Kovacsland: A Biography of Ernie Kovacs - Hardcover

Rico, Diana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151472947 ISBN 13: 9780151472949

Publisher: Harcourt, 1990

Synopsis

A portrait of the legendary comedian and television pioneer examines Kovac's inventive comedic talent, his relationships with friends, family, and peers, and his immoderate, feverish lifestyle

About this title

About the Author

Diana Rico is an award-winning documentary producer-writer, journalist, and author specializing in the visual arts, biography, and social issues. She is also the founder of the wordARTist, a company offering writing, editing, producing, and content development for cultural creatives and arts organizations around the world, and of jumpstART creative coaching, powerful group workshops, e-classes, and one-on-one coaching sessions that help artists in all media dissolve creative blocks.

Rico's articles on the arts have appeared in GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, ARTnews, Architectural Digest, Spa, Mother Jones, Tu Ciudad, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, the International Herald Tribune, and many other national and international periodicals. Her book Kovacsland: A Biography of Ernie Kovacs (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), about the pioneering 1950s tv comedian who influenced David Letterman, Garry Shandling, and the Saturday Night Live crew, was praised by Variety as “the sort of serious treatment great television artists deserve.” The book landed Rico interviews on Larry King Live!, Charlie Rose, Good Morning America, and Entertainment Tonight. She has also been Editor-in-Chief of International Documentary Magazine; Art & Architecture Writer for the Los Angeles Daily News and for NPR's Los Angeles flagship station, KCRW-FM; and Associate Editor of Emmy Magazine.

From Library Journal

Author Rico is obviously a big fan of Ernie Kovacs's style of comedy--wacky, improvisational, even bizarre--which explored the potential of the newly developing television of the 1950s. This detailed biography of the ill-fated comedian shows him to be a workaholic who drove himself endlessly in search of a laugh, a gambler and spendthrift who was a creative genius. His personal life, including a two-year search for his kidnapped daughters and his marriage to Edie Adams, is skimmed over in favor of endless descriptions of comic sketches and quotes from a multitude of friends. His last few years, making movies in Hollywood, took a toll on both his marriage and his creativity, but he needed the money in order to pay the fortune he owed in back taxes. Of most interest is his early career in radio and live television, but the book seems padded and repetitive.
- Marcia L. Perry, Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Mass.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harcourt
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0151472947
• ISBN 13: 9780151472949
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352