If you are of a certain age, then the title of this post is apt to conjure up images of a certain lady.

That’s right. Edie Adams.

And if you aren’t of a certain age, you might be wondering why.

I think I first became aware of Edie when I got the Original Cast recording of the 1956 Broadway musical Li’l Abner. And yes, that’s another one of JT’s Favorite Musicals Not by Rodgers & Hammerstein or Stephen Sondheim.

She played the role of Daisy Mae, and although I only had her vocal performance to go by, she played the role exquisitely. What I didn’t know at the time was she had worked hard to get the role because she was such as fan of the comic strip, but she was less than thrilled with her part as written.

“Daisy was an ornament,” she would later claim, “hanging on Abner’s arm in every scene, no matter what the action. In a possible acting range of ten, poor Daisy seemed to reach no more than a three. To have a leading role and carry a show with no playable dialogue written for you was more than an acting challenge.” 

Moreover, except for one scene, she played the entire show in bare feet. Not only was this hard on her feet, but with all the chicks and dogs and pigs scurrying about on the stage, it got messy (literally) as well. By the time she was finished with the role, her feet had grown a size larger. Her husband Ernie Kovacs claimed, “Many an actress has gotten a swelled head playing a starring role but Edie’s the first to get swelled feet.” 

Thanks to her complaints about her role (she did get top billing after all as Edith Adams), a new song was added just before the show opened for previews in New York. Written, like the rest of the score, by Johnny Mercer and Gene de Paul, “Past My Prime”, a duet for Daisy and Marryin’ Sam, is one of the loveliest tunes in the show, and as performed by Edie Adams and the ever-reliable Stubby Kaye, is Broadway heaven.

Alas, because Edie was unhappy with her role, when the show was transferred to the movies almost entirely intact with most of the original cast, she opted not to repeat her performance.

As I said, she was married to Ernie Kovacs, an actor, comedian, and writer, who did some very innovative things with television in the late 50s and early 60s. Alas, he was killed at the much too early age of 42 in a car crash in 1962, leaving behind not only a widow but an unpaid tax bill of half a million dollars.

So Edie set to work taking every role she could get, including the part of Mabel Cantrell in the 1964 movie version of Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. And she paid off his entire debt. Then she set about buying the rights to all his TV specials so that his work wouldn’t be destroyed.

She became the pitch-lady for Muriel Cigars (Ernie had been a big cigar smoker) even before her husband died. “Why don’t you pick one up and smoke it sometime?”