[Deathwatch] Edie Adams, actress, 81

[Deathwatch Central]

More thanks to a long-time reader for this...

Actress Edie Adams, Ernie Kovacs' widow, dead at 81

October 17, 2008

LOS ANGELES - Edie Adams, the Tony award-winning actress and singer who
was perhaps best known to a generation of television viewers as the
seductive commercial spokeswoman for Muriel Cigars, has died. She was
81.

Adams, the widow of legendary comedian Ernie Kovacs, died Wednesday at
West Hills Hospital in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley of
complications from pneumonia and cancer, according to her son Josh
Mills.

The sultry redhead (and sometimes blonde) won a Tony in 1956 for her
portrayal of Daisy Mae in the musical version of Al Capp's cartoon
"Li'l Abner" and was an accomplished film actress. Her credits included
"The Apartment" with Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray;
"Lover Come Back" with Doris Day and Rock Hudson; "The Best Man" with
Cliff Robertson; and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," the Stanley
Kramer production with a who's who of outstanding comedians and comedic
actors.

But it was the seductive line as a spokeswoman for Muriel Cigars - "Why
don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?" - from the late 1950s
that brought her lasting fame.

Adams studied singing and piano at the Juilliard School in New York.
Doors opened for her after she was booked on Arthur Godfrey's "Talent
Scouts." Although she lost the competition, a television director who
was watching the show liked what he saw and signed her in July 1951 to
become the featured singer on a show originating from Philadelphia that
starred Kovacs.

Unrehearsed and uninhibited, the Kovacs show was live television at its
best and most unpredictable. It soon moved to New York to become a
morning show for CBS called "Kovacs Unlimited." Adams sang and acted as
the straight man for Kovacs.

A few years later, she was billed as Edith Adams and played Daisy Mae
in the Johnny Mercer/Gene de Paul musical "Li'l Abner," that also
featured Stubby Kaye and Julie Newmar. It became a great commercial hit
on Broadway.

Kovacs and Adams eloped to Mexico City and married in 1954. He died in
an auto accident in Los Angeles in 1962.

Adams eventually married photographer Martin Mills and had a son. That
marriage ended in divorce as did her third marriage, to jazz trumpeter
Pete Candoli, who died in January.

Her daughter Mia Kovacs died in an automobile accident in 1982, also in
Los Angeles.


Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary