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ERNIE_KOVACS

                                             September 01, 2022


We often talk of the 1950s as a dark
decade, a period when the normies
ruled triumphant over American culture,
but there were many odd corners where
rebels trying out some strange experiments:

   Cage, Kerouac... and Kovacs.


   In the early days of television, when the formula
   wasn't quite so fixed, Ernie Kovacs somehow
   made it on the air with a comedy show with
   a touch that's hard to describe, often head-
   shakingly strange if rarely *funny* exactly.

      I think the pacing of the show probably
      seems slow by modern standards-- at a
      guess it always seemed slow: Kovacs may
      have been going for the Groucho look but
      he never had the timing.

      In a typical Kovacs bit, he comes out on camera
      and does a long, dead-pan introduction talking
      about the beauty of ballet, and how they were
      determined to find a dance company that could        This particular bit
      peform "Swan Lake" on the show, and they finally     was no doubt a
      found one that isn't very well know, but was         follow-on to a
      really excellent...                                  running gag Kovacs
                                                           used, "The Nairobi
      They they cut to people dressed in gorilla           Trio", where three
      suits doing the ballet.                              people in gorilla
                                                           suits would perform
           (It's perhaps a flaw that these bits            music.
           were typically fairly one-joke: there's
           the set-up, then the joke is revealed...           I don't know for
           and the ballet continues, with only the            a fact either
           general absurdity of gorilla-suit ballet           way, but I don't
           keeping you watching.)                             *think* this was
                                                              intended as
                                                              racist humor.

                                                              The idea wasn't
                                                              "there's nothing
                                                              in Africa but
                                                              gorillas", though
                                                              I'm afraid many
                                                              would take it that
                                                              way these days--


                                          At a guess: the props came
                                          first.  Someone had started
                                          making gorilla suit costumes,
                                          and Kovacs thought up things
                                          to do with them.




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