Nancy Kovack is long retired, no need to act anymore, and firmly married to conductor Zubin Mehta. But in her day, she graced both the big screen and the cathode ray screen with her elegantly sleek looks reminiscent of Honor Blackman.
Nancy Kovack is also the one who got away. With big-star quality looks and acting chops, she was destined for greatness. Instead, she chose a different path.
The first the world saw of Nancy Kovack was in 1955, as the 19-year-old Queen of the Romeo Peach Pie Festival, in Michigan. She was tasked with distributing 50 peach pies around the U.S. to various luminaries. One pie that she delivered went to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
After that, Kovack made the usual round of Sixties-era TV shows: Love, American Style, Bewitched, Mannix, I Spy. If a casting director ever needed a beautiful face and a refined look, Kovack led the way in their Rolodex.
To compound matters–and it’s here where the faint-of-heart should clutch their pearls and avert their gaze–Miss Kovack owned a fantastically voluptuous body.
Nancy Kovack is the one that got away. Directly or indirectly, it’s Mehta we have to blame for taking Nancy off the screen and out of circulation. After her marriage to him in 1969, her filmography drops off to only five or six more credits before disappearing altogether in 1976.
While it seems crazy, in 1991, when Mehta was 55 years old (and Kovack about the same age), Mehta fathered a child in Israel. An article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency relates the rumor of “a smattering of illegitimate children from various affairs.” Mehta admits to just that one boy.
There’s no need to Google-Image-search Nancy Kovack at age 55: we already know that she aged like fine wine.
Still a lovely 88, Nancy Kovack-Mehta and her husband Zubin Mehta live in Los Angeles, where he is Conductor Emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
