Edie Adams

From her brief-but-celebrated TV series, "Here's Edie," to her Broadway turns, and roles in such classic films as "The Apartment," Edie Adams has charmed everyone lucky enough to catch her in her element. After training at Juilliard, Columbia, and the Actors Studio, Adams began to work with comedian Ernie Kovacs on his groundbreaking comedy show, and the pair eloped in 1954. The early '60s saw Adams working in the ad-world romantic comedy "Lover Come Back" alongside Rock Hudson and Doris Day, in Stanley Kramer's madcap comedy caper "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World," and against type as a betrayed, angry secretary in Billy Wilder's Oscar-winner "The Apartment." When Kovacs died suddenly in a car accident in 1962, ABC gave Adams the short-lived "Here's Edie," which, although critically well received, lasted only one season. Meanwhile, her turns on Broadway, in nightclubs, and on the screen helped etch Adams in the American psyche as a whip-smart, brash, talented screen presence; she was particularly famous for her impressions of Zsa Zsa Gabor and Marilyn Monroe. After Kovacs' untimely death, Adams was beset with legal problems over her stepchildren and paying off Kovacs's tax debt, but her story is one of perseverance. In the 1960s she launched Edie Adams Cosmetics and Edie Adams Cut 'n' Curl beauty salons and, through tireless work, she bounced back. Her screen career from the 1970s onward consisted of TV appearances and cameos. From "McMillan & Wife" to "Designing Women," Adams was always a delightful scene-stealer until retiring from acting in the early '90s.