Kovacs in Television Land | Josh Mills, Susan King

[Mark Quigley:] Thank you for coming out tonight to celebrate the extraordinary genius of Ernie Kovacs. [audience applause] There's a lot of people to thank for a night like tonight, and I'll start with our esteemed guest, Josh Mills, who is son of Edie Adams and also keeper of the flame with Ediad Productions for everything Kovacs; the great Susan King, independent journalist and a longtime writer for the Los Angeles Times; gotta thank Paul Malcolm who does heroic work here at the Wilder all the time; Randy Yantek in our digital lab; and our friends and colleagues at the Library of Congress; and at Retro Video for making this evening possible. Extra special thanks to the late, great Edie Adams for her work, heroic work, ground, groundbreaking work to ensure that the legacy of Ernie Kovacs survived to be shared, studied and enjoyed as we're gonna do tonight. There's also a couple of other people that intersected with Edie during her time when she was doing this. One is the Archive's long time Television Archivist, Dan Einstein, who was our archivist for 40 years and helped Edie with some of the things she was doing. There's someone else here named Robert Haxby who was with CBS forever and helped Edie as well. And these are people that - it's part of the reason why we're able to do this tonight is because of them. For what we're screening tonight, for the most part, we're gonna be presenting Kovacs' work with minimal intervention, in a context of the entirety of his broadcasts as originally seen by TV audiences. The first two segments we will screen are a mash-up of two surviving kinescopes from 1951, including a bit not on home video due to music rights. These shows and the half-hour program from '56 that will follow, illuminate a freewheeling improv-, improvisational Kovacs, literally live, in real-time, reshaping the spatial and artistic confines of the 4x3 cathode, cathode frame, in ways that continue to influence the medium to this day. Following the Q&A, before the intermission, we will screen a ten-minute compendium of Kovacs odds-and-ends including rare not-on-home video excerpts and outtakes from his beloved, offbeat gameshow "Take a Good Look". Then after intermission - and be sure to come back after intermission - we will finish the evening with two complete 30-minute episodes of the acclaimed specials Ernie Kovacs made for ABC in the early 1960s, the last of which originally aired posthumously on his birthday, January 23, 1962, just 10 days after he was tragically killed in an auto accident at age 42. These ABC programs demonstrate the comet-like progression of Kovacs' pioneering transformation of television, within a very brief time span. In select ways, the taped specials are the opposite of the earlier kinescope programs we will see. The humor is finally distilled and timed. The bits are executed with tight precision, highlighted by Kovacs' brilliant and completely unorthodox mastery of then newly emerging videotape technology. It is evident in these final master works that Kovacs had not only redefined television, but had elevated it to a new surreal electronic canvas. So, please enjoy these tonight. And I'm gonna welcome for a short introduction, Josh Mills, also Edie Adam's son. [audience applause] [Josh Mills:] Well, thank you for coming out. You never know when you put these things together if anybody's gonna show up, so it's really nice that so many people showed up, so I really appreciate that. I want to thank Susan, right here, for being the moderator and always being so great when I would call her about other things and my mom would talk to her many times with interviews, so thank you. Thank to, thanks to the UCLA Film & Television Archive for finding some rare stuff that I've never even seen, so that should be a lot of fun. And I just hope you guys enjoy it. And... enjoy. [audience applause] [Susan King:] What, what a terrific crowd. I'm so glad so many people showed up. I have to tell you, I grew up in an Ernie household. That episode of "The Ernie Kovacs Show", in fact aired on my mother's 26th birthday. And undoubtedly, she watched it in our little one-bedroom apartment on South Mund Avenue in East Orange, New Jersey. And so whenever Ernie was on, she had me watching him, so I do remember his ABC specials. And I think "Kovacs on Music"? [Mills:] Yeah. Absolutely. [King:] And I remember trying to sing the ad for "Sail a Crooked Ship", [laughs] and going, "Ernie!" You know, but we didn't go to that one. And I remember when he died. And whenever Ernie was on, we watched it. And I'm sure my father was sitting on the sofa reading Motor Trend, was, and wondering why we were laughing. [laughs] You - Ernie's headstone reads, "Nothing in moderation." [Mills:] Yeah. [King laughs] [Mills:] That's how he lived his life. [King:] And can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, his... what he did on the, on screen, on TV, was sort of larger than life and nothing moderate, especially with the ABC specials. They were expensive and - but he lived - you said that your mother said that every day was sort of like, "life is a cabaret." [Mills:] Yeah, I mean, he - when he was about 18, he, he'd finished high school and he had actually gotten really sick and was in a hospital, a pauper's hospital in New Jersey. And he was there for about 11 months and he had pleurisy. And they didn't know if he was gonna live or die. And I think at that time he kind of realized, kind of like in a Bobby Darin kind of way, that he had to live life because he didn't know how long he had. And, eventually, you know he would do, you know, gags with - he could - you know, there was no television. There was just radio and newspapers, but he was bored. So he'd make up gags. So they'd have like X-rays come in and he would you know write on the X-ray, "cut here," [King laughs] and things like that. So, I think at a certain point, he just realized like, I just don't know how long I'm gonna have, and he obviously didn't have very long. But I think he lived his life that way that, you know, if I make the money, I'm gonna spend it. It's not, you know... [King:] Well, he did. I mean, he owed back taxes forever. And that's why he took a lot of things he really didn't want to do, because he needed the money. [Mills:] Yeah, we, we're having, you know, we're having this debate right now about are we gonna have a 70% tax on the rich? Well, Ernie and my mom were in a 90% tax bracket. I thought she was always lying to me when I was a kid 'cause I thought that was unbelievable, but it was absolutely true. But Ernie, you know, if you're earning $100, you're only taking home 10. Or he was gonna spend all 100, it didn't matter to him. He was, "That's my money. I earned it. I don't care what the government says." Plus he gambled. [King:] He played a lot of poker, like with Billy Wilder and Milton Berle and all those guys. [Mills:] Yeah, and the irony... [King:] Jack Lemmon [Mills:] Absolutely, and the irony of being in the Billy Wilder Theater for me, is that, you know, my mom got her part in "The Apartment" because Ernie was going to dinner with Billy and Audrey Wilder. And my mom went to dinner with them and Billy said, "I got a, I think I have a part for you in some, some movie. Mom, Mom said, "Yeah, sure, sure." He said, you know, "be ready on Monday." And sure enough, a car showed up and that's how she got her part in "The Apartment". [King:] Oh my God! [Mills:] And when I was a kid, we had a house in Malibu, and our next-door neighbor was Billy Wilder. And all I knew, was that, you know, before 10 o'clock, don't make a lot of noise. Billy doesn't like a lot of noise. And it's just very odd that we're [laughs] in the Billy Wilder Theater talking about him and my mom. [King:] And also you lived in the house that he bought out here, the 17-room house. [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] That's - I have a feeling it looked like "The Ernie Kovacs Show". [Mills:] Well it was actually, it's very funny that, you know, the suit of armor and all the cap pistols and I mean, I grew up in the house that's on Beaumont Drive, and it was a huge house. It was so big that when my mom and Ernie bought it, there was literally a bowling alley inside of it, when they bought it. And they changed that. [King:] What did they turn it into? [Mills:] It was just part of the house. If you, it just, you know, the kind of the living room kind of just went on for a very long time. But there was a part to the house - I mean, I kind of - it was very omnipresent, Ernie was not my dad. He died in '62, I was born in '68. But I was living in the house and so he was everywhere. And I kind of knew vaguely who he was when I was like five and six, and then we'd go into the, the famous den that he had and the den was very much like what you guys saw. I mean, there were suits of armor and there were dueling pistols and swords. And, and I think there was a polar bear. Not a live one, but a stuffed one. And there were - it just was very manly. It was a very, it was kind of dark. I'll admit it was pretty dark. But there was also a, a wine cellar that was sort of this weird medieval thing where you'd pull up this giant - first it was a rug. You'd move the rug, then you'd pull up this piece and then there was a wine cellar down below. But it wasn't just good enough that there was a wine cellar, Ernie thought that you should actually have it looked old, so he got the NBC prop guy to come out there and spray cobwebs, [laughter] so it looked like it had been there for 300 years. And that's, you know, that's what you do with a wine cellar, you know, just, you know, that's, that's Ernie. [King:] And didn't he - there was that one show that he hosted where he - it was silent movies? [Mills:] Yeah, "Silents Please". [King:] And it looked - I think I remember seeing something on PBS, and it looked like that's the room where he hosted it. [Mills:] Yeah, I mean, his den was sort of his inner sanctum. There was a sign outside where he would - it would say, "Not now." [King laughs] [Mills:] Meaning, they're playing poker. Don't come in. Even if somebody had sandwiches or food. It could be a 24-hour game. Don't come in. But yeah, that's where he did it. And you know, Ernie did need the money, I think at that point. And, he brought the cameras to him. He didn't want to go anywhere. So that's why they did that. [King:] Well you were saying too, that he did "Take a Good Look" because of the sketches - that he wanted to get enough sketches, so if he did another series, he would just run the sketches. [Mills:] Yeah, my... [King:] And he wouldn't have to show up. [Mills:] My mom maintained that, I mean Er-, "Take a Good Look" was like 50, 50 episodes, 49 episodes, something like that. And she maintained that he was banking enough clips, so that essentially, he would actually be able to have a special and not show up. So he was kind of, thought, "Well, if I'm getting paid, I might as well get paid twice." So that was, that was what her philosophy was. She thought that was what he was doing. [King:] And the show that really put him on the map was the silent show in 1957. [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] Can you talk a little bit 'cause he, he appeared after - it was live, it was in color and it was - they had, you know, Jerry Lewis was the big deal that night. NBC had given Jerry Lewis a special. [Mills:] Right. [King:] And you were saying that no comic wanted to follow Jerry Lewis, but your fath- Ernie, s- your father, yeah, your sort of, Ernie... Ernie said, "I'll do it." [Mills:] Yeah, I guess Martin and Lewis had broken up and NBC said, you know, "We need to have Jerry Lewis and we're gonna give him 90 minutes. He could do whatever he wants." And Jerry Lewis said "I only want to do 60 minutes, I don't want to do 90." And no comedian wanted to do the back half of the of the 90 minutes. And Ernie said, "I'll do it, but you can't - I'm gonna do what I want and you can't tell me what I can and can't do." And they said, "Fine." They didn't care. They just wanted to fill the 90 minutes up. So what happened was, it aired. Jerry Lewis didn't really go over that well. Ernie's went over incredibly well and very soon he was on the cover of LIFE magazine and that's sort of what made his career. [King:] And he - that's where he introduced Eugene. [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] Which is also one of the - the full Eugene was one of the ABC specials Isn't it one of the specials? The six episodes? [Mills:] I don't know if it's one of the ABC specials, but there are, there is a color one and there is a black-and-white one. They did do it twice. [King:] The color one was on the silent show but... [Mills:] Right. [King:] But Eugene itself was a full 30 minutes. [Mills:] Oh, yeah. [King:] I mean, he revised it. And I think he got, he and the co-director got the DGA posthumously for it. [Mills:] Yeah. He got a posthumous Emmy after, obviously he passed away, and it was for technical innovation and things like that. But it's a, it's a great show because it's, it's not without sound, it's just without speaking. [King:] Right. [Mills:] So there's, you know, great, great stuff in there that, you know, who-who takes a half hour and just, you know, doesn't talk? Ernie. [King:] Did he have - I know with the ABC shows that Consolidated, which was Dutch Masters, said, "We'll give you anything. You can do anything you want," and ABC agreed. But did he run into problems with the other networks? You know, when he would try to do, I mean, not, not thinking about the silent show, but other shows. I mean, did they, he have problems where they would say, "No, neh, neh, neh. We want the script. We want to know what's going on."? [Mills:] Yeah. There were - it's funny 'cause even the ones with Deke Heyward and some of the writers, I forget the other one, Ring- Rex Lardner, Ring Lardner's son, I believe. They were brought on at some point to kind of hone in Ernie and try to give some cohesion to what he was doing. He was always against that. And there's a very famous story where one of the network - one of the times he was at the networks, they're in a big boardroom in, in New York. It's the middle of a snowstorm. He comes in with a briefcase and a jacket and a hat, and they basically sit him down and say, "Ernie, you know, this is not working and you're not doing this well. And, and we gotta, we gotta get some writers and you've got to be more like Caesar or this or that and the other." And Ernie listened for about 20 minutes and then just said, "Excuse me for a minute," walked out, left the building, walked about 30 blocks back to his house, or apartment, with no coat in a snowstorm. And that was how he supposedly, in his head, conceived "Zoomar", which is the book that he wrote [King:] Oh right. [Mills:] about sponsors and the networks, and what they don't know, and what he knows better. So that was - he didn't like being told what to do. [King:] I remember I had interviewed Henry Bollinger, which, who was Ernie's publicist and your mom's publicist, till she died. [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] And he died, I think, a year or two ago. [Mills:] Recently. Yeah, very recently. [King:] He said that no one knew, especially with the ABC specials, no one knew what he was going to do. He kinda, if he had a script, he didn't show it to anybody. And when he would show up, he'd go, "you do this and we're gonna do this," and [Mills:] He - Ernie didn't understand below the line, above the line. He didn't understand that, you know, if he was spending money, it could have been ABC's money, but most of the time it was his own money. He just wanted to to get what he wanted. So he would work in like a 24-hour cycle. So a normal shooting day, eight hours, 10 hours, 12 hours, where Ernie liked to keep working, because he was an insomniac. So the crew loved him because they were earning double-time and triple-time and golden-time, and they were driving Cadillacs. And everybody else was driving, you know, not Cadillacs. And so that was another part of his debt that became an issue, was that, you know, his production company was putting these things together, and when he died, it wasn't just the IRS. ABC came to my mom and said, you know, "Here's a few hundred thousand dollars that you owe us as well." [King:] And she had to work her tush off to pay and she didn't accept any - people wanted to help her pay off the debts, and she wouldn't let anybody do it. [Mills:] Yeah, she had a pretty hard-core work ethic from her father, who went through the Depression and had a business with a guy who, I guess, left the business when everybody had no money. And so he paid everybody back, and my mom kind of figured out that like that's just what you do. And... Sinatra and Dean Martin they wanted to do a telethon and they wanted to earn, you know, my mom said, "No, I'm not gonna do it." But the story also, my mom told me was that, you know, Ernie dies, the IRS is walking up the driveway. It was a very long driveway. And basically said, "We'll take," you know, "that painting, and we're gonna take that desk, and we're gonna take these things in your clothes." And my mom called her lawyer. Came up. And basically she said, you know, "Tell them that I will pay them back. I don't know when, but I will pay them back." And it took her about ten years, but she paid everything back. Everything that she was owed in back taxes. She paid ABC. She paid everybody else. So, in a weird way, to her detriment in her own career, she just took jobs because she had to pay, you know, as much money as she could to the government. [King:] It's pretty - you know, and she did the commercials. [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] Cigars, cigarettes, Tiparillos. [Mills:] Yeah, those were - the Consolidated Cigar Company were very good to my mom and Ernie. And there was a guy named Jack Molelescu [?], who loved Ernie and loved my mom and, you know, I went to college because of [laughs] those Consolidate- Consolidated ads. [King:] And I wanted to ask you one more question before we go to the audience. [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] Just talking about his influence. I mean, when you look at all, everything he did, I don't think there would have been "Laugh-In" or "Laugh-In" as we see it and he was, he was great friends with George Schlatter and Jolene Brand, [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] who's gonna be in the special. She's in the specials. [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] You could look at Letterman and Conan O'Brien and, and Monty Python. And I think even, you know, like Andy Kaufman [Mills:] Oh, sure. [King:] and I even, I even think, you know, Johnny Carson. You know, like Art Fern. Art Fern kind of reeks of Ernie Kovacs in a way, I could kind of feel. [Mills:] Well the thing that always - I don't know if you guys see it as well, but he's the most relaxed person on television, I think I've ever seen. Like things go wrong, he doesn't care. The joke is almost the fact that there is no joke. I mean, it's almost surreal. [King:] Well he didn't like punchlines. [Mills:] No. And my mom said he could not tell a joke. He was not, [audience laughs] he was not a stand-up comedian in any way shape or form. He could not go onstage and tell a joke. He just had a way of thinking that was really strange and to the point, you know, that you were saying earlier about the crew. He didn't really have, you know, a script or he didn't have a lot of stuff for the ABC specials. He had ideas, but he would say to the crew like, "Okay, so here's the deal. I'm gonna get into, you know, a tub, a thing of water and I'm gonna smoke a cigar." And they would go, "Okay. How do we do that?" And he would say, "Figure it out." And so they were challenged in ways that they weren't thought of, you know, they didn't have ways to do this back then. And they figured out that, you know, if we put milk in his mouth and he smokes a cigar it's gonna look like he's smoking. So the crew loved him because not only were they getting paid really well, but they were being very creative too, and they didn't get to do that a lot. [King:] And, I know a lot of people don't - you know, he made 10 movies and they're showing "Our Man from Havana" tomorrow night here. [Mills:] One of the better ones. [King:] But the thing - but he was always good. I mean, he was very, he believed in all those characters and he was there full throttle. But if anybody gets the chance you need to watch the, I think it's about four minutes trailer for "Operation Mad Ball", which I'm sure he, he wrote and directed because, you know, he's saying it's based on Merriam Webster's dictionary. [laughter] But they had to cut out a certain Z, because it - no one - they couldn't fit it in. And [Mills:] Right. [King:] it is just... and he's leaning against the mantle and the mantle falls. I mean, it's just, it is, it is just hilarious. It is just, it has to be, you know, certainly not Richard Quine. [Mills:] No. No. [King:] You know. [Mills:] I think he, he came to Los Angeles from New York because movies paid better. And it wasn't always his high-water mark in terms of his creativity, but, you know, he met some amazing people out here. I mean, I even have a Rolodex that they had. And so you go through it, and it's like, oh, Mr. and Mrs. Jimmy Stewart and Mr. and Mrs., you know, William Holden, or whatever it is. They lived an incredible crazy life out here, too. And my mom was not in as many shows after they moved to Los Angeles. She did other things as well. [King:] Well, also your sister was just a baby too. [Mills:] Yes. [King:] You know. [Mills:] She, yeah, my sister was two when he passed away, well three, almost three, I think. And so, yeah, I mean I grew up with her in that house as well, along with some other wacky relatives. And it was, it was, it was strange because in the same house at one point, there was me, Mills, my mom, Adams, my sister Mia Kovacs, and then there were the Condolis. So there were five people with four different last names and I thought that was normal. [King laughs] [Mills:] So, I realized later that's not so normal. [King:] Well it was normal for you. [Mills:] Yeah, it was. [King:] You know. Any questions for Josh? Right there. You. [Woman in audience:] Hi Josh. [Mills:] Hi. Oh, there's a microphone coming, I guess. [Woman:] Hi Josh, I told you I had a Q, earlier tonight. [Mills:] Yes. [Woman:] Okay, so you and I have talked a lot about Kippie and Bette. [Mills:] Yeah. [Woman:] And my question has to do with that. So we know that Kippie has passed away, and Mark earlier, you know, mentioned you are the keeper of the flame. [Mills:] Yeah. [Woman:] So my question is, where's Bette? I mean, I don't... [Mills:] Good question. [Woman:] does she even live nearby? I mean, why isn't she here? And what is she doing? Is she planning on doing anything for this event or the centennial? [Mills:] I have, I have probably met Bette 10 times my whole life. I spoke to her once after my mom passed away and that was it, but there was never quite honestly a very tight bond, I will say. So the one thing that I think was difficult for the girls to understand was that they thought that Ernie - my mom was given all this stuff. My mom bought it all back. So she had to - she paid for it once when she bought it the first time and then when the IRS came had to buy it again. So I think there was a little animosity frankly that they felt like they deserved more. And so it's a little difficult. It's a family thing. I mean, you see the Zappa's, you see there's a lot of different family things that go on and in, you know, things like this all the time. So it's difficult, sometimes. [King:] There're those days I'm glad I'm an only child. [laughter] [Mills:] Yes. [King:] Anybody else? Gentleman over there. [Man in audience:] Other than his disease process, what do you think influenced him to be so wacky, so loose, so... unorthodox, really? [Mills:] Well, he had a very strange mother. Mary Kovacs, who I never met, was this Hungarian, whirlwind, and if you've ever seen - it's, it's okay - the "Between the Laughter" movie that Jeff Goldblum did playing Ernie, Cloris Leachman plays Mary Kovacs. But I'll give you an example. After Ernie died, Mary would be very histrionic about a lot of things and she would get very upset about a lot of things. And for a couple years after, everybody kind of had to placate her and say, you know, "It's okay. You know Mary, is just being Mary." Well one day she, she starts screaming, "The car has run over me! The car has run over me!" And everybody comes out, "Yeah, Mary, the car has run over you." "I've gotta get to the hospital, the car has run over me!" "Yes, Mary, we'll take you to the hospital." They take her to the hospital and sure enough they open up her shirt and there's a tire track across her chest. [laughter] And they - it did actually run her over but because she was so histrionic and strange and whatever no one believed her. Well, I think Ernie, you know, when Ernie was a, a kid, they had no money. His father was a policeman. But they didn't have any, very much money and then all of a sudden they had a lot of money. He became a bootlegger. So his mom bought him a pony. I mean they lived in Trenton. It's not like they're, you know, they're in a city. [King:] And didn't he go to that private school? [Mills:] He went to a private school. [King:] He skipped two grades. [Mills:] Yeah, he was like, if you look at pictures when he was, you know, six to 10, he looks like Little Lord Fauntleroy. I mean, he's dressed up in this, like ridiculous outfit. And it was because his mother. Well, Prohibition ends and they have no money again. So, it - he kind of lived a very eccentric life with them. Supposedly, I'm gonna try to get this right, Pop Kovacs said to my mom, about Mary, if - wait, how does it go? - [with accent] "if you, if you see, if you'll see her..." Wait, I'll never get it right. Something like, basically if you see her [with accent:] "smiling, you okay. If you see her grin, you run." [audience laughter] So everybody kind of knew that they were kind of wacky. And I think that's where he got it, was probably his mom. [King:] Anybody else? Gentleman right over there. [Man #2 in audience:] Hey, Josh. [Mills:] Hi, Skip. [Man #2:] Told you I'd be here. [Mills laughs] I just found out something this week and you would be the only one who knows. I got a list of every "Playhouse 90". And it has generally been supposed that "Strangers When We Meet" was Ernie's only dramatic on screen. [Mills:] Yeah. [Man #2:] But this "Playhouse 90" and I assume everything that's known has been digitized or whatever, has this turned up? [Mills:] Is this, was it, it wasn't "I Was a Bloodhound"? That wasn't the one? It was... [Man #2:] No, it's not that. I forget what the name was and the reason it sticks out is the music is by Robert Trasnick [?]. [Mills:] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was, was that a Reagan? Ronald Reagan? [King:] No, that was, that's, well GE Electric... [Mills:] He did a "GE Electric Theater", too. I'm confusing the two. [King:] That's what Ron- Reagan hosted. [Man #2:] No, this is a "Playhouse 90". [Mills:] Okay, he did do one, and I don't remember. I have not seen it. [Man #2:] Okay, it hasn't turned up then? [Mills:] No, it's not. It wouldn't be in our archive because - what happened was when, when - Ernie died in '62. And about 1963-64, someone who worked on Ernie's show said to my mom, called her up and said, "Hey, I think you better know about this. They're using Ernie's tapes and kinescopes," or mostly tapes actually then, for, they're, they're recording over them. They're using them for PSAs. They're putting weather reports... [Man #2:] Same thing happened to Monty Python. [Mills:] Exactly. [Man #2:] Terry Gilliam got a phone call, said, "We're throwing this out. Do you want them?" [Mills:] Right, right. And my mom, with no real recourse other than to just buy them, took insurance money that she got from Ernie's death and bought all of his stuff. And that's the only reason this stuff survives is that she actually went out in 1963, and she'd been storing them, paying for them since, from 1963 till she passed away in 2009. With, you know, up until the '70s, there was no, I mean even beta. There was no VHS. There's no way to, you know, so it's really because of her that this stuff survives. [King:] But there was all sorts of bootleg out there. [Mills:] There were. [King:] There were companies on video. Because I remember I wrote something and I got, Henry he was calling, going... [Mills:] Oh, yeah. [King:] You know, "we're trying to stop that." [Mills:] Yeah, there was a - one point, Rhino put something out. And there was a couple other ones. [King:] Video Yesteryear, I think was another one. [Mills:] Yes, exactly. You're on top of this one, on the bootlegs. But my mom was very serious about, you know, making sure the copyrights were hers and making sure that people didn't exploit it. And she held on very tightly to his whole archive. [King:] But he, you, you said that you saw it about 20 years ago the last thing he did, and in fact he finished it the day before he died, was that show, it was a TV pilot for CBS with Buster Keaton. [Mills:] Right. [King:] But that the, the family they wanted to air at CBS and Edie said, "No." The family said, "No." [Mills:] Well, I think it did air. [King:] Did it? [Mills:] I think, I think it did. I think there was a, probably a time period where it was supposed to air and they kind of postponed it a bit. But it was called... [King:] It was like "The Prospector" or the... "Woodsman" or... [Mills:] He plays like a carnival barker and Buster Keaton plays sort of like his Tonto in a way. He's silent, he doesn't say anything. And it's - I think Ernie wanted to do it because he got to work with Buster Keaton. I mean, obviously, you know, who wouldn't want to do that? But, it's, you know, it was, it was a con-, more, the most conventional thing he probably did, I would say. [King:] Well, when I, when you're mentioning Buster Keaton too, when you look at, especially when you look at the ABC show, so much of it is silent. [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] You know, or the silent show. And just, with the innovations that Buster Keaton did in, you know, pushing the envelope and pushing down the fourth wall. In a way, Ernie kind of feels like the TV ve-, you know, I mean - he smiles a, much more than Buster Keaton, but that kind of innovation in the use of, you know, silent comedy versus, you know, 'cause there isn't that much dialogue in, in the specials. [Mills:] No. And my mom said that, you know, Ernie was the kind of person - well first of all I don't think he was happy unless, you know, there were fifteen minutes before air and he didn't have anything and he had to write it down like that minute. He thought that was the way you should do everything, at the very last minute. It's going to be the best, it's the freshest, nobody, you know, knows what you're doing. But there's a funny story that I'll mention that, about Henry Bollinger, you were talking about. So Henry was this amazing publicist. He was just a fantastic guy. And he was working for a PR firm out here in like '58, one of his first jobs. And they said, "Go down to the studio. Ernie's doing this new show 'Take a Good Look'. We want to start working on that. You need to kind of actually go and, and see if you can get on the project." So he goes down and they're playing cards in Ernie's dressing room. And he's just standing around, not much going on. Doesn't get a chance to talk to Ernie. They say, "Go back, go back. You gotta go back the next day." He's there for three, like two weeks. Not three weeks, two weeks. And he's waiting around. No one's talked to him. They keep telling him to go back. And finally, one day, someone calls and says, "Ernie, you're, you're wanted on the set." So Henry is standing, and he says, "Here, take my cards, play my hand." So Ernie does his, [laughs] does his routine, whatever he has to do on stage, comes back, and Henry actually won some money for him. And Ernie goes, "How'd I do?" He goes, "Well, I think we did pretty good, actually." He goes, "You're the publicist that I've been hearing about?" He goes, "Yeah." He goes, "You're hired." [audience laughter] [King:] That's so cool! [Mills:] So that's how they started as, their relationship. [King:] That's so, so wonderful. [Mills:] Yeah, yeah. [King:] Anybody else, guys? No one's gonna bite. Down here. [Woman #2 in audience, inaudible] [Woman #2:] ...history of what happened that day? [Mills:] Well, only that, you know, what everybody else really knows is that, you know, he was in a single car accident. [King:] Corvair. [Mills:] Yeah. My sister passed away in a single car accident the exact same way, 20 years after that. So it was, you know, in January, just like we had these terrible rains. It was raining, you know, just like that in 1962. You know, everybody talks about terrible L.A. drivers, but when it doesn't rain, there's a lot of oil and stuff on the road. And I think that that had something to do with it. Who knows if there was really a cigar that he was trying to light. That could have been a Weegee-type... [King:] That's what, that's what I had heard. Also it was 1:35 in the morning. [Mills:] Well that - he had also prior to that, I know he'd been working. First of all, he was an insomniac. I mean he didn't believe - he really did like to, you know, take a, take a steam, and, you know, kind of mellow out that way. But he didn't really sleep all that much. So I think combined with the fact that he was working so much and wasn't sleeping and went to this, you know, party. It was actually, I believe it was, [King:] Milton Berle's. [Mills:] it was Milton Berle's son's adoption party at the Wilders' house. And I think he just - it was late at night and... [King:] And Edie - and your mom had taken a separate car. [Mills:] Yeah, my mom took a - my mom drove the Corvair to the party and Ernie drove like the Rolls or something like that, or a station wagon. I forget what it was but a heavier car, and Ernie said, "No. It's raining. You take the heavier car. I'll take the Corvair." And that's pretty much why he died. So, I mean, I don't, you know, I don't know if... I've actually never seen the photo that everybody talks about of him hanging out of the car. I've never seen it. [King:] It's, it's really, it's really horrific. And that was in the paper. I mean, oh my God. [Mills:] Yeah, and it seemed - I just get the impression that that was sort of a posed photo that someone had gotten there before the police and actually had... That's my impression. I don't know. [Mills:] So, yeah. [King:] Oh my God. I hope they weren't with the Times. [laughter] I think it was the New York Daily News, actually. [King:] It was awful. I saw, you know, and I was, I've been very Ernie'd the past month. [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] And so [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] in all my Ernie, Ernie readings and reading up again on him. You know, there it was. It was like, "I don't need to..." [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] You know, but just that they would do that and they did do that back then. [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] Just gruesome. I remember, I mean, my mom telling me it was a very, I mean, it's all, you know, it's front-page stories on newspapers across the country. You know, it was a really, you know, someone here actually, I don't know who it was said it affected me more than Kennedy. I was like, "Wow." I mean, that's quite a, you know, legacy. [King:] Well as I said, I was, you know, having breakfast at the age of seven in Miami and hearing it on the radio. [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] Going "Ernie!" You know, "Ernie." You know, it's, it was, it was very, even at seven, it was very, I was very upset about it, you know? [Mills:] Yeah. [King:] Anybody else? Okay the time - okay we have to stop. But please stay and watch the outtakes which none of us have seen. [Mills:] I've never seen these, you know, enjoy. [King:] And then there's gonna be an intermission. And then you get to see the two two of the specials including the, the last one. And the last one does have a special surprise appearance at the very end by a very - one of his most famous creations. [Mills:] Yeah. [Mills:] We'll see. [King:] And Jack Lemmon told me that he was often... [Mills:] Oh, yeah, what was the story? You should just tell this really quickly. What was the story that Jack Lemmon told you about Ernie? [King:] Well, just that he was one of the Nairobi Trio. [Mills:] Right. [King:] And, and they did three movies together, but he also - but what he, Jack Lemmon had told me in 1990 - now this is, you know, I just remember 'cause I went, "Oh!" You know, I was talking to Jack Lemmon, so I remember, you know. But he said that Billy Wilder saw "Operation Mad Ball" and thought of him for "Something Like It Hot". He also told me that William Powell wore women's silk underwear, [laughter] during "Mister Roberts". I didn't want to go into any detail on that one. [Mills:] You should have. You should have. [King:] I should have, but [laughs] but somehow I, I didn't want to see Nick Charles walking around and thinking of him, you know, in, you know, women's silk. [Mills:] What about Asta? I don't even know. [King:] I think Asta, just kept, you know, natural. [Mills:] Okay, good. All right. [King:] So any guys, watch - let's enjoy this and, and enjoy the, the two specials and thanks so much again for coming out and [Mills:] Yes, thank you. let's give a hand to Ernie 'cause that's why we're here tonight. [audience applause]