Consider any comic talents who have pushed the boundaries of the television medium, and it’s likely they were inspired by Ernie Kovacs. Working through the 1950s with his wife and partner Edie Adams, the cigar-toting Kovacs transformed the TV studio into a magic toyshop where technology, illusion and culture—high and low—ran a collision course that transfixed home audiences and often baffled network executives. His tragic death in 1962 at the age of 42 left us to ponder what he might have achieved if he had had the opportunity to commandeer a movie camera as well. In 1999 Edie Adams participated in the Mill Valley Film Festival’s Tribute to Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams.

Josh Mills will present a special program of scenes from classic Kovacs TV shows. Mills is the son of Edie Adams and administrator of the Kovacs archive that Adams painstakingly assembled following her husband’s passing.

Ernie in Kovacsland was the whimsical title of one of his early television shows, and it is also the name of a new, lavishly illustrated book, edited by Josh Mills with Ben Model and Pat Thomas. Following the program, Mills will sign copies of the book, available for sale at the Rafael.