Lost Ernie Kovacs Game Show Episode Discovered, Will Air on YouTube

By Bruce Haring

The estate of Ernie Kovacs has announced a recently discovered final episode of the game show, “Take A Good Look,” will stream on the “Clown Jewels” YouTube channel on Thursday, January 23rd at 7 p.m. EST.

This rare lost episode has not been seen since it first aired 65 years ago. The premiere will feature Edie Adams son, Josh Mills, and Kovacs archivist Ben Model in a live chat with fans to take questions and add to the conversation. The “Clown Jewels” channel already has available a curated playlist for fans to view: “Featuring: Ernie Kovacs.” Fans can also purchase any of the five previously release DVD box sets direct from the Ernie Kovacs webstore.

In addition, a brand new, never-heard-since-original-broadcast comedy album, “Mayhem in the AM: The Lost Radio Comedy of Ernie Kovacs” will be released the next day, Friday January 24, 2025, to all available audio platforms.

The premiere of the final episode of the offbeat and wildly bizarre “Take A Good Look” game show and “Mayhem in the AM: The Lost Radio Comedy of Ernie Kovacs” are the kick-off to a new distribution agreement between the Ediad Productions and one of the world’s leading legacy comedy media imprints, Clown Jewels. Unreleased and rereleased audio and video from the vast Ernie Kovacs library will be rolled out in the coming months on digital, satellite and physical platforms with details announced shortly.

“The best part of the partnership between the Ernie Kovacs estate and Clown Jewels, is that we finally will bring Kovacs to classic comedy fans where they are most – online,” said Mills of Ediad Productions. “It still amazes me that in 2025, we are still finding new, never-heard-or-seen-since-originally-broadcast Ernie Kovacs material, but here we are!”

“Ernie Kovacs brilliant “high” meets “low” hijacking of mid-century television programming ignited a spark in my teenage brain and the fire spread fast,” said Devo cofounder Gerald V. Casale and 2024 VideoFest Ernie Kovacs Award Winner. “Could Devo have ever existed without the Nairobi Trio? I think everyone knows the answer.”

“Take A Good Look” began in 1959 and was an off-the-wall game show hosted by Ernie Kovacs. Guests from all fields were identified by a celebrity panel via a series of pre-recorded clips featuring Kovacs and regular cast members Peggy Connelly, Jolene Brand & Bobby Lauer. Celebrity panelists included Edie Adams, Cesar Romero, Hans Conried, Carl Reiner, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jane Wyatt, Mort Sahl, Jack Carson, Tony Randall, Janet Leigh, Jim Backus and Jacqueline Susann.

Best known for his wildly imaginative, gleefully absurdist television show in the 1950s, Ernie Kovacs (1919 – 1962) was also a radio show host, a film actor, a television director as well as a notorious illustrator, novelist, essayist, newspaper columnist, and poet.

A pioneer in early television whose inventive use of the medium inspired countless performers, directors, and video artists, Ernie Kovacs created indelible characters such as Percy Dovetonsils, Matzoh Hepplewhite, and Uncle Gruesome, Kovacs invented a distinctly modern form of comedy that playfully subverted the television medium. After his death in 1962, Edie Adams, his on-screen partner as well as his wife, was instrumental in saving and preserving Kovacs’ body of work when she bought all existing Kovacs materials – including the masters – the television networks were planning to destroy.

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