Projectionist / archivist Eric Grayson was a personal friend of Edie and has posted his own obituary:
Broadway star Edie Adams, widow of comedian Ernie Kovacs, ex-wife of photographer Marty Mills, and ex-wife of musician Pete Candoli, has died.
Edie is something of a hero of mine. She was quite eccentric, to say the least, and could be very frustrating at times. Endlessly energetic and highly charged, she seemed to gain energy as the hours creeped later after midnight.
Being in the shadow of people like Candoli and Kovacs, Edie doesn't always get her own respect. She was a tremendously talented singer and actress, a graduate of Juilliard, and was nominated for three Emmys for her TV work. She should have been nominated for an Oscar for her great performance in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960). Her TV series, Here's Edie, is a landmark show filled with the very top musical talent, from Count Basie to André Previn. Her TV commercials for Muriel Cigars are unforgettable (particularly to teenaged boys of the era.)
But to my mind, I will always love her best for her preservation work. Her first husband, Ernie Kovacs, was a groundbreaking TV comedian. Most modern TV comedy from David Letterman to Saturday Night Live owes him a debt of gratitude. After Ernie died in a car accident in 1962, Edie found that Ernie's work was being destroyed lock, stock, and barrel by the networks. Already almost hopelessly drowned in debt, she took out more loans and bought everything of Ernie's she could get her hands on. She worked for the next ten years to pay off those debts.
It is because of Edie that we have any record of Ernie's work, and her dogged insistence on re-gathering all the material from his career (and her own, incidentally.) I met her in the late 90s when she was working on the A&E Biography special for Ernie. She'd gotten wind that I had some Kovacs footage she hadn't seen. I had to buy a special answering machine around that time because Edie was incapable of leaving a short message.
I visited her in 1999 and witnessed her house, a wonderland of memorabilia. Never far from her dogs, she had so much delicate stuff that it became necessary to keep her canine pals out of part of the house, which they resented. She had a video room and all manner of stuff. In the late 90s, she still had a beautiful green Jaguar, which she drove at high speed down the mountainside where she lived. I sat in horror as she drove me to LAX, thinking "Oh, no, I'm going to barf on Edie Adams' beautiful mahogany dashboard." Thankfully, I didn't, but I boarded my flight with a head start on being air sick!
In 2005, she and I were both invited to an Ernie Kovacs retrospective in Kansas, and she brought some rare stuff from her collection. A small cadre of Kovacs fans were invited back to her "bed and breakfast" where she showed the tapes in the common area. I can't recall a more frustrating evening! Every show was something I hadn't seen and it fascinated me, and Edie talked over the soundtrack of each one. The result was that I couldn't really hear the shows and I couldn't really hear her important comments about the shows, so I effectively missed both. I felt like Tantalus in Dante's Inferno. I didn't want her to stop, but I had to drive back from Kansas the next day. At 3am, with no sign of her losing any energy at all, we finally had to break up for some sleep.
Edie never had an easy life. Ernie died in a car accident in 1962, and she had custody problems with his two daughters by previous marriage. Her daughter Mia died in another car accident in 1982. She would never speak about her two marriages afterward. I got the feeling that Ernie was really the love of her life and she was somehow disappointed that she never found that kind of relationship again.
Among celebrity film historians and preservationists, Edie is second to none. Generous, kind, witty. I had asked for an acknowledgment in the A&E Biography show but she got me a huge credit at the end, even though they used more footage from her collection than mine. I'm going to miss her a lot... I recently found a piece of outtake footage from Our Man in Havana with Ernie, and I really wanted to talk to her about it. Just at the moment I got the call telling me of her death, I was unpacking a trailer for one of Ernie's movies.
Edie's surviving son, Josh Mills, is doing his best with a bad situation. The poor guy has now lost his dad (Marty Mills), his mom, and his stepdad (Candoli) in the last 18 months. I've corresponded with him. Nice guy, very classy.
Thanks for all you did, Edie. In the words of Ernie, "It's been real."
> Projectionist / archivist Eric Grayson was a personal friend of Edie > and has posted his own obituary:
> Broadway star Edie Adams, widow of comedian Ernie Kovacs, ex-wife of > photographer Marty Mills, and ex-wife of musician Pete Candoli, has > died.
> Edie is something of a hero of mine. She was quite eccentric, to > say > the least, and could be very frustrating at times. Endlessly > energetic and highly charged, she seemed to gain energy as the hours > creeped later after midnight.
> Being in the shadow of people like Candoli and Kovacs, Edie doesn't > always get her own respect. She was a tremendously talented singer > and actress, a graduate of Juilliard, and was nominated for three > Emmys for her TV work. She should have been nominated for an Oscar > for her great performance in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960). > Her TV series, Here's Edie, is a landmark show filled with the very > top musical talent, from Count Basie to André Previn. Her TV > commercials for Muriel Cigars are unforgettable (particularly to > teenaged boys of the era.)
> But to my mind, I will always love her best for her preservation > work. Her first husband, Ernie Kovacs, was a groundbreaking TV > comedian. Most modern TV comedy from David Letterman to Saturday > Night Live owes him a debt of gratitude. After Ernie died in a car > accident in 1962, Edie found that Ernie's work was being destroyed > lock, stock, and barrel by the networks. Already almost hopelessly > drowned in debt, she took out more loans and bought everything of > Ernie's she could get her hands on. She worked for the next ten > years to pay off those debts.
> It is because of Edie that we have any record of Ernie's work, and > her dogged insistence on re-gathering all the material from his > career (and her own, incidentally.) I met her in the late 90s when > she was working on the A&E Biography special for Ernie. She'd > gotten > wind that I had some Kovacs footage she hadn't seen. I had to buy a > special answering machine around that time because Edie was > incapable > of leaving a short message.
> I visited her in 1999 and witnessed her house, a wonderland of > memorabilia. Never far from her dogs, she had so much delicate > stuff > that it became necessary to keep her canine pals out of part of the > house, which they resented. She had a video room and all manner of > stuff. In the late 90s, she still had a beautiful green Jaguar, > which she drove at high speed down the mountainside where she > lived. > I sat in horror as she drove me to LAX, thinking "Oh, no, I'm going > to barf on Edie Adams' beautiful mahogany dashboard." Thankfully, I > didn't, but I boarded my flight with a head start on being air sick!
> In 2005, she and I were both invited to an Ernie Kovacs > retrospective > in Kansas, and she brought some rare stuff from her collection. A > small cadre of Kovacs fans were invited back to her "bed and > breakfast" where she showed the tapes in the common area. I can't > recall a more frustrating evening! Every show was something I > hadn't > seen and it fascinated me, and Edie talked over the soundtrack of > each one. The result was that I couldn't really hear the shows and > I > couldn't really hear her important comments about the shows, so I > effectively missed both. I felt like Tantalus in Dante's Inferno. > I > didn't want her to stop, but I had to drive back from Kansas the > next > day. At 3am, with no sign of her losing any energy at all, we > finally had to break up for some sleep.
> Edie never had an easy life. Ernie died in a car accident in 1962, > and she had custody problems with his two daughters by previous > marriage. Her daughter Mia died in another car accident in 1982. > She > would never speak about her two marriages afterward. I got the > feeling that Ernie was really the love of her life and she was > somehow disappointed that she never found that kind of relationship > again.
> Among celebrity film historians and preservationists, Edie is second > to none. Generous, kind, witty. I had asked for an acknowledgment > in the A&E Biography show but she got me a huge credit at the end, > even though they used more footage from her collection than mine. > I'm going to miss her a lot... I recently found a piece of outtake > footage from Our Man in Havana with Ernie, and I really wanted to > talk to her about it. Just at the moment I got the call telling me > of her death, I was unpacking a trailer for one of Ernie's movies.
> Edie's surviving son, Josh Mills, is doing his best with a bad > situation. The poor guy has now lost his dad (Marty Mills), his > mom, > and his stepdad (Candoli) in the last 18 months. I've corresponded > with him. Nice guy, very classy.
> Thanks for all you did, Edie. In the words of Ernie, "It's been > real."
> Eric
Thanks for posting that. It sounds like she was very active right thru her later years.
I'd see Edie Adams in TV from time to time in the '60s and '70s - commercials, talk shows and the like. I didn't have a great sense of who she was though until a channel started playing reruns of The Ernie Kovacs show (and that was about 90% of my introduction to Kovacs, too, who died when I was five). She was so perfect on that show; I wish it was being rerun more often so people could see her when she was in her prime.
