tell him what to do or how to do it or what was funny so he really had an attitude of just like you know i'm gonna live i'm gonna perform and i'm gonna live the way i want to live and everyone else be damned i mean to my mom, even. I mean, like, you know, when he died, he was half a million dollars in debt, 350,000 from the IRS and 150,000 from his ABC shows because he was the producer but didn't understand above the line or below the line. So he just spent. And so I think at the end he was just sort of – and he didn't have a will. I mean, there were so many things.

He just lived his life like, you know, spending. Didn't want to pay taxes. No, for sure. When he would get money, when he'd get a TV deal or something and he did get money, immediately go, oh, look, I got money. And he'd spend all of it right away. We still have some checks of his. And you'll see frequently Kovacs Enterprises cash $1,000. 1955.

I mean, he was taking out thousands of dollars every year just because he could. And your mom was spending it too, just sort of not understanding, okay, the money's rolling in. If he wasn't worried about it, why should she? Yeah. And then the bill came due. They had business managers who should have been watching. she yeah and then the bill came due they had they had business managers who should have been watching but you know to my mom's credit when she when when ernie died she realized oh shit i'm really in trouble and she went to ucla and i have the book i just saw this very inspiring she went

took um courses on accounting to make sure she knew not to do it again. And they said when he died, a bunch of celebrities all wanted to do telethons and benefits and she wouldn't have any of it. She absolutely refused. Her father was a very honorable guy that she loved. And he had a hardware store during the Depression. And the partner in the hardware store during the depression just one day took the money from the till and left. And her father basically said, no, I can't not pay these bills and close up shop. So he basically tried to make sure the shop ran. And my mom said she learned a lesson that you just don't leave people high and dry. You pay your bills. You actually, you know, do the things you say you're going to do. And she refused it.

And luckily, she was in a position where she could earn a lot of money. And she just said to the IRS when they came up the driveway, give me some time and I will pay it all back. And they did. And she, I mean, it took her a decade, but she paid it all back. I mean, it's very admirable. And to read in the book, it's heartbreaking to read her point of view of what happened that night in January 62. That, you know, they were at a party together. They were at Milton Berle's. They were at a party for, they were at the Wilders house, Billy Wilders house. And it was a party for the Berles that adopted a boy. Billy Berle, I think.

Yeah. And so they left in separate vehicles and she got home first. Yeah, and so they left in separate vehicles, and she got home first. Yeah, he basically told her, it's raining outside. You take the rolls, and I'll take the Corvair. Which they had just gotten, so he had hardly driven it that much. Right. Plus, there was this other, Ben will know this as well, but obviously, Ernie had just finished a show with Buster Keaton. Oh, the medicine man. The medicine man, the pilot.

The last of three days of shooting that same day. And I think he said he was tired that day and he didn't even want to go to a party. No, he didn't. And my mom said at the end it was very dark. I mean, he knew that there was this impending bill that needed to be paid, whether it was financially or psychically, I don't know.

But she said it did get very dark. But that night he drove home and had a single car accident, and that was it. And nobody really knows what happened. I mean, there's speculation that because he was guilty of trying to light cigars while driving, that perhaps he was reaching for a cigar or a match, but he lost control of the Corvair. Yeah, it was raining a little bit. lost control of the the corvair yeah which was raining a little it was raining the roads were slick and uh jack lemon talks about ernie was the worst driver i ever was in a car with he was a terrible driver he was awful he'd always take chances carl

reiner actually said it to me that he was like just like he was barreling down all these streets and he would go jesus ernie like you know down. So I think he just had this abandon that he lived his life with that unfortunately caught up with him. He was exhausted by that night. If you watched the last ABC special, which was taping in either December or beginning of January, he looks really tired, and it's not as strong a show as the other ones, and you see he's really— He's lagging.

Yeah, yeah. So suddenly he's gone just like that in an instant. Yeah. You know, your mom is numb. Yeah. For months. But she doesn't have the luxury of mourning too long because she has to get it together very quickly. Like how much money altogether was owed?

It was about half a million, but it was probably more. I'll tell you, there's a Ralph Nader story in here, which I'll tell you about in a minute, which is crazy. But one of the things that was great about it is that one of your former guests on the show, Robert Wagner, was friends with Ernie. He had been in a movie, Sail a Crooked Ship with Ernie, and Ernie had these gambling games where Ernie was a terrible, terrible gambler, literally could not win. And when he died, people came to my mom, well-known people, and said, Ernie owed me $30,000. I'd like you to pay me. Oh. And my mom just thought, well, I don't know what his business is. I don't know if that's true. Robert Wagner was the only one that came to her and said, I owed Ernie $10,000. I'd like to give you $10,000.

And my mom said, I can't take it. I don't know what Ernie's debts were. Your mom was a classy lady. Yeah. On the up and up. Yes. So Sinatra and Dino and Lemon himself, who was very close to her, offered to, as Gilbert said, offered to do a special, a telethon, anything to help her out, but she had too much pride to do it.

She wanted to do it on her own, so she started working like mad. She did, and she was lucky because she could play places like Vegas and she could make a lot of money very fast, but it wasn't artistically something she wanted to do. She would literally just say, what are you paying? And that's how she would make a lot of money very fast. But it wasn't artistically something she wanted to do. She would literally just say, what are you paying? And that's how she would make her decisions. And I heard with Ernie Koufax, when he needed money, when he realized, I owe so much, he would do just about anything. But the idea of a series, he couldn't stand.

Yeah, absolutely. He didn't like convention. I mean mean he didn't like sitcoms my mom actually didn't like it either well we can get into this later but yeah she was offered the role of um bewitched that was that was william asher offered i didn't know that and uh she turned it down she thought that was you know she'd spent all these years doing nightclub acts and you know doing these variety shows and things she didn't want to do. And she finally just thought, well, I need to do what I want to do. And so she wouldn't do a sitcom. One part she took in a famous movie that comes up a lot on this show is It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, where she's obviously.

Now, I'm going to ask Ben, who might know. Josh and I were talking about it before we turned the mics on. There's speculation that Kramer approached her and Ernie as a package deal for the part that was... I've never heard any evidence, but you look at it and you can't help thinking that it would have been planned for the two of them. And just the chemistry that Ernie and Edie had together as a team, which you see in the TV shows, they're hilarious together. He was such a star at that point that if you're making that movie and you're putting all of these comedians you almost have to offer a part to ernie kovacs oh absolutely and so so melville crump the dentist played by sid caesar was probably and we'll we can reach out to some other people to try to get

confirmation on this but the slow burn yeah the slow burn of melvin crump she's got great moments oh yeah she's on the screen with these giants every one of them that was made not too long after ernie died and she said that was the first time i laughed in about a year after ernie died i always thought like like that mad mad world was never as funny as it should have been right but i always thought boy they should have made a making of mad mad yes probably way funnier yeah even the freebird commercials the trailers are good yeah yeah yeah well i think that uh you know my mom said you know i was around every comedian that i ever could have wanted to be around. It was a perfect scenario. And even there in Palm Springs, it's 115 degrees.

I mean, it's miserable. And they're all having a great time. She'd never met Terry Thomas. She became great friends with him. Spencer Tracy was nice to her. Yeah, people were great. And did she have loads of stories about all the comics? Yeah.

And what's great is we also have, I have about 200 pictures my mom took on the set that no one's ever seen oh man and she had this uh uh it was called minox minox that's a miniature camera spy camera yeah and so i have all these great pictures of you know spencer tracy sitting around and jonathan winters wow are great. And it always seemed like I'm sure the biggest laughs were off camera. Yeah. I mean, and the other thing was my mom said, you know, everybody was part of it. I mean, the stuntmen, this guy, Cary Lofgren, you know, was like loomed large over this. The stunt guys were the real stars of this movie. So everybody was a part of it. Everybody was sort of like, you know, stuck in this very hot part of California where it was 115 degrees. And they all, you know, got together and hung out.

Yeah. We will come back to Ernie. We're going to do one of those Josh Mills and Ben Modell interludes. Okay. Get ready. There's a story of. Now Josh is tied to the train tracks. Now Josh falls in love with the hero.

Now Josh reads a porno mag. Now Josh takes a job as a stripper. Josh is turning some interesting colors. This Josh interlude will be about, where do I want to go? Your mom dating Peter Sellers. Wow. Yeah. She was doing a show in London.

She had a show called Here's Edie in 1964. Sure. And she taped a show in London. And she went out, Peter Sellers liked blondes evidently, and they went out on a date, and he took her to a skiffle club of all things. So Lonnie Donegan, you know. Oh yeah, sure, skiffle. Yeah.

And my mom just said he was very kind of dull he wasn't really Peter Sellers the story I I always heard about Peter Sellers was that he he he if he wasn't in character he didn't exist yeah yeah I think that was the case he like had there was nobody there if he wasn't a character. Yeah, I think they only had that one date. But yeah, she was always fascinated. She ran in a crowd with a lot of interesting people. She was fascinated by comedians?

By funny people? She loved comedians. She thought that was the greatest, you know, just to laugh was the best. She loved silly. Anything that was silly. To read that book, her memoir, The People, I was saying this to you before yeah she worked with everyone i mean lucy and desi and and and gorvidal and leonard bernstein and groucho and and just and then and the names just kept on coming you know i think she did everything she was super talented um and she was good looking but i think also well she was the most your mother

your mother was the ninth most fuckable woman in the world i want you to remember poor juliet prowse You remember it was me. Yeah. No, but she, how do I bring it back? There's no hope. No. I think, frankly, people really were rooting for her. I think that they really wanted her to succeed.

Of course. And so she, and she worked really hard. I mean, she worked, when I was a kid, she was working all the time on the road. She'd go for two weeks, three weeks. I mean, she was still paying off debt in the 1970s. Any stories about working for the mob? Because it comes up in the book. They were all mob clubs. One of the stories is that she went to a boxing match in Vegas.

And it was one of the first closed circuit camera events. And she goes up to Johnny Roselli, who she knows very well. And she goes, Johnny! And he looks at her and says, get away, kid. Stay away. Don't. Dip, dip. And she said, I was so hurt.

I couldn't figure out. I was friends with him. He didn't want to be seen with me. The boxing match is over. They turn off the cameras. He comes up to her. He goes, what are you doing coming up to a guy like me? There's cameras here all over the place.

You don't want to be seen with a guy like me. You people know who I am. And my mom thought, oh, oh my god he was looking out for me wow he was actually worried about what was going to happen to me wow so those are the moments where i was like holy crap because we always talk frank and i always talk about this these celebrities would love working for the mob i don't think it was if you weren't a celebrity i don't know how great it was no no um but there's another crazy story there was a guy who uh had a um he this is weird he he was a hairdresser in las vegas and his name was izzy marion and he was at one time married to

connie francis but while in vegas he would do every celebrity, female celebrities hair, Diane Carroll, my mom, whoever was in town. And he came to my mom and he said, I want to open a hair salon at Caesars, but they won't let me. Would you do a favor for me? And said what do you want and he said i'd like you to go i think it was detroit i don't know for sure and sing for them at like a social club and she said okay and so she was going back and she did it and it was a night a sunday night with the family night with the wives and the kids and the whole thing she sang an italian italian aria. And lo and behold, Izzy Marion gets his salon at Caesars. And he did it for the mob. It was all mob run. Good stuff. Yeah.

Good stuff. Here's a question for you, Ben. Oh, boy. From Josh Chambers. Ben, great work on the Kino Edison box. Oh, thank you. Some fun gems in there. What is one classic silent film you would like to either rescore or perform live. Oh, thank you. Some fun gems in there. What is one classic silent film

you would like to either rescore or perform live? Oh, it's hard. It's really hard to pick. There's so many. I get this question a lot, like, what's your favorite film? I don't really have a favorite film,

but I'm glad he liked the Kinetophone. Well, how about this one instead? He says, then also for Ben, what is his opinion of the 1984 remix of Metropolis? Oh. It featured Freddie Mercury and Pat Benatar, among other people.

It's not my cup of tea. There are some people who really like it. But there's always been attempts for decades to make silent film more interesting by putting more contemporary music on it. And sometimes it works, but a lot of times it doesn't necessarily. I mean, it sold a lot of tickets and people saw it and now a lot of people know what metropolis is but it didn't you know usher in a new era of going to silent movies how did you feel about the new dracula score the it's well it's it's philip glass so once you hear a couple of bars, you kind of get it. It's the same thing over and over. And it was done a bunch of years ago.

And that's, I mean, my interest in trying to do a score, which I did this year and last year in a couple of places on Theater Oregon, is that the original Dracula is a great film, but it doesn't get shown all that much. And part of the problem is there's absolutely no music in it at all, except for the opening titles, which has music from Swan Lake, because when you think of vampires... Yeah.

And so there are these gaping holes where, as a moviegoer, you expect music to be there, but there isn't. It's just... And so what I've tried to do is... I've done a couple... I mean, I don't know if I can pull it off on the piano, but just to lay in little bits of music here and there to support the emotion that's on screen so you're just not listening to Lugosi breathe and wait for his cue.

Give us a taste. I don't, I mean, it's not, it's not going to sound like much without the film. It's okay. We sound like much without the film. It's okay. We know the film very well. There's something simple underneath. You know, there's that moment when you first see Dracula's wives, and then we cut to this wide shot, and these three women in ethereal gowns

just sort of walk quietly for several seconds, and, you know, just try to find something that that supports and also keeps your ears occupied while you're waiting for something to happen although at times in dracula when it's silent it's kind of eerie too yeah yeah i mean i don't play wall to wall music but there there are definitely places uh where where the leaving the silence there works and it's it was just a And part of it was the technology. Somebody has told me, oh, well, Todd Browning wanted it without music, but I think that it was Universal Pictures was kind of late to the game in adapting to sound.

And even if Todd Browning had wanted a score, I don't know if they would have been able to do it. And even I think Frankenstein also has almost either zero music or hardly any at all. Isn't there some Swan Lake in Frankenstein too? Or in The Bride of Frankenstein or one of them? I think somebody mentioned to me at a show that The Mummy has the same. Yes. If the opening title is for The Mummy, it's the same thing.

What I. You know, that theme. Right. The one that sounds like Harry Potter. Yes. What I remember from all of the 40s universe, I think it was Hans J. Salter. And it was like, it was always, it was the Wolfman transformation as well as a million other monsters they used. And it was...

well as a million other monsters they used. And it was... Yeah, they would just reuse a lot of music and sometimes they would take stock music from the silent era and drop it into a lot of films because it was already written and they didn't have to pay anybody. What piece do you love to play when you're accompanying films? I mean, do you prefer to do something like City Lights or

The General? For me, it's more about who's in the audience and where I'm doing it than the film itself. So if, you know, an auditorium full of fifth graders seeing Buster Keaton's One Week is almost as, just as

exciting as getting to play something at the TCM Festival because people are getting to see what's on screen. It's not about me, per se. Give us an example. Of? Anything. Of anything? Keaton.

Something you would play for one week or Steamboat Bill. Nice. Okay. All right. The star loses his girl and all his money, and he's out on a dark, rainy street with a bottle of booze. Played by Jack O'Keefe. Just in a movie with your mom. Yes. Very good. I could picture it with your mom. Yes. Very good. I could picture it in my head.

Nice. God damn it. Sorry about that. I didn't make that movie. Picture your mother being picked as the ninth most fuckable woman in the world. Oh, Lord. I feel like standing up and applauding.

It's like, it's triumphant. See, Josh, don't you feel better now? Sort of. Kind of. It's like, like ultimately you win at the end. Everyone wants to fuck my mother. Okay, Josh. One for you from Michael Campobasso. He's one of mine, Gilbert.

Your mother was instrumental. Skip over. I don't want a question from some guinea. Your mother was instrumental in the preservation of footage from both hers and Ernie's careers. When you first started becoming familiar with the footage yourself, was there anything shocking or surprising that you saw? I think we covered what was shocking and surprising. Yeah. But something you found in the footage. That wasn't Swank Magazine. surprising that you saw i think we covered what was shocking and surprising yeah but something

you found in the footage uh that wasn't swank magazine um well i mean i kind of we had done a my mom had done a set uh with a company called white star years ago and there was a a good amount of stuff on there but i think that the thing that I find interesting is the daily shows, which a lot of people never really saw on NBC. From NBC, from 1956. Yeah, I mean, his high watermark was the ABC specials. We all get that. But it was nice to see that there was a daily show that, you know,

Ernie did like, you know, like anyone else. And he was really good at it. And he had his own take on things. And there was a great set the uh the dungeon set yeah and so i think sort of the daily grind in and out you know trying to get you know five shows a week done and that kind of a thing it was fun to see that ernie was actually really good at that as opposed to just the sort of esoteric stuff that everybody loves which is legitimately great too yeah but they say he had no time to prepare no because he had during when he's doing that show he's doing a radio dj show from 6 a.m to 9 a.m

for abc then he hightails it over to nbc to do his half hour show which was at 10 30 and then there's a certain point in the summer of 56 when he got to do a summer replacement show for Caesar's Hour. So on top of all of this, he's rehearsing and writing. And then every Monday night, there's this one hour big special at 8 o'clock. And then, you know, then poker. And people didn't know he briefly hosted The Tonight Show. Yeah, for about four months. There was one thing where when he was on the radio, he wanted the audience to experience what it was like being run over by a train.

Yes. That's true. Yeah, this is when he was in Trenton on the radio in Trenton. Yeah. He put the microphone and let the train run over it. Let me ask you guys about some of these characters. Just a sentence or two that you can tell us. Maybe the origin or the genesis of a character like Percy Dovetonsils, was it loosely based on Alexander Wolcott, which I find in my research?

I don't think so. There is at least one, if not two, other people who read poetry gently with organ music behind them on the radio. And Ernie had been in radio for several years before coming to television. And it's possible, but a lot of things with Kovacs, he would get an idea or see something and instantly know what it was. And Percy Dovetonsil was a character that came up when Andy McKay would go to the dime store in Philadelphia on their budget of $1.50 a week and just find things and these were novelty glasses

that you would wear to look like you were awake and I think that the eyelid across it looks, if you see a really sharp photo of it, it looks like it was drawn on but he must have put them on. The character came to him.

Yeah, exactly. And then the leopard skin jacket must have been lying around. But I think for him it was a way to, for someone who was such a huge presence, to play as sort of a softer character. I don't think there was anything mean or caustic about it. And he would write all these poems and read them on the air and people loved that. By the way, I'm convinced that Steven Root in the movie Office Space is doing

Percy Dovetonsils. Wow. It was great. My mom was the one that came to me and said he's doing Percy. Absolutely. And I was like, no. She was like, yeah, he's doing Percy. Seek him out and ask him. We did.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if he. What about Miklos Smolnar, the Hungarian chef? That's his dad, isn't it? Well, yeah. His dad. Ernie was Hungarian and Miklos Smolnar.

I mean, that's the great thing about Ernie. I love that character. A lot of ethnic humor from the 1950s. Who does Hungarian characters? I mean, Ernie did right so uh i think that was definitely his father and just you know hanging around with those guys uh in trent new jersey in 19 you know 25 or something and maybe possibly a little bit of the inspiration for the swedish chef it certainly looks like as long as i'm being oh yeah as long as i'm

chasing down influences yeah it looks like it does It sure does look like it. Yeah. And I saw, too, they were talking about one thing he used to do on the show that was definitely the inspiration for Mr. Bill, like where the character gets hurt all the time. That's in the doc from, that's Kippy saying that. Isn't it something gets run over? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was definitely Mr. Bill from Saturday Night Live it became.

Well, you know, we were just a second ago talking about... That's why Bell loved him, too. Oh, yeah. Sure, yeah. Influencing all those shows. In, I think it was 1992, maybe 89, sorry, it was the Television Hall of Fame. And Ernie and Jim Henson were both inducted that same year. And Henson definitely was a fan of Ernie. Had to be. I was just going to ask that question.

Yeah, for sure. What about the horror host, Uncle Gruesome? Well, that's just, you know, Criswell or Goularty or that's just his take. The funny thing is my mom, you know, again, brought up Pennsylvania, very white bread sort of thing. She never saw any of the movies that they were parodying or things that were going on so she he would just say you know bring a bring a wig and a hat and a trench coat and she'd go okay and then she would show up and that's what she would have to do that day but ernie i think was a little more down the road and and liked a lot of the you know cheap horror movies for sure there's a neat moment on one of the nbc shows because it aired at 10.30 a.m. New York time,

where he does the Uncle Gruesome character one day, and it's lit from underneath. And the next day on the show, he says, we got a lot of calls from parents whose children, I guess, were watching, and were a little scared with what happened to Ernie. And so what he does is he brings out their makeup guy, a guy named George Fiala, and he shows the audience how they put on the Uncle Gruesome makeup just to reassure all the kids who are watching. Oh, that's on your blog. Yes, yes.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. He did that. Okay, and last but not least, because you both listen to this podcast, Gilbert will know where I'm going, the Nairobi Trio. Oh, yes. Yes. Chimps.

What on earth? It was another one of those things where somebody brought in a record, a guy named Peter Hanley, who was the male singer on the show that he did on Dumont, a late night show at 11, 1130. And he heard this record called Solfeggio, and he thought it sounded like something Ernie would have fun with. And the legend is that Ernie heard it, listened to it one more time, and in 15 minutes,

he had the whole thing staged. And one of the monkeys was Jack Lemmon, I heard. Yeah, there are a lot of different celebrities. The version that a lot of people have seen online and on the DVDs, which was from the last special, but it had been taped as a clue for Take a Good Look. It's Jolene Brand and Ernie. And we never knew who the guy on Mallets was,

but at the event that Josh was mentioning that we did at the Egyptian, we or somebody, or maybe it was me, we asked Jolene who was, and she said it was Jack Lemmon. There was a lot of, they would do a lot of live things like for charity functions. I mentioned they do this thing called the Share Show, which was a big deal in Los Angeles.

And Ernie's big joke was that he would do the Nairobi Trio and it would be Frank Sinatra and Jack Lemmon and they would do this thing, but nobody knew. That's an Ernie Kovacs joke, right? Very cool. You got Frank Sinatra and Jack Lemmon, but nobody knows that they're there. That is one of my earliest TV memories as a child, is seeing the Nairobi Trio. It's so simple, and you can't describe it to anybody.

You can't describe it. And that was nightmarish. Yeah. That's haunting. What the hell is this? It's really bizarre. It's macabre. I mean, he was a dark guy.

There's no doubt about it. I just want to ask quickly about Ernie's movie career. And we were talking about your mom's movie career, too. She's quite excellent. Yeah. Even in a not-so-good movie like Under the Yum-Yum Tree with Jack Lemmon, which we were talking about before. She's the best thing in it. She's very good in Love Her Come Back.

She's not on the screen very long, but she almost steals the movie. And she's good in the Gore Vidal picture in The Best Man. Best Man, she's really good. She's right in the apartment. And the apartment, of course. How can I leave the apartment out?

Which apart she got just because she was at dinner with Billy Wilder. Yeah, the story goes that Ernie, because Ernie was best friends with Jack Lemmon. Excuse me. Friends with Jack Lemmon. And they went to dinner. It was just Audrey Wilder, Billy Wilder, my mom, and Ernie.

And Billy Wilder turns to my mom at some point and says, I'm writing this movie. And we're making this movie. And I think I have a part for you. And she said, but don't you want me to audition? And he said, no. And she thought, okay, great. Yeah, I have this part. And he said, Monday a car will come for you. And she said, but don't you want me to audition? And he said, no. And she thought, okay, great. Yeah, I have this part. And he said, Monday, a car will come for you.

She said, great. So Monday turns up, car comes. She goes, I guess I got the part. And that's how she got into the apartment. I love it. She's fun in the movie. Yeah, she's really good in it. And Ernie, we were talking to, is a good actor.

But I feel it's safe to say that Operation Madball and Our Man in Nevada is an excellent film. Yeah. They don't bring out the best in him. Right. He took out an ad, a full-page ad in Variety, with pictures of all the parts he'd played and then wrote, no bleep captains, you know, because he was sick of playing captains. Oh, I love that. Yeah, he was always...

No more captains, he said. Yeah. These old, like, funny authority figures. Right, right said. Yeah. These old, like, funny authority figures. Right, right. Tough guy. The trailer he made for Operation Madball, which people can watch, got a lot of Ernie Kovacs stuff in it. He had complete creative control on that. Yeah.

For sure. I enjoyed that more than the movie. Yeah, yeah. And I heard he hated studio audiences. Yeah. And especially hated canned laughter. Couldn't stand it he he um you know they were just bringing in those uh big signs would say applause but his would say applesauce he just didn't want anyone uh he didn't want it and and you know i my mom and he got a gig

playing vegas in the 1950s and the basically the the the mob said to him, like, you know, Edie, you have to like tell Ernie he's working to the first 10 rows. You're working, you know, big. You've got to work big. Ernie didn't know how to work to an audience. He wasn't a stand up comic. He didn't really have any other, you know, besides radio and stuff like that. So he worked very small. My mom went to Juilliard, realized you have to project and get your voice out there. Ernie worked in a very small way, so very different. I can't imagine he didn't get network notes, too,

and reject those as well, because he's a one-man operation. Oh, yeah, definitely. That's how he wound up writing the book Zumar. Yeah, and he basically would say to them, if you don't like it, rack up another Western, because that's what you're going to show. Yeah. Interesting. The movie career, too. I mean you're going to show. Yeah. Interesting.

The movie career, too. I mean, he turns up in a John Wayne Western. I mean, he's turning up in Bell Book and Candle. Yeah. It's a pretty good movie. He's getting beaten up by John Wayne. Yes, absolutely. What's the name of that?

North to Alaska? Yeah. But I think he was trying to make a movie out of Eugene toward the end. He talks about it in an interview that he does with the CBC. And he talks about it in great detail. Like he describes the opening sequence and what kind of a lens he wants to use. And his idea is that Alec Guinness is going to star in the movie as Eugene. And he would direct.

And he would direct. And he had all these different scenes mapped out. Wow. And the Eugene special that he does was something where he wound up rescheduling the special he taped for that November and taped this and bumped the other thing. I think he was trying to redo the version of Eugene sort of as a pilot to show that this could actually work. And had it not been for the car accident because movies like the bellboy and and ladies man these sort of non-linear narrative films were getting made i think ernie would have made his eugene film that's interesting yeah because he has a filmmaker's eye to to to be lost at taken from us at 42 and then it does leave you wondering yeah what what uh what wonderful work there was to come and a lot of

people say he would have been great in silent films that was his time period yeah i think that this the story is that when when they filmed medicine man they had to shoot it really quickly because it was pre-sold and but he and keaton really hit it off and there was talk of buster bringing in his his scrapbooks to if this show got picked up and and if if they didn't have to rush and they had more time to play uh the two of them would have cooked up some amazing visual gags and you imagine it wouldn't have been such a you wouldn't have been worried about the fact there was an old western scenario of course uh as we run out of time, let's plug these goodies.

The box set from Shout Factory. Art by someone I think we recognize. Oh, yes. The great Drew Friedman. Drew Friedman. Yeah. Did a great job. Yeah.

And how did you guys hook up? How did you guys meet? Well, I got an email from Josh right after I put up my website for Ernie Kovacs, and I thought, gosh, I hope nobody makes me take it down. And I got an email from Josh back in, you know, right after I put up my website for Ernie Kovacs. And I thought, gosh, I hope nobody makes me take it down. And I got an email from Josh Mills saying, hi, my mom is Edie Adams and she found your website and loves it.

Wow. And then I got an email from Edie. And so she and I had this email and telephone friendship for many, many years. And then after she passed, I started working more with Josh on just knowing what shows were where and where they were stored and what elements we have. And, you know, getting the working to connect with the Library of Congress, which is where all the physical elements are now. So you are the two guys keeping this flame burning. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. So tell our listeners what to get. I mean, there are people out there for the uninitiated who don't know Ernie Kovacs, need a beginner set. Yeah, you can get them on Amazon or anywhere. You can go to erniekovacs.com or edadams.com, and there's box sets. There's a Centennial box set. There's also this wonderful CD. We just released, reissued with bonus tracks that Ben found on audio transcription discs.

Way to go, Ben. Yeah, thanks. The Ernie Kovacs album, which was a record on Sony in 1977, which he was nominated for a Grammy for posthumously. And what's the one you just released this year? That's the Centennial Edition DVD set. Centennial Edition DVD set. But there's literally, I think there's four box sets that are available right now. Including the one of your mom's show. Yeah, my mom's show too.

And we didn't even get to the scariest story of all, how your mother got that phone call with some guy, some worker at the studio saying they're erasing all of- Yeah. She was, this is probably 63, and she was about a year out after Ernie died. And one of the technical crew guys called my mom and said, Ed for no good reason really other than to save it she went to a lawyer got a quick claim and went to nbc cbs abc and anywhere else and said if it says kovacs i'll buy it and she did and we amassed i mean the only reason it survives is my mom's weird idea that ernie was a genius and he should be saved. You guys are heroes, but she's the original hero. She rescued it all.

Let's save early television while it was early television. She was saving his stuff and holding on to it decades before people thought we should stop wiping these tapes. And it was costing her even more and more and more money. They were dumping stuff in the Hudson River to save on storage? Yeah, so a lot of the stuff from Dumont, all the Soupy Sails' shows, all Ernie's shows, yeah, it's all at the bottom of the Hudson.

The New York Tonight shows with Johnny Carson. They're all gone. Well, the first one with Groucho is gone. I think the introduction exists or some small piece of it. It's tragic. But it was a different ephemeral at that time. Nobody thought, well, I'll show this again, so we'll just wipe it in.

But they were doing that, I remember, at the thing at the Egyptian. George Slaughter talked about going out to the parking lot and stopping the trucks, taking the masters. Oh, the Laugh-In masters. Yeah. He ran into the parking lot. I heard a story that when they were making the deals

for the honeymooners, Audrey Meadows' brother was a lawyer. And they looked at him as, oh, yeah, her brother the lawyer. What a jerk. And one of his stupid demands was, well, I'd like her to get paid if it shows again. And they thought, what an idiot. After people watch it once, we're not going to show it again. Yep.

Right. And that, so they agreed to that. One last Easter egg. In the movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel. Yes. What is Jeff Goldblum's character's name?

Kovacs. Very good. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. It's a nice little tip of the hat. No accident, a tip of the hat.

What events are coming up? You've done a million of them this year. I've got a million of them. We do have an event on Wednesday, which is now December, whenever this runs. We'll put it on social. Okay.

Wednesday at the Hollywood Heritage Museum, the Hollywood Barn. So we're having an Ernie Kovacs event there. And in January, we're going to be doing a panel at Sketch Fest in San Francisco with Kids in the Halls, Dave Foley, Dana Gould, Wayne Fetterman, and myself. We'd also like to thank our friend Kevin McDonald, who was going to be with us on this show, but had an untimely injury.

Yes. Broken elbow and something else. All these Kovacs fans. Can you do a broken elbow? We want to thank some people, too. This is the first night that we're recording with our new friends here at SiriusXM. Dan Spaventa. Did I say that right, Dan? Yeah.

Steve Varley. Right, Steve? Steve Varley. Jack Vaughn, Jim McClure, and how does Jason say his last name? Shabiro? Jason Shabiro. And also our new friends at Starburns, Jason Smith, Brian Baldinger, and Land Romo. It takes a village. Or a village has. And we want to thank

Gino Salamone, who called me and said you've got to get on this guy, Josh Mills. Let's hear it for Gino. Let's hear it a little bit for Gino.amone who called me and said you got to get on this guy Josh Mills. Let's hear it for Gino. Let's hear it a little bit for Gino. Gilbert doesn't like to say his name on the show. It's like Valdemort To our listeners if you're not a fan of

Ernie Kovacs educate yourself. Absolutely. Become one dig in. Thank you guys for preserving this terrific and valuable history oh thanks for having us on a total thrill yeah this has been great i'm gilbert godfrey this has been gilbert godfrey's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host frank santo padre and we've been talking about the legacy of ernie kofax and edie adams And we've been talking to Josh Mills and Ben Modell. And this is a show for everyone who's ever had their mother pick ninth most fuckable woman in the world.

Ben, take us out on anything you like to play. Oh, God. Follow that. I might be the only one. Thank you.