Edie Adams, Tony award winner, TV actress, dies 81

Edie Adams (April 16, 1927 – October 15, 2008) was an American singer, Broadway, television and film actress and comedienne.

Edie Adams made sporadic appearances through the decades on television, including on Fantasy Island The Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote and Designing Women.

Death of Edie Adams
Edie Adams died of cancer and pneumonia in Los Angeles, where she resided, aged 81

Husband Ernie Kovacs
Edie Adams was married to Husband Ernie Kovacs for 8 years (1954 – 1962).  Ernie Kovacs (January 23, 1919 – January 13, 1962) was an American comedian whose uninhibited, often ad-libbed, and visually experimental comic style came to influence numerous television comedy programs for years after his early death in an automobile accident. Such iconoclastic shows as Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Uncle Floyd Show, Saturday Night Live and even Captain Kangaroo and Sesame Street, and TV hosts such as David Letterman are seen as having made use of Kovacs’ influence.

Edie Adams’ Television & Filmography on next page

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 1957 Cinderella broadcast. She played supporting roles in several well-known films in the 1960s, including "Miss Olsen" in The Apartment (1960). In 2003, as one of the last surviving headliners from the all-star movie, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, she joined actors Marvin Kaplan and Sid Caesar at 40th anniversary celebrations of the movie. She was also a favorite nightclub headliner. Adams "both embodied and winked at the stereotypes of fetching chanteuse and sexpot blonde".

Television
Ernie in Kovacsland (1951) (canceled after 2 months)
The Ernie Kovacs Show (1952–1956)
Cinderella (1957)
Lucy Meets the Moustache (1960)
Take a Good Look (panelist from 1960–1961)
Here’s Edie (1963–1964)
Evil Roy Slade (1972)
Cop on the Beat (1975)
Superdome (1978)
Fast Friends (1979)
The Seekers (1979)
Make Me an Offer (1980)
Portrait of an Escort (1980)
A Cry for Love (1980)
The Haunting of Harrington House (1981)
As the World Turns (cast member in 1982)
Shooting Stars (1983)
Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter (1984)
Adventures Beyond Belief (1987)
Jake Spanner, Private Eye (1989)
Tales of the City (1993) (miniseries)

Filmography
Showdown at Ulcer Gulch (1956)
The Apartment (1960)
Lover Come Back (1961)
Call Me Bwana (1963)
Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963)
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Love with the Proper Stranger (1963)
The Best Man (1964)
Made in Paris (1966)
The Oscar (1966)
The Honey Pot (1967)
Up in Smoke (1978)
Racquet (1979)
The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (1980)
Boxoffice (1982)
Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There (2003)
 

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