It is safe to say that without Jonathan Winters, there would be no Robin Williams.

Why? Because Williams himself said so. The two comedians’ style is often described as “madcap,” but that’s a euphemism. A more accurate diagnosis would be “bipolar,” and in Winters’ case, that was literally true.

Winters broke the mold of the wise-cracking comedian personified by Bob Hope. His shtick was the one-man stage play, narrating, providing sound effects and switching voices of characters that poured forth from his imagination.

To get a sense of Winters’ capabilities, watch this YouTube clip in which he is handed a pen-and-pencil set and told to improvise. In less than three minutes, he creates twelve characters, including a water skier, a cigarette-smoking jock and a wood nymph. And he does it live on network television at a time when there were more than seven words you couldn’t say on TV.

Winters’ contribution to comedy in the early 60’s was, like the X-15 rocket plane, to push the envelope and create a sonic boom. Unlike many of the comics who feigned craziness after him, Winters was the real thing, having spent 8 months in a mental hospital in the late fifties.

 

I was introduced to Winters’ comedy by my mother, who was definitely not crazy but who cracked up whenever she watched him on the Tonight Show or commercials. You might think it would be hard for a man with his manic personality to find a compatible woman to settle down with, but he was married to the former Eileen Ann Schauder for sixty years, and they had two children together.

It was fitting that, just as Winters gave birth to Williams, Williams added Winters as his child “Mearth” on Mork & Mindy. Ever wondered where Mork’s “Na-Nu Na-Nu” came from? Baby Elizabeth, a Winters’ character whose mother tells her to “Take that groundhog out of your mouth–you don’t know where it’s been!”

Baby Elizabeth’s answer? “Ne-Nu-Na-Na-Nu-Nu.”

This article first appeared in slightly different format in Comic Wonder (2008).