Kovacs somewhat skeptically regards his partner in crime and comedy--the television camera
...was born in the bowels of Trenton, New Jersey on this day in 1919.
Writer, actor, lover of UPA cartoons, doodler and prodigious loser at cards, his motto was "nothing in moderation". Look up what little there is on Youtube(I can't get the embedding to work today, for some reason).
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Gene Deitch relates a charming tale of meeting Kovacs during his tenure running the New York UPA studio in his online autobiography. Seems Ernie saw the UPA sign in their office window and waved up to the guys from the street. They waved back and he came up to kibbutz with them. God, that was a more innocent era.
That's a great story--thanks for tipping me to it.
The one I've heard is that Kovacs was at a swanky(not to say pretentious)party at the home of a CEO who was going to run a film in his private screening room for the assembled Hollywood hotshots. After a few cocktails Kovacs asked the host in all seriousness if he intended to show "any UPA cartoons"; when the answer was no, Ernie deadpanned, "Well, I'm afraid I'll have to leave, then." And left!
The best of UPA's output was right up Kovacs' alley, and I can well believe he'd have been happy to hang with those artists.
Wonderful stuff! What a command of the medium even back then.
Ernie Kovacs was my hero. His show was a huge influence on me. I wept the night he was killed in that awful traffic accident.
He was one of a kind.
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