Edie Adams, the Tony award-winning actress and singer who was perhaps best known to a generation of television viewers as the seductive commercial spokeswoman for Muriel Cigars, has died. She was 81.
Adams, the widow of the legendary comedian Ernie Kovacs, died Wednesday at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center of complications from pneumonia and cancer, according to her son, Josh Mills.
The sultry redhead (and sometimes blond) won a Tony in 1957 for her portrayal of Daisy Mae in the musical version of Al Capp's cartoon "Li'l Abner" and was an accomplished film actress. Her credits included "The Apartment" with Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray, "Lover Come Back" with Doris Day and Rock Hudson, "The Best Man" with Cliff Robertson, and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," the Stanley Kramer production that featured a who's who of outstanding comedians and comedic actors.
But it was the seductive line she delivered as a spokeswoman for Muriel Cigars -- "Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?"-- from the late 1950s that brought her lasting fame.
Adams was born Elizabeth Edith Enke on April 16, 1927, in Kingston, Pa. She grew up in Grove City, Pa., and Tenafly, N.J., and studied singing and piano at the Juilliard School in New York.
Doors opened for her after she was booked on Arthur Godfrey's "Talent Scouts." Although she lost the competition, a television director who was watching the show liked what he saw and signed her in July 1951 to become the featured singer on a show originating from Philadelphia that starred Kovacs.
Unrehearsed and uninhibited, the Kovacs show was live television at its best and most unpredictable. Critics called it "wacky and zany," and it soon moved to New York to become a morning show for CBS called "Kovacs Unlimited." Adams went along to do the singing and acting as the straight-man for Kovacs.
Later that year, Adams was signed for the role of Eileen in the Broadway production of Leonard Bernstein's musical comedy "Wonderful Town." The show, based on the 1940 comedy "My Sister Eileen," opened to excellent reviews for the production and for Adams.
Writing in the New York Times, critic Brooks Atkinson noted: "Miss Adams moves through this elusive character with the greatest of ease, keeping it fresh and sweet and adding just enough worldliness to make it palatable."
