text: Kovacs and his family shared a 16-room apartment in Manhattan on Central Park West that seemed perfect until he went to California for his first film role in Operation Mad Ball. The experience of the totally different, laid-back lifestyle of Hollywood made a big impression on him. He realized he was working too much in New York; in California he would be able to work fewer hours, do just as well or better and have more time for Edie and his daughters. At the time, he was working most of the time and sleeping about two or three hours a night. Kovacs claimed that he realized it was time for a change when he was telling his girls a bedtime story and found himself thinking of using it for a show instead. Kovacs relocated his family there in 1957, after Edie finished work for the Broadway play Li'l Abner.
  Death
  In the early morning hours of January 13, 1962, Kovacs lost control of his Chevrolet Corvair station wagon while turning quickly and crashed into a power pole in West Los Angeles. He was thrown halfway out the vehicle's passenger side and died almost instantly from chest and head injuries.
  A photographer arrived soon after and images of Kovacs' bodywith an unlit cigar on the pavement near his outstretched handappeared in newspapers across the United States.