Jonathan Winters, the cherub-faced comedian whose breakneck improvisations and misfit characters inspired the likes of Robin Williams and Jim Carrey, has died. He was 87.
The Ohio native died Thursday evening at his Montecito, Calif., home of natural causes, said Joe Petro III, a longtime friend. He was surrounded by family and friends.
“He was just a great friend, and I was very lucky to be able to work with him for all the years I did,” said Petro, an artist and printmaker who collaborated with Winters for decades on numerous art projects. “We’ve lost a giant, and we’re really going to miss him.”
Winters was a pioneer of improvisational standup comedy, with an exceptional gift for mimicry, a grab bag of eccentric personalities and a bottomless reservoir of creative energy.
“Beyond funny, he invented a new category of comedic genius,” comedian Albert Brooks tweeted Friday.
The humor most often was based in reality — his characters Maude Frickert and Elwood P. Suggins, for example, were based on people Winters knew growing up in Ohio.
A devotee of Groucho Marx and Laurel and Hardy, Winters and his free-for-all brand of humor inspired Johnny Carson, Billy Crystal, Lily Tomlin and others. But Williams and Carrey are his best-known followers.
It was Williams who helped introduce Winters to millions of new fans in 1981 as the son of his goofball alien and earthling wife in the final season of ABC’s “Mork and Mindy.”
Winters’ only Emmy was for best supporting actor for playing Randy Quaid’s father in the sitcom “Davis Rules” (1991). He was nominated again in 2003 as outstanding guest actor in a comedy series for an appearance on “Life With Bonnie.”
He won two Grammys: One for “The Little Prince” album in 1975 and the other for his “Crank Calls” comedy album in 1996. He also won the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for Humor in 1999.
The Internet Movie Database website credits him as the voice of Papa in the forthcoming “The Smurfs 2” film. He continued to work almost to the end of his life, and to influence new generations of comics.
“No him, no me. No MOST of us, comedy-wise,” comic Patton Oswalt tweeted.
Winters was born Nov. 11, 1925, in Dayton, Ohio. Growing up during the Depression as an only child whose parents divorced when he was 7, Winters spent a lot of time entertaining himself.
Winters, who himself battled alcoholism in his younger years, described his father as an alcoholic. But he found a comedic mentor in his mother, radio personality Alice Bahman.
“She was very fast. Whatever humor I’ve inherited I’d have to give credit to her,” Winters told the Cincinnati Enquirer in 2000.
Winters joined the Marines at 17 and served two years in the South Pacific. He returned to study at the Dayton Art Institute, helping him develop keen observational skills.
After stints as a radio disc jockey and TV host in Ohio from 1950-53, he left for New York, where he found early work doing impressions of John Wayne, Cary Grant, Marx and James Cagney, among others.
One night after a show, an older man sweeping up told him he wasn’t breaking any new ground by mimicking the rich or famous.
“He said, ‘What’s the matter with those characters in Ohio? I’ll bet there are some far-out dudes that you grew up with back in Ohio,’” Winters told the Orange County Register in 1997.
Two days later, he cooked up one of his most famous characters: the hard-drinking, dirty old woman Maude Frickert, modeled in part on his own mother and an aunt.
While show business kept Winters busy, the former art school student was also a painter and writer.
Among his books is a collection of short stories called “Winters’ Tales” (1987).
“I’ve done for the most part pretty much what I intended — I ended up doing comedy, writing and painting,” he told U.S. News. “I’ve had a ball. And as I get older, I just become an older kid.”
Winters’ wife, Eileen, died in 2009. He is survived by two children, Lucinda Winters and Jay Winters.
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