Ernie Kovacs returns to your TV in a big, BIG way in April 2011.  Shout Factory will release a DVD box set of Ernie Kovacs shows now available for pre-order.  The six-disc set (seven if you order it from Shout Factory's website) was curated by Ben Model, and includes more than 13 hours of Kovacs shows, sketches and rarities spanning his entire career from 1951 to 1962.  Highlights include: the original 1957 "Eugene" show in color, shows from the early years on WPTZ, "The Mysterious Knockwurst", 8mm home movies shot on the set of "Three to get Ready", "It Happened to Ernie" (a short promotional film Kovacs made to promote "It Happened to Jane") and a slew of Ernie's Dutch Masters commercials and the ones Edie Adams made for Muriel Cigars (with Edie Adams).

The reviews are coming in!!

• Eric Candiani on KTLA's blog sez: "Probably the single most important television release we'll get this year, if not this decade. "The Ernie Kovacs Collection" is a truly must see for anyone interested in the history of television." Read the whole blog post here.
• Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune posted a great write-up in his column here.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled website...

---

Ernie Kovacs was undeniably one of the great pioneers of television comedy. Kovacs made the medium of TV an integral part of his humor, and his wit and talent continues to inspire even today.  The 10+ years he was on television (March 1951 to January 1962) left an indelible mark on the industry and on everyone who watched and remembered his shows.  Thanks to the dedication and untiring efforts of Edie Adams, his widow, a great deal of his television work survives in original 16mm kinescopes and 2" video masters.

I launched this Ernie Kovacs website in October 1996, back in the days of externai dial-up modems (remember that "EEEE-ooo-ccchhhh!!!"?) and free AOL trial CD-ROMs, after teaching myself HTML during lulls at temp jobs. Soon after, I received an e-mail from Josh Mills, Edie's son, who had found the site and told me he liked it a lot...and had e-mailed his mom about it.  A few days later I got an e-mail from Edie, and thus began a long acquaintance and friendship over both e-mail and telephone that lasted all the way until her untimely passing in 2008.

Over the last three years I have been studying and researching Kovacs' television work, and screening rare programming and going through various documentation on the shows.  In the process I have even helped identify some unidentified shows in the collections of Edie Adams and at the Paley Center for Media.  I've developed a deeper understanding of the Kovacs' oeuvre (if I may use that word on television) and the timeline of his TV career.  The right margins of these pages will have little bits of trivia from my various findings.

The last few years has seen a rise, if not in the number of fans, then certainly in our connecting online over Facebook,  through Kovacs clips posted on YouTube, and over the Ernie Kovacs Blog, which I share with fellow Kovacs fan Al Quagliata (who, thankfully, launched his own Kovacs site some years ago after I got too busy to keep this one updated).

Ben Model
New York, NY
February 4, 2010