Two of the Nairobi Trio

by Richard Oxman

“1950- Ernie Kovacs makes a quantum leap from radio to television. During the next 12 years, he will poke, prod and rewrite the rules, literally knocking on America’s TV screens.” — excerpt from online’s Great Moments In Multimedia History, serendipitously noticed by the author…as many Kovacs-related anniversaries took place in early May.

“Life is a Limbo Dance, but…it’s a question of where you get down…not how low you can get.” — written on the wall adjacent to Tom Waits’ first appearance in Jarmusch’s Down By Law.

Dedicated to William & Mary, the sweet parents of one of my readers…. May they rest in peace. With memories of Ernie…passed on.

In a recent article Play Ball!?, I went through a number of people, etc. influenced/affected by Ernie Kovacs. It brought back a lot of indelible memories respecting my Heffalump Hungarian.

As incredible as the (credit) list is which I delineated in my “Play Ball!?” piece, it doesn’t hurt to add that Ernie’s “Silent Show” was the only TV program presented by the United States at the Brussels World Fair of 1958. [1] Anyone with the foggiest concerning classic 50s fare on the air knows what an absolute shining honor he achieved with that lone selection. Nor does it hurt to add that in 1989 –in celebration of TV’s 50th anniversary– Ernie was included in a prestigious list of the medium’s Top 25 Personalities of All Time. It was the only time I ever agreed with People Magazine. He had been inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame in ‘87. Commercial concerns aside, I would have had him in the Top Five. [2] He was a great addition to all that’s pulsating about Life.

I had the very good fortune of knowing a number of people who were super close to the maniacal Magyar. Marc Connelly, the Algonquin roundtable playwright (who was a loyal Kovacs family friend), camerman Bob Kemp, and Lou Pack, the New York hack who served as his personal driver for years. [3]

But the reams of info available to me…I must put aside because of time pressures. And force myself to focus on a single event related long ago. It enables me to condense a political point expeditiously, and it’s something that I trust will linger for a long time.

When Ernie did TV specials, his working modus operandi was as much on the edge as his creative process…routinely. F’r'n’stance, in one case ABC would have liked him to schedule shoots for two consecutive Sundays, but Ernie insisted upon fitting everything into 48 consecutive hours! This kind of defiant behavior was NOT atypical.

As Diana Rico explains these kind of scenarios, “There were many reasons the crew never complained. For one thing, they were all making golden overtime, and many of them suspected that Kovacs kept the shoots going in part so that they would get paid well. For another thing, Ernie made these sessions into gigantic work parties. When everybody was ready to collapse, he would have a full feast catered in from one of Hollywood’s finest restaurants….”

She cites (regular ABC camerman for Ernie) Norm Silvers’ observation: “There were probably forty or fifty of us on the crew, but there were always two or three hundred people eating — gardeners, guys from the carpentry shop, people from other stages and all over.”

I cite a long recollection about the marathon sessions from camerman Kemp…who I knew:

“ABC management would come in and say, ‘No no no, they’re going home, the overtime’s killing us.’ And Ernie would say, ‘No. They’re going to shoot.’ We wouldn’t shoot right then, but we still got paid; he wanted us to get paid.” Apparently, if they kicked Ernie and his cadres off the set…he moved the whole kit and kaboodle into his dressing room environs.

Kemp says, “If management put up a barrier, he’d tear it down.” People like Jack Lemmon would hit the card table with Ernie…while the blue collars would sit around and wait…on the clock. Ernie nurtured his own creative genius while simultaneously providing for his invaluable crew plus.

Well, who knew? Who was the wiser? What you could get away with was part and parcel of his whole life’s schtick. Which brings me to the point I want to make.

Not too long ago when I was living in Santa Cruz, California –the supposed Capital of Progressive America (if you don’t count Berkeley)– I reluctantly joined an anti-Patriot Act set of acteurs. At one official meeting, we were discussing how awful it was that librarians were now compelled to do thus and so vis-a-vis FBI demands.

I guess it was because we were having our tete-a-tete at the local library’s main community room that I got inspired to offer up an option…out. I’ll never forget the puzzled looks on all the middle-of-the-road faces once I had delineated my plan. Faces furrowed by failure.

My idea was to simply recommend that librarians –who were not allowed to contact patrons…if records were handed over as per FBI demands– place the name and phone number of a given (violated) patron on the upper-right-hand corner of a colleague’s desk, thereby setting it up for someone else to inform the patron of governmental shenanigans involving their records.

An anonymous call of some kind, then, could be made to the local citizen…easily. Without the librarian who was officially restricted by the P-ACT having anything to do with illegal activity. At least not by the letter of the law. One would have a shot at passing a lie detector test under such circumstances, oui? Si.

Oh, Ernie, you’ve been such an inspiration. Hold me tight and snuggle up, you Cuban cigar smoking smuggler. [4]

And make those monkeys pay while we play ensemble. Still. Life on the sill.

Mechanical Monkey Toy Pawnotes:

[1] The Nairobi Trio, which was one of the show’s acts, should not be missed, if you ever get a chance to see their performance. The trio of “mechanical toy monkeys” made their first appearance on The Ernie Kovacs Show (April 21, 1954). The sublime timing and simplicity of the act appealed to people ‘cross the board. They always mimed to “Solfeggio” when I saw them…and, as a pre-teen, I found myself hysterical on the floor more than once, my (very different) dad bowled over right next to me. Ernie almost always played the conductor, a victimized ape of sorts; there was also an anthropoid figure at an upright piano, and another at a xylophone. Diana Rico, in her Kovacsland, notes: “At a precise moment in a recurring musical phrase, the xylophonist-ape turns jerkily to the conductor-ape and bashes him on the head with his xylophone hammer.” Then she quotes Frederic Morton of Holiday: “The manner, nuance, and mood of the clout may vary with each performance, but it always dramatizes the unfathomability of fate and the treacherousness of life, and it always has the audience in stitches over seeing someone else betrayed.” It was a kind of “nihilistic operetta,” to borrow from Diana. But as a youngster it simply reached me like nothing else, I think, because of the wildness of the fundamental image. I mean, I was surrounded by “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?” and Doris Day’s puffy smile.

[2] January 19, 1957 Jerry Lewis and Ernie offered up back-to-back TV specials, to which Jack O’Brian, in the New York Journal-American, shouted (in the title of his review): “Lewis, No; Kovacs, Yes.” This was the sentiment ‘cross the country at the time, but…future ratings and rewards were shelled out on the basis of everything but artistry. Critical acceptance and popular embrace of those who truly had something to offer in Amerika…used standards that became more and more despicable with the passage of time. See my opening quote above.

[3] The latter had a big influence on me during my days at Dover Garage in NYC, where I did my duty in the yellow (road) submarine. If you ever saw the regular opening to the TV series Taxi, you’ll know the facade of my old garage.

[4] Diana Rico –to whom I am heavily indebted in the writing of this piece– put out a work titled Kovacsland in 1990. The Harcourt Brace Jovanovich publication does a great job of touching upon Ernie’s escapades vis-a-vis Castro’s overthrow of Batista…while filming Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana. And much more. There’s a very interesting hit on a response he had to noticing that a colleague was carrying works by Brecht. Although Kovacs was –simultaneously– a victim of the IRS and his own financial fetishes, he managed to send out quite a number of messages that any leftist would be happy to be associated with; like what came from his Rotten Louie skit…wherein the guy goes to jail ’cause someone literally suffocates from the mounds of too much money he’s generated. The details therein about Ernie’s time with his early New Jersey Trentonian column are priceless.