Jonathan Winters, Comedian, Actor, And Improvisation Genius, Dies At 87

Jonathan Winters and incredibly talented Emmy-award winning actor, comedian, artist, and author, has died at the age of 87. Winters, who appeared in over 70 movies and TV shows, including TV’s “Mork And Mindy” and the silver screen’s 1963 ensemble comedy hit, “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World,” died of natural causes last night.

Winters was also the recipient of the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

The New York Times called Winters “the rubber-faced comedian whose unscripted flights of fancy inspired a generation of improvisational comics, and who kept television audiences in stitches with Main Street characterslike Maude Frickert, a sweet-seeming grandmother with a barbed tongue and a roving eye,” and noted he “died on Thursday at his home in Montecito, Calif.”

The unpredictable, often surreal quality of his humor had a powerful influence on later comedianslike Robin Williamsbut made him hard to package as an entertainer. His brilliant turns as a guest on programs like “The Steve Allen Show” and “The Tonight Show” — in both the Jack Paar and Johnny Carson eras — kept him in constant demand. But a successful television series eluded him, as did a Hollywood career, despite memorable performances in films like “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” “The Loved One” and “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.”

Jonathan Harshman Winters was born on Nov. 11, 1925, in Dayton, Ohio, where his alcoholic father (“a hip Willy Loman,” according to Mr. Winters) worked as an investment broker and his grandfather, a frustrated comedian, owned the Winters National Bank.

“Mother and dad didn’t understand me; I didn’t understand them,” he told Jim Lehrer on “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” in 1999. “So consequently it was a strange kind of arrangement.” Alone in his room, he would create characters and interview himself.

Variety adds:

During the late 1950s, however, Winters suffered at least one emotional breakdown and spent time in a mental hospital. He was later diagnosed with manic depression (now known as bipolar disorder) and medicated appropriately. In his standup routines he made obscure references to his illness and hospitalization. He was one of the first one celebrities to go public with a personal mental illness issue and felt stigmatized as a result. “This is something I’ve never quite shaken,” he once said. “There are bigger stars than me with all kinds of coke problems, sauce problems, guys that are married four, five times. Then they put them in picture after picture. Why should I have to go through my life auditioning and proving I’m sane?”

Whatever the extent or manner of his personal demons, Winters was able to harness them to bring an unprecedented frenetic energy to his work as a comic. He did not tell joke or rattle off punchlines but improvised on any subject. He also channeled his mania into a variety of characters including ribald old lady Maude Frickert, quack psychiatrist Dr. Bellenhoffer, Southern yokel Elwood P. Suggins and brash movie star Lance Lovegard.

On a personal note, I remember Winters well from my childhood. He truly was one of America’s funniest, most-talented comedic artists, and I always felt he was overlooked by the mainstream media.

Rest in peace, and thanks for all the laughs.