R.I.P.: Jonathan Winters, 1925-2013

[onairb]

I thought that "Mork and Mindy" was laugh-out-loud hilarious in Season 1 only.* For some oddball reason, the grandma was written out, Conrad Janis got the boot, and they did a lot of scenes from a pizza place with two new actors I had never heard of. For me, that was the jump-the-shark moment. I never bothered watching after that, even though Janis returned.

I loved Winters too, but I don't think that anything could have saved that show from Season 2 onward.


[*Edit: I will say that fish-out-of-water sitcoms basically are good for only a year or two. I loved "The Beverly Hillbillies" Seasons 1-3; but once they get used to city life, it's not funny anymore to me. How it ran 9 years was beyond me.]

cd

Elizabeth Kerr eventually returned for season 4, but it was too late. The more supporting characters they added for Mork to play off of, the worse it got. Jay Thomas and Gina Hecht were dropped after season 2, but there was another character, a bumbling politician who was Mindy's cousin(played by an Ed Begley Jr lookalike named Jim Stahl), who appeared far too often in season 3.

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

What probably made Jonathan Winters a household name was a fifteen-minute comedy series seen on NBC in the 1956/57 TV season (which preceded some of the earliest broadcasts of "The Huntley/Brinkley Report").

According to Brooks and Marsh, one memorable skit was a spoof of "Person to Person" (although the authors said it was in "the 'You Are There' tradition") in which there was an interview between Edward R. Murrow and Napoleon, with Winters playing both parts.

I suspect that since videotape had just been developed that part of the segment was probably taped ahead of time, with Winters doing part of it live. I would guess that since Napoleon would be in costume that it was the part pre-taped with Winters doing Murrow live.

 

[Carmine5]

I well remember the episode of "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson in which Mr. Carson does a throw to a commercial for Alka-Seltzer and Jonathan Winters, who was the first guest, let's loose a horrendous belch. Of course, Carson and the audience went wild with laughter. That kind of inspired improv and lunatic spontaneity is an art that has just about disappeared. Jonathan Winters was the undisputed grand master of it. If it wasn't for Robin Williams pathological need to be liked as a comic actor, I would put him a close second.