RIP Jonathan Winters

One of the 'great greats' dies at 87

Jonathan Winters, ‘one of the great comedy talents in the history of the United States’, has died at the age of 87.

With a career that began in the Fifties, Winters inspired comics such as Robin Williams, George Carlin and Bill Cosby – and is probably best known for his roles in the film It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World and alongside Williams in Mork And Mindy.

He was also the original voice of Grandpa Smurf on TV, and in the recent movie adaptation.

Among those paying tribute were US comedy legend Mort Sahl, who tweeted: ‘Jonathan Winters was the model of the guy who always questioned authority. And where he is now, God better be on his best behavior.’

Gilbert Gottfried wrote: ‘He was a bottomless well of creativity... There was a fearless, just crazy attitude about him – of not caring, not being afraid – that always appealed to me. He influenced me and many other comics.’

And Steve Martin said: ‘Goodbye, Jonathan Winters. You were not only one of the greats, but one of the great greats.’

Born in Dayton, Ohio on November 11 1925, Winters' career was said to have started after he lost his wristwatch, but was too poor to replace it. His wife Eileen saw an advert for a talent contest in which the first prize was a wristwatch, which he entered and won – landing him his first job in showbusiness, as a disc jockey.

He moved to New York in the Fifties and started performing stand-up in the nightclubs, developing routines that would come to be immortalised on albums, and creating characters such as Maude Frickert, the seemingly sweet old lady with an acid tongue.

But he also suffered manic depression and in 1959 was arrested when he began crying on stage in San Francisco. He was later taken into custody by police who found him climbing a boat’s rigging , saying he was from outer space.

He spent eight months in an institution, and would later say his illness played a part in his work, once telling a reporter: ‘I need that pain — whatever it is — to call upon it from time to time, no matter how bad it was.’

Winters made several appearances of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, usually coming on as a character that the host was unaware of, and improvising answers to his questions.

He had his own nightly CBS show from 1967 to 1969, and later a series, The Wacky World of Jonathan Winters, which ran from 1972 and 1974. He was a regular on game show The Hollywood Squares and appeared in the 1969 movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.

In Mork & Mindy, he played alien Mork’s son, Mearth, the joke being that Orkans aged backwards, so he would act like a petulant toddler, despite being an older man.

In 1999, Winters was awarded the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor,and in 2010 a line-up of comics inculding Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Kimmel and Ryan Styles appeared in the mockumentary about hims losing his sense of humour, Certifiably Jonathan.

News of his death was broken by his friend Gary Owens, the announcer for TV’s Laugh-In, who said: ‘He was one of the great comedy talents in the history of the United States. Just brilliant.’

Here he is doing improv: