Kovacs's death, Adams was married two more times. In 1964, she married photographer Martin Mills. In 1972, she married trumpeter Pete Candoli, with whom she appeared in a touring production of the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes. In addition to raising stepdaughters Bette and Kippie from her marriage to Kovacs, Adams gave birth to daughter Mia Susan Kovacs (killed in an automobile accident in 1982) and son Joshua Mills. Adams was a Republican and campaigned for Dwight Eisenhower's re-election during the 1956 presidential election. Adams was an early advocate of civil rights, frequently lending her support to the movement at celebrity events and on her own television show during the early sixties. She insisted that her duet with Sammy Davis Jr. on her variety show Here's Edie be staged so that they were seated next to each other – as equals. Prior to that, entertainers of different races and sexes were unable to perform next to one another, so that one had to be in front of or behind the other. Death Adams died in Los Angeles, California, on October 15, 2008, at age 81, from cancer and pneumonia. She was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, alongside her first husband Ernie and between her daughter, Mia, and her stepdaughter, Kippie. After her death an article in The New York Times said that her work "both embodied and winked at the stereotypes of fetching chanteuse and sexpot blonde". Kovacs' legacy Adams archived her husband's television work, which she described during a 1999 videotaped interview with the Archive of American Television. She later testified on the status of the archive of the short-lived DuMont Television Network, where both she and husband Kovacs worked during the early 1950s. Adams said that so little value was given to the film archive that the entire collection was loaded into three trucks and dumped into Upper New York Bay. Upon discovering that her husband's work was disappearing through being discarded and re-use of the tapes, Adams initially used the proceeds of his insurance policy and her own earnings to purchase the rights to as much footage as possible. Filmography Television References External links The official Edie Adams website 1927 births 2008 deaths 20th-century American actresses Actresses from Pennsylvania Actresses from New Jersey American cosmetics businesspeople American musical theatre actresses American Presbyterians American television actresses American women comedians Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park