{"id":4244,"date":"2013-04-16T22:47:49","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T05:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=4244"},"modified":"2013-04-21T22:56:11","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T05:56:11","slug":"joh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2013\/04\/16\/joh\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Winters Remembered by Robin Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

from The New York Times<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

A Madman, but Angelic<\/h1>\n

By\u00a0ROBIN WILLIAMS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

ABC, via Photofest<\/em><\/div>\n

My father\u2019s laughter introduced me to the comedy of Jonathan Winters. My dad was a sweet man, but not an easy laugh. We were watching Jack Paar on \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d on our black-and-white television, and on came Jonathan in a pith helmet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho are you?\u201d Paar asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a great white hunter,\u201d Jonathan said in an effete voice. \u201cI hunt mainly squirrels.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI aim for their little nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

My dad and I lost it. Seeing my father laugh like that made me think, \u201cWho is this guy and what\u2019s he on?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan\u2019s improvs on \u201cMork & Mindy\u201d were legendary. People on the Paramount lot would pack the soundstage on the nights we filmed him. He once did a World War I parody in which he portrayed upper-class English generals, Cockney infantrymen, a Scottish sergeant no one could understand and a Zulu who was in the wrong war. The bit went on so long that all three cameras ran out of film. Sometimes I would join in, but I felt like a kazoo player sitting in with Coltrane.<\/p>\n

On one of his first days on the show, a young man asked Jonathan how to get into show business. He said: \u201cYou know how movie studios have a front gate? You get a Camaro with a steel grill, drive it through the gate, and once you\u2019re on the lot, you\u2019re in showbiz.\u201d<\/p>\n

No audience was too small for Jonathan. I once saw him do a hissing cat for a lone beagle.<\/p>\n

His comedy sometimes had an edge. Once, at a gun show, Jon was looking at antique pistols and a man asked if he was a gun proponent. He said: \u201cNo, I prefer grenades. They\u2019re more effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you wanted a visual representation of Jonathan\u2019s mind, you\u2019d have to go to his house. It is awe-inspiring. There are his paintings (a combination of Mir\u00f3 and Navajo); baseball memorabilia; Civil War pistols and swords; model airplanes, trains, and tin trucks from the \u201920s; miniature cowboys and Indians; and toys of all kinds.<\/p>\n

We shared a love of painted military miniatures. He once sent me four tiny Napoleonic hookers in various states of undress with a note that read, \u201cFor zee troops!\u201d<\/p>\n

But the toys were a manifestation of a dark time in his life. Jonathan was a Marine who fought in the Pacific in World War II. When he came home from the war, he went to his old bedroom and discovered that his prized tin trucks were gone.<\/p>\n

He asked his mother what she did with his stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gave them to the mission,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did you do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t think you were coming back,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n

[ click to read full piece at NYTimes.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The New York Times A Madman, but Angelic By\u00a0ROBIN WILLIAMS ABC, via Photofest My father\u2019s laughter introduced me to the comedy of Jonathan Winters. My dad was a sweet man, but not an easy laugh. We were watching Jack Paar on \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d on our black-and-white television, and on came Jonathan in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}