TFTP's Monochrome Monday: Ernie Kovacs as Percy Dovetonsils (c. 1959)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Kovacs Corner'
Length - 2:10

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

Ernie Kovacs is a TFTP favorite (see earlier TFTP posts featuring Kovacs here and here), as his groundbreaking comedy from early television is fascinating even today. Here is a late appearance (probably in a segment from Kovacs' game show "Take a Good Look" which aired 1959-1961) of one of Kovacs' most well-known characters, Percy Dovetonsils.

Kovacs created Dovetonsils in circa 1950 for his local Philadelphia program "Three to Get Ready" (a pioneering early morning show). The character is a take-off of a type of character that appeared on a number of programs in the earliest era of TV--an effete and eccentric high-culture maven that was also a likely spoof of homosexuality in that less enlightened period. Here, Kovacs/Dovetonsils recites a short poem (Dovetonsils was usually introduced, as he is here, as a "poet laureate") that is referred to as a "clue"--most likely for the game play of the "Take a Good Look" episode it appeared in.