The above is a clip from the last episode of the "Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour" that aired in April 1960. It features Edie Adams, who died yesterday at the age of eighty-two.
Those of my ancient generation most likely remember Edie Adams as the voice of the Muriel Cigar commercials of the 1960s and 1970s (Great voice, awful cigars. I couldn't find a YouTube of her signature line "Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?")
Old-TV buffs remember her as the partner and widow of Ernie Kovacs, the brilliant TV comedian, and a great performer and comedienne in her own right.
Golden-age Broadway fans remember her as Eileen in the original cast of Wonderful Town and as Daisy Mae in the Li'l Abner musical.
All well and good, but how does her passing merit a mention on this blog?
Edie was a member of the Costume Designers Guild, Local 892 IATSE, having designed her own costumes for much of her career. When several IA locals (including ours) founded the Hollywood Hands On computer lab in 1991, she was one of our first and most active volunteers. She became a regular at the Guild headquarters where HHO was housed on the second floor.
She helped kick off a tradition of cooperation and participation in computer skills training among the IA locals that persists to this day. And she was a wonderful and fun person to have around.
Posts
4 comments:
Here I've loved Kovacs and Edie in her own right since I was 14(in about 1995 I began a website about all things Kovacs, in fact-since defunct)--and yet all this time I never knew she was occasionally hanging out at my 839 building! A small world indeed.
She certainly had an amazing coloratura-and led an amazing life.
I was a huge fan of Ernie Kovacs, and I still remember that terrible rainy Friday evening when he was killed in his Chevy Corvair.
I sure wish he had stayed at the party with Edie that night. In any case, she was a truly amazing woman.
Don't forget her incredible turn as J.J. Sheldrake's personal assistant in Billy Wilder/I.A.L. Diamond's "The Apartment." Small, but pivatol role.
Sigh.
Not only did I overlook her role in The Apartment, but also she was the Fairy Godmother in the 1956 TV production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella.
Post a Comment