AN ORIGINAL: Jonathan Winters, in the film “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” and on TV’s “Mork & Mindy,” inspired Robin Williams and other comics. (
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LOS ANGELES — Jonathan Winters, the cherub-faced comic whose breakneck improvisations and misfit characters inspired the likes of Robin Williams and Jim Carrey, has died. He was 87.
The Ohio native died Thursday evening at his Montecito, Calif., home of natural causes, said Joe Petro III, a longtime friend. He was surrounded by family and friends.
Winters was a pioneer of improvisational standup comedy, with an exceptional gift for mimicry, a grab bag of eccentric personalities and a bottomless reservoir of creative energy. Facial contortions, sound effects, tall tales — all could be used in a matter of seconds to get a laugh.
“Jonathan Winters was the worthy custodian of a sparkling and childish comedic genius. He did God’s work. I was lucky 2 know him,” Carrey tweeted yesterday.
On Jack Paar’s television show in 1964, Winters was handed a foot-long stick and he swiftly became a fisherman, violinist, lion tamer, canoeist, UN diplomat, bullfighter, flutist, delusional psychiatric patient, British headmaster and Bing Crosby’s golf club.
“As a kid, I always wanted to be lots of things,” he told US News & World Report in 1988. “I was a Walter Mitty type. I wanted to be in the French Foreign Legion, a detective, a doctor, a test pilot with a scarf, a fisherman who hauled in a tremendous marlin after a 12-hour fight.”
The humor most often was based in reality; his characters Maude Frickert and Elwood P. Suggins, for example, were based on people he knew growing up in Ohio.
“First he was my idol, then he was my mentor and amazing friend. I’ll miss him huge. He was my comedy Buddha. Long live the Buddha,” Williams said in a statement yesterday.
Williams helped introduce Winters to new fans in 1981 as the incongruously old son of Williams’ goofball alien and his earthling wife in the final season of ABC’s “Mork & Mindy.”
The two often strayed from the script. “The best stuff was before the cameras were on, when he was open and free to create,” Williams once said. “Jonathan would just blow the doors off.”
Winters won an Emmy for best-supporting actor for playing Randy Quaid’s father in the sitcom “Davis Rules” (1991).
He continued to work almost to the end of his life. IMDb.com credits him as the voice of Papa in the forthcoming film “The Smurfs 2.”
Winters’ wife, Eileen, died in 2009. He is survived by two children, Lucinda Winters and Jay Winters.