Video: 'Ernie Kovacs' Biography'

(Saturday, January 13, 1962, shortly before 2:00 a.m. PST) — American comedian, actor, and writer Ernie Kovacs, 42, was killed in a car accident early this morning when he lost control of his Chevrolet Corvair station wagon while turning quickly and crashed into a power pole in Beverly Hills, about a half-block from the Beverly Hilton hotel.

Kovacs was thrown halfway out the vehicle’s passenger side and died almost instantly from chest and head injuries. He and his wife, Edie Adams, were driving home separately from a baby shower in honor of the wife of comedian Milton Berle.

Kovacs’s visually experimental and often spontaneous comedic style influenced numerous television comedy programs for years after his death.