Edie Adams (April 16, 1927 – October 15, 2008) was an American singer, Broadway, television and film actress and comedienne. Adams, a Tony Award winner, "both embodied and winked at the stereotypes of fetching chanteuse and sexpot blonde."

Career

Adams earned a vocal degree from the Juilliard School of Music and then graduated from Columbia School of Drama. In 1950, winning the "Miss U.S. Television" beauty contest led to an appearance with Milton Berle on his television show.Her earliest television work had her billed as Edith Adams.

Adams began working regularly on television with comedian Ernie Kovacs and talk show pioneer Jack Paar. Kovacs was a noted cigar smoker, and Edie did a long-running series of TV commercials for Muriel Cigars. She remained the pitch-lady for Muriel well after Kovacs' death, intoning in a Mae West style and sexy outfit, "Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?"Another commercial for Muriel cigars, which cost ten cents at the time, showed the alluring Adams singing, "Hey, big spender, spend a little dime with me." Kovacs' network, ABC, gave Edie a chance with her own show, Here's Edie, which received five Emmy nominations but lasted only one-season. Edie made sporadic appearances through the decades on television, including on Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote and Designing Women.

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.

Work

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)

Feature films

* 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)

Personal life

Adams was born Edith Elizabeth Enke in Kingston, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey.

Adams married Ernie Kovacs on September 12, 1954, in what was Kovacs second marriage; they remained together until his death in a car accident on January 13, 1962, after which she won a "nasty custody battle" over her stepdaughters, Betty and Kippie.She had two later marriages, briefly to photographer Martin Mills and then to trumpeter Pete Candoli. Adams gave birth to two children: a daughter, Mia Kovacs, who was born in 1959 and killed in an automobile accident in 1982, and a son, Joshua Mills.

Adams died in Los Angeles, where she resided, aged 81. According to her son Josh Mills, the cause of death was cancer and pneumonia