Sing a Pretty Song--: The ""Offbeat"" Life of Edie Adams, Including the Ernie Kovacs Years

Singer-actress Adams, writing with Windeler ( Shirley Temple ), recalls that her career skyrocketed when she married comic genius Ernie Kovacs. Their marriage lasted 11 years, until his death in an auto accident in 1962 at age 43. This funny, sad memoir of Adams's life with and as the widow of the ``mad Hungarian'' virtually recreates the couple's idiosyncratic TV skits on classic shows like Three to Get Ready . There is a laudable lack of either bitterness or boasting in the book, although Adams, who found herself straddled with debt following Kovacs's death, has reason for both. We're shown instead her insouciance and talent for soldiering on, as when she summoned her three young daughters to a family party: ``This is a big celebration . . . We've just made our big payment on your father's tennis club seized for taxes. Now there's only one million, nine hundred forty-nine thousand to go.'' Photos. (July)