April has been terrible with loss. Today we have lost another of the greats. Award winning comedian, actor, writer, impressionist, and recording artist Jonathan Winters passed away today. More of my childhood has gone away.
When I was a kid, Jonathan Winters was everywhere. He was always a guest star on various sitcoms and variety shows, even game shows and talk shows. I'm pretty sure he even had a few short-lived shows of his own as well. His manic improv and madcap characters were always a treat for me.
I loved him in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and it was a family event whenever the film aired in our household. We always couldn't wait for him to tear the gas station apart. Classic classic comedy. Below you can see that scene, as well as Winters talking a bit about it, and how it helped him come back from a breakdown.
Later I loved the man in the 1994 version The Shadow, playing it straight as he also did in the dark comedy The Loved One and an episode of "The Twilight Zone" called "A Game of Pool."
Winters also did voice acting in animation, recorded dozens of comedy albums, wrote poetry, and appeared in television programs as myriad as "Hee Haw," "The American Sportsman," and "The New Scooby-Doo Movies." His final movie role will be the voice of Papa Smurf in The Smurfs 2. We have truly lost another of the legends.
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