Jonathan Winters

Jonathan Winters was an utter original, a wildly improvisational comic whose work careened from childlike prankishness to bitter satire and from bizarre sound effects to straight-faced moralizing -- often all within the same bit. Mercurial and manic, Winters veered from character to character and premise to premise at breakneck speed, yet with balletic grace; for all of the seeming chaos inherent in his comedy, his aesthetic remained remarkably consistent and pure, his stream-of-consciousness narratives and radical concepts all refracted through the same singularly bent worldview. In essence, Winters was comedy's first surrealist, and his groundbreaking vision paved the way for everyone from Andy Kaufman to Robin Williams. Jonathan Harshman Winters III was born in Dayton, Ohio on November 11, 1925. After serving in World War II and graduating college, he returned to Dayton to begin his career at a local radio station; although his job description called only for him to introduce records and read news and weather reports, his ad-libbed remarks and menagerie of strange voices quickly began dominating his weekday broadcasts. In the early 1950s he graduated to television, winning a recurring slot on CBS' daytime series The Garry Moore Show and introducing popular characters like farmer Elwood P. Suggins and free-spirited senior citizen Maude Frickert. After appearing on the 1955 summer-replacement series And Here's the Show, Winters was awarded his own 15-minute NBC program (aired each Tuesday following the network news) in 1956. After exiting the show a year later, he issued his 1960 debut LP, The Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters, a collection of bizarre skits which he introduced by discussing a recent stay in a sanitarium. Severe emotional difficulties plagued Winters...