Edie Adams has died. Those too young to remember her should check out DVDs of Ernie Kovacs' show
. Or go rent It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
I met her as a child growing up in Flint. She (and, I think, Kovacs) performed in one of the A.C. Spark Plug concerts that my father produced in the sixties, and we always got to meet the stars back stage at the IMA auditorium afterward, and often went to Luigi's for pizza (still the best pizza in the universe, IMHO). The place has autographed pictures of the stars that dined there on the wall. I think hers is still there.
I'm showing my age, but I fondly remember her cigar commercials.
I relayed the following story to her through the fan club, and reportedly she got quite a kick out of it.
Do you remember the sketch about the surgery, with no words, only music? The music is spooky and dramatic, and there's one spot showing the stereotypical sight of instruments being handed dramatically from one person to another.
Then the music becomes playful, then triumphant.
***SPOILERS FOLLOW***
They're not doing surgery.
They're
around a
dinner table carving a turkey.
I saw this when I was very young, and it was kind of funny, not ROFL material.
I saw the sketch again one evening in my 20s, when PBS broadcast a weekly selection of his shows. This time I realized the music was a classical piece I knew well, and I knew its name and the composer. Still not ROFL material. But there was a connection I didn't realize right away.
The next afternoon I was thinking about the sketch. I though, "Mildly funny sketch about the roast turkey, set to Stravinsky's 'Firebird'. Yeah, mildly funny. Wait--roast turkey? 'FIREBIRD'?" And I let out a loud groan of "OH NO!"
I didn't get the pun until more than 12 hours later.
:)