LOS ANGELES (Oct. 16) - Actress and singer Edie Adams, the blondebeauty who won a Tony Award for bringing Daisy Mae to life onBroadway and who played the television foil to her husband,comedian Ernie Kovacs, has died. She was 81.
Adams died Wednesday in a Los Angeles hospital from pneumoniaand cancer, publicist Henri Bollinger said.
Skip over this contentA graduate of Juilliard School of Music, Adams hoped to becomean opera singer but instead went on to gain fame for her sketcheswith Kovacs and her pivotal roles in two top Broadway musicals.
For nearly two decades, she also was the sexy spokeswoman forMuriel cigars, singing and breathily cooing in TV commercials:"Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?"
She was born Elizabeth Edith Enke in 1927 in Kingston, Pa., andgrew up in Tenafly, N.J. She first attracted notice on the TV show"Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts." Kovacs was then performing hisinnovative comedy show on a Philadelphia TV station, and hisdirector saw her and invited her to audition.
Skip over this content"Here was this guy with the big mustache, the big cigar and thesilly hat," she recalled in 1982. "I thought, `I don't know whatthis is, but it's for me."'
When she auditioned for the Kovacs show, she knew a lot aboutopera but only three pop songs, she recalled.
"I sang them all during the audition, and if they had asked tohear another, I never would have made it," she said.
With her innocent face and refreshing manner, Adams became theideal partner for Kovacs' far-out humor. They eloped to Mexico Cityin 1954.
Kovacs moved his show - which appeared in various guises in the1950s and early 1960s - to New York, where he became the darling ofcritics and discriminating viewers and hugely influential on othercomedians. Both Kovacs and Adams garnered Emmy nominations in 1957for best performances in a comedy series.
Adams found success on Broadway as well.
She was acclaimed for her role as the sister to RosalindRussell's character in the 1953 "Wonderful Town," theComden-Green-Bernstein musical based on "My Sister Eileen."
In 1957, Adams won a Tony for best featured (supporting) actressin a musical for her role as Daisy Mae in "Li'l Abner," based onAl Capp's satirical comic strip.
"Edith Adams makes a wonderful Daisy Mae with her busty blouse,brief skirt and bare legs - the hill-billy girl with a touch of AlCapp's Hollywood glamour," The New York Times wrote.
She and Kovacs moved to Hollywood in the late 1950s, and bothbecame active in films.
In Billy Wilder's classic "The Apartment," the 1960 Oscarwinner for best picture, Adams played the spurned secretary tophilandering businessman Fred MacMurray.
Among her other movies were "Lover Come Back," "Call MeBwana" (with Bob Hope), the all-star comedy "It's a Mad, Mad,Mad, Mad World" (as Sid Caesar's wife), "Under the Yum YumTree," "The Best Man" and "The Honey Pot."
In early 1962, Kovacs left a star-filled baby shower for Mrs.Milton Berle and crashed his car into a light pole, dyinginstantly. He had been a carefree gambler and profligate buyer ofunneeded things. He once telephoned his wife and said he had boughtthe California Racquet Club, with its nightclub, shops andmortgages.
His widow was faced with debts of $520,000, trouble with theInternal Revenue Service and a nasty custody battle over Kovacs'daughters, Betty and Kippie, from his first marriage. She andKovacs also had a daughter Mia, born in 1959.
Berle, Frank Sinatra, Jack Lemmon, Dean Martin and other starsorganized a TV special to raise money for her and her daughters.
"No," she said, "I can take care of my own children."
For a solid year, she worked continuously. She did movies, TVmusical revues and a Las Vegas act where Groucho Marx introducedher with the comment: "There are some things Edie won't do, butnothing she can't do."
She won custody of her stepdaughters, tearfully tellingreporters after the verdict: "This is the way Ernie would havewanted it."
Over a career that spanned some six decades, Adams also appearedin various stage productions; had a short-lived TV show in 1963that earned her two Emmy nominations; performed in nightclubs andreleased several albums.
In the 1980s and 1990s, she made appearances on such TV shows as"Murder, She Wrote" and "Designing Women." She also playedTommy Chong's mother, Mrs. Tempest Stoner, in the first Cheech andChong movie, "Up in Smoke," in 1978.
Over the years, she strove to keep Kovacs' comedic legacy aliveby buying rights to his TV shows and repackaging them fortelevision and videocassettes.
After her widowhood, she had two brief marriages to photographerMartin Mills and trumpeter Pete Candoli.
She is survived by her son, Joshua Mills. Daughter Mia Kovacswas killed at 22 in a 1982 car accident.
