A crossword puzzle I just finished had “Nairobi Trio” as a solution to the clue “Ernie Kovacs’s gorilla band” and I nearly fell out of my chair. This is one of my favorite memories of 50’s TV.
For those unfortunate enough not to have seen the original, check out
I was just wondering who all has a warm place in their heart for this nonsense.
I saw it as a kid in the early-'70s. Dad and I were visiting he parents in Oregon, and our first stop was his brother’s place. I got up early and turned on the TV, and this came on. I thought it was brilliant!
I’ve loved it ever since, and watch it on YouTube from time to time. It’s amazing you can do a slow burn in a gorilla mask.
When you’re Jack Lemmon, you can.
I saw this in the mid-70s, when our PBS station ran some old Kovacs episodes. It was one of my favorite skits! I remember trying to convince two of my friends that we should do the Trio in our school’s talent show. (They didn’t get it, and thought I was nuts.)
I saw a commercial once for Colt .45 malt liquor with the Nairobi Trio. At the time, Cole .45 was using the same music in their commercials, and they actually had one ape directing, one playing the piano, and a third serving the Colt .45 to the guy who seated at a table.
At the time, I had never heard of the Nairobi Trio, and was wondering to myself “WTF!” Years later, I found out about Kovacs and the Nairobi Trio. I see my earlier post on it from a decade ago indicates I saw it during a network tv broadcast of “Bridge on the River Kwai” in 72/73.
I watched Kovacs on the local PBS channel in the '70s. As brilliant as he was, many of his bits didn’t really hold up over the decades. The Nairobi Trio, though, was timeless. Always my favorite part of the show!
I first saw it in the early 60s (after Ernie’s death) when it was re-created for “Hollywood Palace”. I thought it was the most wonderful and surreal thing I had ever seen.
I forgot to mention: while the OP’s version is the classic, definitive version, apparently Ernie did it earlier with different scenarios. I think this is the only other version still preserved: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIf5Ec2Keh0&feature=related
You might be interested in this, a list (with links) to the 50 greatest comedy sketches of all time:
http://www.nerve.com/content/the-50-greatest-comedy-sketches-of-all-time
The Nairobi Trio sketch is number 7.
I first saw this as a kid back in the late 70s/early 80s. I thought it was one of the funniest, most surreal things I had ever seen. Thirty years later, that’s still true. I must have watched the classic clip more than a hundred times, and it always get the same delighted-by-weirdness reaction every time.
This was before my time (in terms of seeing it live) but I remember it as one of the all-time greatest early TV bits.
Does anybody know if it was a one-off, or recurring?
Looking at YouTube, I see Kovacs had some variants on the theme.
They have the Your Show Of Shows clock skit at 25? They don’t even list the great George Costanza pretends to be a marine Biologist skit from Seinfeld? These people are nuts!
They can’t have a Seinfeld sketch because it wouldn’t count as a sketch. It appears that their definition is something done on an English-language comedy sketch TV show. Actually, perhaps their definition is that it has to be shown on an American, British, or Canadian TV network comedy sketch show. They’re pushing it with the “Who’s on First?” sketch, but Abbott and Costello did have a TV program at one point and they did do the sketch on it.
I wasn’t saying that I agreed with the ratings in the list. I never agree with anybody’s list of the best whatever. I just thought it was interesting that someone went to the trouble of watching a lot of comedy sketches, some quite old, and created a list of what they thought the best ones were with links when possible to those sketches.
I was always a big fan of everything Kovacs did. All of his shows were great.
A google video search on Ernie Kovacs gets quite a few clips.
That’s great. Do you, by any chance, remember Kovacs’s Mad Magazine column(s)? The one I’m specifically thinking of was Ripley’s Strangely Believe It (or perhaps it was Believe It or Don’t) which had a bunch of silliness along the lines of:
“Although the moon is not as large as the earth, it is further away”
“Contrary to popular belief, the moon is made of green cheese.”
I keep hoping to Google and find that somebody has taken the time and trouble to post those things. My memory of them keeps fading and I long ago lost track of those old magazines.
The Wikipedia bio article on Kovacs just mentions the existence of the MAD stuff without quoting any. And I see that other SDMB references I’ve made about it also show up.
As best I can recall, we were late enough getting our TV that the golden age of Kovacs was already in the past when I started watching TV so all I have of that is reruns and clips on other shows, although there were plenty of those. Specials done as retrospectives made me most aware of Kovacs. I also saw several of his movie roles, most notably Bell, Book and Candle – one of my favorite Kim Novak movies.
Any of that also familiar to you, Susanann?
It is wonderful to be among folks who love Ernie Kovacs. When I mention Ernie’s name, I am accustomed to blank stares (which, naturally, makes me want to beat a little rhythm on the starer’s head with drumsticks).
There are a couple of “Strangely Believe It!” panels here.
Among my favorite characters: Percy Dovetonsils, Poet Laureate. Percy always reminded me of a somewhat-more-effete Vincent Price.
I vaguely remember a nonsensical (but pretentious) poem that began “Dearth, dearth, dearth.” Was it from a Percy Dovetonsils bit?
Thanks for finding those! You can click on the small images for ones big enough to read. Hilarious.
One I love to paraphrase (due to poor memory of the specifics) is:
On March 13, 1954, Martin Watson, a bricklayer in New York City, carved his initials MW into a brick he had just kilned. Exactly two years later, to the day, he was fishing off Cape Cod and caught a perch.
I now can answer my own question. The “Dearth” poem was on a Kovacs special in 1961. It was not a Dovetonsils skit, and the poem wasn’t read by Kovacs (although I would bet that it was written by him). I found it on YouTube, here.
God, I miss Ernie Kovacs.