Edie Adams Passes

Tony-winning actress, TV star Edie Adams dies

By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer – Thu Oct 16, 1:53 pm ET
Consolidated and rewritten by William D. French, Jr.

LOS ANGELES – Actress and singer Edie Adams who played the television foil to her husband, comedian Ernie Kovacs, has died. She was 81.

A graduate of Juilliard School of Music, Adams went on to gain fame for her sketches with Kovacs and her pivotal roles in two top Broadway musicals.

She was born Elizabeth Edith Enke in 1927 in Kingston, Pa., and grew up in Tenafly, N.J. She first attracted notice on the TV show "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts." Kovacs was then performing his innovative comedy show on a Philadelphia TV station, and his director saw her and invited her to audition.

When she auditioned for the Kovacs show, she knew a lot about opera but only three pop songs, she recalled.

"I sang them all during the audition, and if they had asked to hear another, I never would have made it," she said.

They eloped to Mexico City in 1954.

After moving to New York both Kovacs and Adams garnered Emmy nominations in 1957 for best performances in a comedy series.

Adams also starred in live television productions, including the legendary 1957 production of Rogers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella", billed as Edith Adams.

Both Adams and Kovacs also appeared in the final episode of the hour long version of "I Love Lucy", originally titled "The Lucille Ball - Desi Arnaz Show".

In 1957, Adams won a Tony for best featured (supporting) actress in a musical for her role as Daisy Mae in "Li'l Abner," based on Al Capp's satirical comic strip.

She and Kovacs moved to Hollywood in the late 1950s, and both became active in films.

In Billy Wilder's classic "The Apartment," the 1960 Oscar winner for best picture.

Among her other movies were "Lover Come Back," "Call Me Bwana" (with Bob Hope), the all-star comedy "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (as Sid Caesar's wife), "Under the Yum Yum Tree," "The Best Man" and "The Honey Pot."

In early 1962, Kovacs left a star-filled baby shower for Mrs. Milton Berle and crashed his car into a light pole, dying instantly.

Over a career that spanned some six decades, Adams had a short-lived TV show in 1963 that earned her two Emmy nominations.

In the 1980s and 1990s, she made appearances on such TV shows as "Murder, She Wrote" and "Designing Women." She also played Tommy Chong's mother, Mrs. Tempest Stoner, in the first Cheech and Chong movie, "Up in Smoke," in 1978.

Over the years, she strove to keep Kovacs' comedic legacy alive by buying rights to his TV shows and repackaging them for television and videocassettes.