AKA Elizabeth Edith Enke

Born: 16-Apr-1925 [1]
Birthplace: Kingston, PA

Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor, Comic, Singer

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Lover Come Back

Edie Adams -- Tony-winner, classically trained as a singer, and a gifted comedienne -- is probably best known for being Ernie Kovacs's widow. Adams was crowned Miss U.S. Television in 1950, winning a talent competition on the DuMont Television Network. In the early 1950s, she appeared on Ernie in Kovacsland and The Ernie Kovacs Show, while he was married to a troubled woman who had kidnapped their two children. Kovacs and Adams and married after his divorce, in 1954.

Adams is remembered as the "cigar girl" from Muriel commercials, where she suggestively said, "Why don't you pick me up and smoke me sometime?" While Kovacs almost always had a cigar in his mouth, Adams was allergic to smoke, a fact she did not share with the makers of Muriels.

In 1962, Kovacs died in a car accident following a party at Milton Berle's home. He had switched cars with Adams only moments before, the streets were wet and he had been drinking, but she believes he was probably lighting one of his beloved cigars when he lost control of the vehicle. Following his death, it was discovered that Kovacs owed $500,000 in back taxes -- he had simply refused to pay income taxes, maintaining that the tax system was unfair. Adams' lawyers urged her to file for bankruptcy, but she hated that idea and refused offers of help from many of their celebrity friends. Instead she told her managers to accept whatever roles would garner the most money. Once the IRS was paid off, she began purchasing the rights to recordings of Kovacs' work. Otherwise it almost certainly would have been lost, since some of it had already been destroyed.

Her first major film was 1960's The Apartment. In most of her films, she played comedic supporting roles, as in Lover Come Back, where she played "the other woman", and Love With a Proper Stranger, where her character Barbie refused to lend Steve McQueen the money he needed to get his lover an abortion. In the late 1960s Adams cut back on her work schedule, but continued to appear in some surprising roles. She played Tommy Chong's mother, Mrs. Stoner, in Up in Smoke, and in 1980 she appeared in the soft-core sequel The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood. Adams also made the rounds as a TV guest star, on shows from The Love Boat to Murder, She Wrote.

Husband: Ernie Kovacs (m. 12-Sep-1954, d. 13-Jan-1962 automobile accident, one child)
Daughter: (d. 1982, automobile accident)
Husband: Pete Candoli (musician, The Candoli Brothers, m. 1972, div. 1989)
Husband: Marty Mills (photographer, m. 1964, div.)

    University: Juilliard School of Music
    University: Columbia University

    Tony 1957 for Li'l Abner
    Beauty Contest Miss U.S. Television 1950

    FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
    Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (8-May-1993)
    A Cry for Love (20-Oct-1980)
    The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (May-1980)
    Up In Smoke (15-Sep-1978)
    Evil Roy Slade (18-Feb-1972)
    The Honey Pot (21-Mar-1967)
    The Oscar (4-Mar-1966)
    Made in Paris (9-Feb-1966)
    The Best Man (5-Apr-1964)
    Love with the Proper Stranger (25-Dec-1963)
    It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (7-Nov-1963)
    Under the Yum Yum Tree (23-Oct-1963)
    Call Me Bwana (14-Jun-1963)
    Lover Come Back (20-Dec-1961)
    The Apartment (15-Jun-1960)
    Cinderella (31-Mar-1957)

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