Tony-winning actress Edie Adams, a blond chanteuse with a funny streak who was married to the late comedian Ernie Kovacs, has died. She was 81.

Ms Adams, who starred in the movies The Apartment and It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles after battling cancer and pneumonia, her spokesman, Henri Bollinger, said in a statement.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Ms Adams rose to fame as a sexpot spokeswoman for Muriel cigars, with the catchphrase "Why don’t you pick one up and smoke it sometime?"

Ms Adams won a Tony Award in the 1950s for her role as Daisy Mae in the Broadway version of the comic strip Li’l Abner.

She also made appearances on The Ernie Kovacs show in the early 1950s, and she married Mr Kovacs in 1954. They stayed married until Kovacs died in a 1962 car accident.

Ms Adams will be buried next to Kovacs and their daughter, Mia, who also died in a car crash in 1982.

Source: Reuters

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.