TFTP Comedy: "Kovacs on the Corner" (1952)

Posted to Internet Archive

Ernie Kovacs was one of the great geniuses of early television comedy. He had a relatively brief but wide-ranging career--as a talk-show host, game-show panelist and host, morning-show host, and comedian--before dying prematurely in a car accident in 1962. This clip is a complete episode of a very short-lived Kovacs series called "Kovacs on the Corner", which was on NBC on weekday mornings for just three months in early-1952.

"Kovacs on the Corner" featured Kovacs in a slightly more laid-back style than that for which he is best known. Kovacs' pioneered a style of visual comedy on television that was not seen before or much since, utilizing sight gags, technical tricks unique to TV, and absurdism to create comedy. Here, in "Kovacs on the Corner", he is much more subtle and situational in his comedy. The "corner" of the title is a city neighborhood corner that comprises the show's sole set and on which Kovacs--assisted by singer and future wife Edie Adams--encounters different characters of the type one might meet on a street corner (policemen, street sweepers). Several musical numbers are featured, showing the easy facility with which early TV comedy shows crossed over into musical variety and back again.

Kovacs does show glimpses of his legendary humor here. A segment called "Swap Time" in which two ordinary people swap odd items (a torn bowler hat for an eight-pound block of ice) offers Kovacs the opportunity for some clever ad-libbing. An advertisement spoof in which Kovacs and Adams pitch "food" (holding a brown sack with the word "food" written on it) is a trenchant critique of TV commercials that foreshadows his later comedy. Although this episode is not typical of Kovacs' later comedy, it is both a good peek into his early career and a good example of a particular type of early musical/comedy variety show.