Betty Kovacs, the eldest daughter of comedian Ernie Kovacs who with her sister Kippie and stepmother, actress-singer Edie Adams, was at the center of a nasty custody battle that kept Hollywood riveted in 1962, has died. She was 79.
A former dancer and casting director, Kovacs died June 21 of pancreatic cancer at her home in Sun City, California, her wife and partner of 45 years, Elaine Guy, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Ernie Kovacs and his first wife, Bette Wilcox, were married in August 1945. Elizabeth Lee Kovacs was born on May 16, 1947, followed by her sister, Kip Raleigh Kovacs, on Jan. 4, 1949.
Soon after their parents divorced in 1952, a court awarded Ernie full custody of the kids — it was unusual for a man to get custody back then — when it was determined that his ex-wife was mentally unstable. Meanwhile, Ernie and Adams had met on his Philadelphia TV show in 1951, and they would wed in Mexico City in September 1954.
During a weekend visit in 1953, Betty and Kippie were kidnapped by their birth mother, and it took Ernie, with the help of private investigators, about two years before he finally found them living in a shack in Cassia, Florida, in June 1955.
“The girls didn’t know how to eat with a knife and fork and apparently had never brushed their teeth the whole time they were gone,” Adams wrote in her 1990 memoir, Sing a Pretty Song.
The incident was portrayed in the 1984 ABC telefilm Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter, which starred Jeff Goldblum as Ernie, Melody Anderson as Edie and Soleil Moon Frye as Betty.
Seven months after Ernie, then 42, died on Jan. 13, 1962, when he crashed his Chevrolet Corvair into a power pole in West Los Angeles, his first wife sued for custody of Betty and Kip, claiming Adams was “unfit” to care for them.
Betty, then 15, and Kip, 13, testified that they wanted to stay with their stepmother, and they were allowed to do so after a four-day court battle. “This is what Ernie would have wanted. Now I can smile,” Adams said. Added Betty, “I’m so happy I can hardly express myself.”
“Elizabeth had to navigate through that kind of horror,” Guy said. “She managed very well. She was very strong, very beautiful and kind and understanding. She was an artist deep in her heart.”
(Ernie and Edie would have a daughter of their own, Mia, born in June 1959.)
Kovacs graduated from Rexford High School in Beverly Hills, performed in a revival of No, No, Nanette and studied dance in Los Angeles at the famed Roland Dupree Dance Academy, where Guy was a teacher.
She acted in summer stock opposite Linda Lavin and as a casting director found Betsy Lynn George to star in the 1991 music video for Billy Idol’s Cradle of Love that was directed by David Fincher. She also wrote editorials for the defunct Californian newspaper.
Survivors include her stepbrother, Josh Mills, an author, manager and host of the Rarified Heir podcast.
Her sister Mia was killed in May 1982 at age 22 in a car accident on Mulholland Drive. Kippie, who was married to screenwriter Bill Lancaster, son of actor Burt Lancaster, died after a long illness in July 2001 at age 52.
The Tony-winning Adams, who after Ernie’s death was married to photographer Martin Mills and trumpeter Pete Candoli, died in October 2008 at age 81.
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