Robin Williams: Truibute to a Man of Laughter

He was chatting, sitting innocently in the chair to the right of Johnny Carson when Robin Williams launched into an impromptu bit. I saw it only once, when it aired, so my recollection may not be verbatim. I never laughed harder at anything in my life.

“Imagine,” Williams said, “Fred Astaire is about to dance, when accidentally steps into a pile of doggy do.” Johnny’s band leader hastily provides accompaniment. The comedian jumps up and sweeps the whole set in a spot on evocation of the suave dancer. Then, of course, he steps in it.

He alternates between graceful, elegant dance steps and furious efforts to scrape the doggy do off the sole of his shoe, using the bandstand riser and the edge of Johnny’s desk to accomplish the futile task.

The mix of insouciant grace interspersed with rageful frustration was comedic genius rivaling the best offerings of Charlie Chaplin and the long line of physical comics since. Top hat, white tie, tails, and doggie do. That was Robin Williams.

His insight into comedy was as simple as is was profound. He taught us that everything is funny, as long as humans are found doing it. And the more serious they are about it, the funnier it is.

The unwitting comedians he exposed with rat-a-tat impressions, flung so hard and fast you dare not blink, include presidents, hip hop singers, pundits, intellectuals, transvestites, Shakespearian actors, addled teenage boys and girls, and addled aged men and women. The list is inclusive, endless really. He skewered William F. Buckley himself in three seconds as the voice of Alladin’s genie.

If serious could be attributed to him, he was a serious actor, attended Julliard on full scholarship, earned three Oscar nominations and won one for his moving and intelligent performance in Good Will Hunting. Some critics contend that his coiled energy threatens to break through in his straight acting performances, but I don’t buy it. His acting is disciplined, deeply felt, pitch perfect.

Even Mrs. Doubtfire provides Williams a far more difficult challenge than it appears, since he has to play a desperate and irresponsible husband and also impersonate an elderly woman. He must evoke empathy, exasperation, pathos, and, of course, lots of laughs. He must do all this opposite the esteemed Sally Field. He more than holds his own.

His voiceover in Disney’s Alladin places him in the rarified company of Disney’s greatest: Sterling Holloway, Phil Harris, Angela Landsbury, Ellen DeGeneris, Peggy Lee, and Tom Hanks. Some have said he was the best of a great roster.

But it is the improvisational Robin Williams whose imprint sets him utterly apart. His idol Jonathan Winters captured the humor in ordinary scenes featuring recurring characters who were offbeat (or just off). Williams’ characters did not recur; they glanced off him in a fierce volley of personified energy and were whisked away by the next utterly unexpected arrival.

Their appearance amazed us because we knew they were conjured in that instant. Their moment of life sparked in us a gasp of recognition; these were people taken from the world we know, the world of celebrity, governance, and everyday life. And, most exquisitely, these firefly personalities were hilarious, flashes of every human foible fallible humans can fabricate.

I do not know why this lovely man, whose work has never contained a whiff of meanness or cruelty, chose to end his life so cruelly. It was a life dedicated to the impossible task of getting as many of us as possible laughing long and hard, mostly at ourselves. Perhaps he felt that in our willingness to laugh together, we might just decide to put an end to useless hate and mindless violence.

Perhaps he read the most recent headlines detailing the horrendous woes we humans bring upon one another. Perhaps he realized that even his frenetic comic energy could not make enough of us laugh to overwhelm our darker impulses. If he was indeed suffering the early stages of Parkinson’s, that too could have been a factor. I don’t know.

I do know this. Robin Williams’ fine wish to spend himself in his frantic, crazy, wild, and sublimely funny effort to make us laugh provided us a great gift none of us deserved. Maybe we should have laughed just a bit more.