Singer-Actress Edie Adams Dies
Muriel Cigar Ads, Emmy Noms
Edie Adams, an actress, comedian and singer whose career spanned nightclubs, stage, film, television and a series of dynamic commercials for Muriel cigars, died October 15 in the West Hills section of Los Angeles. She was 81. The cause of death was pneumonia and cancer.
She was born Edith Elizabeth Enke on April 16, 1927, in Kingston, Pennsylvania, and spent her childhood partly in Grove City, Pennsylvania, and Tenafly, New Jersey.
Adams graduated from New York City’s renowned Juilliard school, where she trained as a singer. She launched her career when she won the Miss U.S. Television beauty pageant in 1950 after singing a coloratura version of “Love Is Where You Find It” in the talent competition. Her prize was an appearance in Minneapolis onstage with Milton Berle. That opportunity led to an appearance on Berle’s television show, which in turn led to her being featured on television with comedian Ernie Kovacs, who eventually became her husband.
In 1953 she made her Broadway debut in he role of Rosalind Russell’s sister in the Leonard Bernstein musical Wonderful Town.
Her second Broadway came three years later when she was cast as Daisy Mae in the musical version of the comic strip Li’l Abner, for which she won a Tony award.
In the 1960s Adams scored supporting roles in several movies, including The Apartment, Lover Come Back, Under the Yum Yum Tree and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
In 1962 she appeared on the ABC television network with Duke Ellington. The following year she launched a variety show, Here’s Edie, in which she performed with Count Basie and Sammy Davis, Jr. Although the show received four Emmy nominations, it lasted only two years.
In the 1970s and ’80s, Adams continued to work regularly in television, appearing frequently as a guest star such series as Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote and Designing Women. Her most recent credit was a 2004 PBS production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, in which she portrayed the Fairy Godmother.
Although she was prolific in many mediums, she is best known for the 19 years of commercials she did for Muriel cigars. During the years that the spots aired, the brand’s sales increased more than tenfold. Typically outfitted in tall heels and tight-fitting dresses, Adams danced with giant cigars, caressed them and touted their virtues, capped by the provocative catch phrase “Pick one up and smoke it some time,” a line adapted from Mae West’s famous line, “Come up and see me some time.”
In 1962, Kovacs, whom she married in 1954, died in an automobile accident in Los Angeles. Upon his passing, Kovacs owed the Internal Revenue Service hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes. Declining assistance from friends, Adams paid off the debt herself with funds earned from her liver performances and film and television work. She endured another tragedy 20 years later when Mia Kovacs, her daughter with Ernie Kovacs, also died in an automobile. Two subsequent marriages—to photographer Marty Mills and jazz trumpeter Pete Candoli—ended in divorce.
She is survived by her son, Josh Mills.
On March 11, 1999, Adams was interviewed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation’s Archive of American Television. During the four-and-a-half-hour interview, conducted by Harry Colman in Los Angeles, Adams chronicled her long and varied career as a singer and actress.
She talked about her appearances as a featured singer with the late Ernie Kovacs on Ernie in Kovacsland which led to her collaboration with him on his groundbreaking NBC shows (produced out of Philadelphia’s NBC affiliate WPTZ): 3 to Get Ready and Kovacs in the Corner, as well as (New York shows) Kovacs Unlimited and the various incarnations of The Ernie Kovacs Show.
She also discussed her Broadway roles in such shows as Wonderful Town and L’il Abner, as well as her appearance in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first musical for television, Cinderella. She also elaborated on her work in such feature films as Billy Wilder’s The Apartment and Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
She recalled her many other television appearances, such as those on Jack Paar’s morning show as well as commercials for Muriel cigars. She spoke about Ernie Kovacs’ tragic death and her continued work in television and films, including her Emmy-nominated television show Here’s Edie. She also described her work in preserving Kovacs’s legend—archiving kinescopes and tapes of his programs for future generations.