The lasting influence of television innovators Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams will be celebrated at Museum of the Moving Image
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, April 27, $15, 7:00
Series runs through May 27
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
Last April, the Paley Center paid tribute to Ernie Kovacs, one of television’s earliest pioneers, a comedic innovator who created such all-time-great characters as Percy Dovetonsils, Wolfgang Von Sauerbraten, Matzoh Hepplewhite, Pierre Ragout, and Eugene. The cigar-chomping Kovacs’s sketch comedy, which often included his wife, Edie Adams, was way ahead of its time, parodying Madison Ave., classical music, and television itself, all done with a sly wink and a nod. Tragically, the Trenton-born Kovacs died in a car accident in Los Angeles in 1962, just short of his forty-third birthday. The Museum of the Moving Image is honoring Kovacs and Adams, who went on to host her own well-regarded variety shows following her husband’s death, with the first-ever dual retrospective of the remarkable team on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Kovacs’s television debut. Curated by Ben Model, the archivist for the Kovacs and Adams estates who is best known in New York for his live piano accompaniment to screenings of silent films, the series begins April 27 with a panel discussion that examines the continuing influence that Kovacs and Adams have had on the medium, with Broadway legend Harold Prince, comedy writer Alan Zweibel, television critic David Bianculli, journalist Jeff Greenfield, and Model, moderated by comedian Robert Klein. The tribute continues at the museum through May 27 with archival material playing in the TV Lounge, “Kovacs for Kids” presentations on May 19-20, and an artwork by Jim Isermann added to the permanent exhibition “Behind the Screen.”