Edie Adams

Adams was born in Kingston, Pennsylvania, the only daughter of Sheldon Alonzo Enke and Ada Dorothy (née Adams), whom she described as "two conservative native Pennsylvanians". She had an elder brother, Sheldon Adams Enke. The family moved to nearby areas such as Shavertown and Trucksville and spent a year in New York City before settling in Tenafly, New Jersey, where she attended Tenafly High School. Ada Enke, who had a "trained dramatic soprano voice," taught her daughter singing and piano; mother and daughter were members of the Grove City Presbyterian church choir. Adams's grandmother, a seamstress, taught her how to sew. She made her own clothing beginning in the sixth grade and Adams would later have her own designer line of clothing, called Bonham, Inc. After high school, she wanted to pursue a career as a vocalist, but was unsure whether she would make the cut after music school auditions. She knew that her costuming skills were at a level to constitute a fallback, with Traphagen School of Fashion as her "safe school" during the college application process. In the event, she succeeded in getting into Juilliard, where she earned a vocal degree, and then took a "fifth year" and graduated from Columbia School of Drama. She also later studied at the Actors Studio in New York. While at Juilliard she was, by her own account, one of the first women to be interviewed for the Kinsey Report on female sexuality. While still at Juilliard, she taught part-time at the Barbizon School of Modeling and gave assemblies at New Jersey high schools, intended to recruit female students for various colleges and commercial schools. The assemblies had been conceived more as lectures, but once she discovered that her pay would be mainly commissions for interest generated, she turned them much more into performances. Although she studied and sang serious music at Juilliard, summer jobs (including performing in a production of The Pirates of Penzance) and her New York social life introduced her to lighter, more popular performance styles, as well as to New York's café society and the Brill Building crowd. One of her vocal teachers, Dusolina Giannini gave her some half-encouraging, half-discouraging advice: to abandon her hopes of being an opera singer and "go straight into musical comedy." After turning down an offer from Richard Rodgers to be an understudy in the road company of South Pacific. She also turned down a 5-year contract from MGM that would have groomed her toward becoming a movie actress, but would not have promised her any specific film work. She knew that with her Juilliard education she could fall back to being a music teacher, but was still determined to try to break into show business. She began going to every audition (not only as a singer, but for legitimate theater) and entering every vocal contest she could find. She passed an audition to go on the road with Vaughn Monroe, but her father put his foot down about her traveling with a big band. In 1949–50, she appeared in the early live television show Bonnie Maid's Versatile Varieties as one of the original "Bonnie Maids" doing live commercials for the sponsor. According to her memoir, she did a three-week stint in Montreal and Toronto singing with a trio led by Artie Arturo. In 1950, she won the "Miss U.S. Television" beauty contest, which led to an appearance with Milton Berle on his television show. Her earliest television work billed her as Edith Adams. One of her early appearances was on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. She was seen by the producer of the Ernie Kovacs show Three to Get Ready (in Philadelphia), who invited her to audition. Adams had very little experience with popular music and could perform only three songs. She later stated: "I sang them all during the audition, and if they had asked to hear another, I never would have made it." She became part of the show in July 1951. Adams had never seen the program she was hired for. When he saw his daughter on the show, Adams's father was upset to find her role involved trying to avoid pies in the face. In one of his last interviews, Kovacs looked back on the early days, saying, "I wish I could say I was the big shot that hired her, but it was my show in name only—the producer had all the say. Later on I did have something to say and I said it, 'Let's get married.'" Adams began working regularly on television with Kovacs and talk show pioneer Jack Paar. After a courtship that included mariachi bands and an unexpected diamond engagement ring, Adams and Kovacs eloped; they were married on September 12, 1954, in Mexico City. Adams was initially uncertain about marrying Kovacs. She went on a six-week European cruise, hoping to come to a decision. After three days away and many long-distance phone calls, Adams returned home with an answer: yes. It was Kovacs's second marriage and lasted until his death in a car accident on January 13, 1962. Adams and Kovacs received Emmy nominations for best performances in a comedy series in 1957. In 1960, she and Kovacs played themselves in The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour final television special on CBS, during which she performed the send-off song "That's All". Adams made four appearances on What's My Line? (once as "Edith Adams (Mrs. Ernie Kovacs)" while her husband was on the panel; once together with Kovacs; twice alone as Edie Adams). Adams starred on Broadway in Wonderful Town (1953) opposite Rosalind Russell (winning the Theatre World Award), and as Daisy Mae in Li'l Abner (1956), winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She played the Fairy Godmother in Rodgers and Hammerstein's original Cinderella broadcast in 1957. Adams was to play Daisy Mae in the film version of Li'l Abner but was unable due to the late arrival of her daughter, Mia Susan Kovacs. After Kovacs's death, his network, ABC, gave Adams a chance with her own show, Here's Edie, which received five Emmy nominations but lasted one season, in 1963. Kovacs was a noted cigar smoker, and Adams did a long-running series of TV commercials for Muriel Cigars. She remained the pitch-lady for Muriel well after Kovacs's death, intoning in a Mae West style and sexy outfit, "Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?" Another commercial for Muriel Cigars, which cost 10 cents, showed Adams singing, "Hey, big spender, spend a little dime with me" (based on the song "Big Spender" from the musical Sweet Charity). Adams's cigar commercials made her one of the top three most-recognizable television celebrities. In subsequent years, Adams made sporadic television appearances, including on Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, McMillan & Wife, Murder, She Wrote and Designing Women. Adams played supporting roles in several films in the 1960s, including the embittered secretary of two-timing Fred MacMurray in the Oscar-winning film The Apartment (1960). She was the wife of a presidential candidate (played by Cliff Robertson) in The Best Man (1964) and was reunited with Robertson for the comedy The Honey Pot (1967). In 2003, as one of the surviving headliners from the all-star comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), she joined actors Marvin Kaplan and Sid Caesar at a 40th anniversary celebration of the film. She was also a successful nightclub headliner. Shortly after her husband's death, Adams won a "nasty custody battle" with Kovacs's ex-wife over Edie's stepdaughters. His ex-wife had previously kidnapped the girls during a visit years before; because Kovacs was their legal guardian, he and Edie had worked tirelessly to locate his daughters and bring them home. Another court battle began for Adams in the same year, this time with her mother-in-law, who refused to believe there were more debts than assets in her son's estate. Mary Kovacs accused her daughter-in-law of mismanaging the estate and petitioned for custody of her granddaughters. The dispute lasted for years, with Adams remaining the administrator of her husband's estate and guardian of the three girls. She worked for years to pay her late husband's tax debt to the IRS. The couple's celebrity friends planned a TV special benefit for Edie and her family, but she declined, saying, "I can take care of my own children." She spent the next year working practically non-stop.