Robin
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Cecil B. DeMille Award (2005)
GRAMMY AWARDS
Best Comedy Album (Reality … What a Concept) (1980)—won
Best New Artist (1980)—nominated
Best Comedy Album (Throbbing Python of Love) (1984)—nominated
Best Comedy Album (A Night at the Met) (1988)—won
Best Comedy Album (Good Morning, Vietnam) (1989)—won
Best Recording for Children (Pecos Bill) (1989)—won
Best Spoken Word Album for Children (Jumanji) (1997)—nominated
Best Spoken Comedy Album (Robin Williams: Live on Broadway) (2003)—won
Best Comedy Album (Weapons of Self Destruction) (2011)—nominated
PRIME-TIME EMMY AWARDS
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (Mork & Mindy) (1979)—nominated
Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Musical Program (Carol, Carl, Whoopi and Robin) (1987)—won
Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Musical Program (ABC Presents: A Royal Gala) (1988)—won
Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Homicide: Life on the Street) (1994)—nominated
Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Musical Program (Comic Relief VII) (1996)—nominated
Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Musical Program (Robin Williams: Live on Broadway) (2003)—nominated
Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program (Robin Williams: Live on Broadway) (2003)—nominated
Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) (2008)—nominated
Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special (Robin Williams: Weapons of Self Destruction) (2010)—nominated
SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWARDS
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (The Birdcage) (1997)—won
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (Good Will Hunting) (1998)—nominated
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role (Good Will Hunting) (1998)—won
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (Lee Daniels’ The Butler) (2014)—nominated
NOTES
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PROLOGUE
a Barbary Coast whorehouse: Paul Henninger, “Try Laughing This Show Off,” San Bernardino County (CA) Sun, October 8, 1977.
CHAPTER 1. PUNKY AND LORD POSH
on the northeast corner of Opdyke Road and Woodward Avenue: These descriptions are taken from Bloomfield Legacy 9, no. 2 (Fall 2014), and from Robin’s own remembrances of the house, offered on Inside the Actors Studio, June 10, 2001.
It was his exclusive domain: Dotson Rader, “What Really Makes Life Fun,” Parade, September 20, 1998.
“The craziness comes from my mother”: Joan Goodman, “Robin Williams Gets a Tall Order in Popeye,” London Times, March 18, 1981.
Robin would describe himself as having been an overweight child: Superstars & Their Moms, ABC, May 3, 1987.
“Daddy, Daddy, come upstairs”: Lawrence Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams,” Playboy, October 1982.
in an eight-year span, he attended six different schools: Don Freeman, “Way Out,” TV Guide, October 28–November 3, 1978.
“It’s the contradiction of what people say about comedy and pain”: Nancy Collins, “Robin Williams,” Interview, August 1986.
a portrait photograph of Rob and Laurie Williams: Kristin Delaplane Conti, The McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. iii. This book was commissioned by Robin Williams and Marsha Garces Williams for the family’s personal reference and self-published in 2002.
“Picture George Burns and Gracie Allen”: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
Robert Fitz-Gerrell Williams: His middle name is often misspelled as Fitzgerald.
He was born in 1906: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 59.
“periodic toots”: Ibid.
“I don’t want you to do this anymore”: Ibid.
Rob and his first wife: Kevin Fagan, “Robert Williams Dies—Winemaker, Bar Owner and Bon Vivant,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 16, 2007.
a lieutenant commander on the USS Ticonderoga: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 61.
he soon returned to work at Ford: Ibid., pp. 61–62.
Rob met an effervescent young divorcée named Laurie McLaurin Janin: Ibid., p. 35.
“the minute he walked in, people were at attention”: Ibid., p. 36.
“He definitely had ‘IT’”: Ibid.
When the couple miscommunicated over a canceled date: Ibid.
Laurie was born in 1922: Ibid., p. 9.
her father, Robert Armistead Janin, was Catholic: Ibid., p. 11.
The couple had separated by the time their daughter was five: Ibid., p. 10.
the MacLaren clan of Scotland: Ibid., p. 3.
Laurie’s great-grandfather Anselm Joseph McLaurin: Ibid., p. 6.
cut off from this aristocratic heritage: Ibid., p. 12.
“I never knew when I woke up each day”: Ibid., p. 13.
“It made me realize that we cannot drink”: Ibid., p. 14.
the Great Depression nearly wiped out Robert Smith: Ibid., p. 23.
“we didn’t have a colored servant”: Ibid., p. 55.
she moved to Pass Christian, Mississippi: Ibid., p. 24.
then back again to New Orleans: Ibid., p. 28.
she performed as an actress in the French Quarter: Ibid., p. 29.
At the start of World War II, she was working for the Weather Bureau: Ibid., p. 30.
she met a young naval officer named William Musgrave: Ibid., p. 31. By coincidence, William Musgrave was also from Evansville, Indiana, where Rob Williams had grown up.
Frank Lloyd Wright and Henry Miller: Ibid.
When the war ended and William Musgrave returned home: Ibid., p. 32.
gave birth to their son, Laurin McLaurin Musgrave: Ibid., p. 33.
a model for the Marshall Field’s department store: Ibid., p. 36.
On June 3, 1950, they were wed: Ibid.
an apartment on Chicago’s north side: Ibid., p. xii.
On July 21, 1951, Laurie delivered their son: Ibid., p. 37. The hospital has since been absorbed into Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
natural childbirth was “giving birth without makeup”: Dotson Rader, “Guess Who’s Back on TV,” Parade, September 15, 2013.
the medical staff there peppered her with questions: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 37.
Laurie would still unhesitatingly describe Susie as “colored”: Ibid.
“She wouldn’t put up with anything”: The Whoopi Goldberg Show, September 18, 1992.
Shortly after Robin’s birth: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 39.
Rob, an astute negotiator: Ibid.
the family almost never took vacations: Aljean Harmetz, “Robin Williams: Comedy for a Narcissistic Time,” New York Times, December 28, 1978.
one of his childhood nicknames was “Leprechaun”: Ibid.
in at least one such photo, she faces off against him: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 40.
a beloved sight gag for which she would cut apart a rubber band: As Laurie demonstrates in the Superstars & Their Moms TV special.
a book, supposedly written by an English princess: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
“Spider crawling on the wall”: Ibid.
“I love you in blue”: Ibid.
“then I tried to find things to make her laugh”: Inside the Actors Studio, June 10, 2001.
“the need for that primal connection”: Rader, “What Really Makes Life Fun.”
“my mother has never met a stranger”: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 56.
“Lord Stokesbury, Viceroy to India”: Ibid., p. 65.
“Lord Posh”: David Ansen, “Funny Man: The Comic Genius of Robin Williams,” Newsweek, July 7, 1986.
“the Pasha”: Rader, “What Really Makes Life Fun.”
returning home from school with an envelope: Ellen Hawkes, “The Transformation of Robin Williams,” Reader’s Digest, February 1999.
“It all went in and stayed there”: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 63.
“He’s very shy, very quiet”: Ibid., p. 70.
After “a couple of cocktails, he got very happy”: Inside the Actors Studio, June 10, 2001.
Robin was allowed to stay up past his bedtime: Freeman, “Way Out.”
“My dad was a sweet man, but not an easy laugh”: Robin Williams, “A Madman, but Angelic,” New York Times, April 15, 2013.
his legendary performance in which the host offered him a stick: The Jack Paar Program, April 10, 1964. This memorable routine did not occur on Paar’s Tonight Show but rather on the prime-time NBC variety series he hosted after stepping down from Tonight. Archived at http://bit.ly/2bWgdpy.
When Winters, a US Marine, returned from combat: Williams, “A Madman, but Angelic.”
“He was performing comedic alchemy”: Ibid.
Washington Road, in Lake Forest: Susan Carlson, “Lake Forest Remembers Former Resident Robin Williams,” NBC Chicago, August 12, 2014.
“a big house, in a neighborhood of fairly big houses”: Author interview with Jeff Hodgen.
“We’d go up on the garage roof”: Author interview with Jon Welsh.
“We’d take it out on the lawn and tunnel under it”: Ibid.
“He had an almost artificial, squared-up, shoulders-back thing”: Ibid.
He had grown up with his mother in Versailles, Kentucky: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 66.
“I played too much. So much for higher education”: Ibid.
“I was determined not to like her out of loyalty to my mom”: Ibid., p. xi.
“I’d do something bad, Pop would be mad”: Ibid.
“I was the other way and just full of hell”: Ibid., p. 62.
“Todd always extorted all my money”: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
“She’s their daughter and my mother”: Author interview with McLaurin Smith-Williams.
McLaurin could now decide whether he wished to live: The timeline here is somewhat fuzzy. Robin has said he first became acquainted with his half brothers at the age of ten (see, e.g., Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams”), and McLaurin recalls being introduced to him at that age (when McLaurin was about thirteen or fourteen). This would indicate it occurred while the Williamses were living in Lake Forest, Illinois; however, McLaurin says he met Robin when the family lived in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
“growing up as a quote-unquote only child”: Author interview with McLaurin Smith-Williams.
“We were both very private, solitary-type individuals”: Ibid.
“they’d fish the car out of the river”: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 64.
“He had a very strong personality and he would have his own way”: Author interview with McLaurin Smith-Williams.
“It was kind of the devil you know versus the devil you don’t”: Ibid.
“He said, ‘They get along so well. I don’t understand it’”: Ibid.
“Robin would say, occasionally, that he was brought up as an only child”: Author interview with Frankie Williams.
“I always thought he looked a little British”: Author interview with Christie Platt. Her maiden name was Mercer.
“the bullies wanted to put me in my place”: Author interview with Jeff Hodgen.
“I started telling jokes in the seventh grade”: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
“He just wasn’t in school. ‘Where’s Robin?’”: Author interview with Jon Welsh.
“He left without much of a ripple”: Author interview with Christie Platt.
“the kids who’ve been moved from one military post to another”: Author interview with Jon Welsh.
“I was always the new boy. This makes you different”: Freeman, “Way Out.”
“there were no other kids in the neighborhood”: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
Susie … John and Johnnie Etchen … their son Alfred: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 41. Alfred Etchen died in 2008.
“I didn’t realize how lonely Robin had been”: Ibid.
“My world was bounded by thousands of toy soldiers”: Harmetz, “Robin Williams: Comedy for a Narcissistic Time.”
“My imagination was my friend, my companion”: “The Robin Williams Show: Sixty Characters in Search of a Maniac,” Time, October 2, 1978.
the school’s navy and gold colors: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
“They’d bring in a busload from an all-girls’ school”: Ibid.
“some kid from upstate who looked like he was twenty-three and balding”: Ibid.
“the chance to take out your aggressions on somebody your own size”: Ibid.
“really idealistic, really left-leaning, really believed in democracy”: Author interview with Sue Campbell. John Campbell died in 2007.
Robin continued to slip one-liners into otherwise sober speeches: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
He was a member of the school’s honor roll: Blue and Gold ’68 (yearbook), Detroit Country Day School, Birmingham, Michigan, 1968.
“I was looking forward to a very straight existence”: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
“I know there are fifteen young hotshot kids in there”: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 62.
He parted ways with the company in 1967: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 45.
“an elephants’ graveyard” with “a lot of old rich people”: Ibid.
Rob accepted a job at First National Bank: Ibid., p. 63.
CHAPTER 2. THE ESCAPE ARTIST
nearing the end of their cross-country car ride; “It scared the piss out of me”: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams”; and Michael Caleb Lester, “Robin Williams: ‘I’m Just Getting Going…,” San Francisco, July 1983.
“I’d go to church on Wednesday night”: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, pp. 46 and 63.
“Christian Dior Scientist”: Author interview with Robin Williams.
“It probably would have been easier for me to move to Mexico”: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
its students were mostly affluent and mostly white: Log ’69, Redwood High School, Larkspur, California, 1969.
who called him a geek: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
his first Hawaiian shirt: Ibid.
courses in psychology, 16-millimeter filmmaking, and black studies: Ibid.
he boldly ran for senior president at Redwood: “All but the Sophomores Vote Slates,” Daily Independent Journal, January 28, 1969.
“his only thing that brought him into the groups”: Author interview with Douglas Basham.
he did eventually try it on “an astrological scavenger hunt”: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
Robin remembered ascending the heights of Mount Tamalpais: Ibid.
male runners keep their hair at a “reasonable length”: “Parent Upset over Track Haircut Rules,” Daily Independent Journal, March 4, 1969.
“These are communists that are doing this”: Author interview with Douglas Basham. Basham would briefly lose his job at Redwood High School for refusing to enforce Shaw’s haircut rule but was later reinstated and went on to teach and coach there until his retirement in 1995.
a member of the school’s honor society: Log ’69, Redwood Hi
gh School, Larkspur, California, 1969, pp. 182–83.
a performer in its satirical senior farewell play: Author interview with Phillip Culver.
“He would tell me the conversations that were going on”: Ibid.
Todd had recently been discharged from the air force: Conti, McLaurin & Williams Family Histories, p. 67.
When Todd revived a San Francisco nightspot called Mother Fletcher’s: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
where he planned to study to become a foreign-service officer: Ibid. The school is now known as Claremont McKenna College.
“Anybody that went to Claremont was expected”: Author interview with Dick Gale.
“a time when everybody was being told: question authority”: Author interview with Mary Alette Davis. Her maiden name was Hinderle.
“Like going from Sing Sing to a Gestalt nudist camp”: Lawrence Grobel, “Robin Williams: The Playboy Interview,” Playboy, January 1992.
“We could yell, ‘Go Nads!’”: Author interview with Bob Davis. He is the husband of Mary Alette Davis.
“I saw this really cute boy in the stairwell”: Author interview with Christie Platt.
“I had one or two steady girlfriends in high school”: Collins, “Robin Williams.”
“after my first day, I was hooked”: Linderman, “Playboy Interview: Robin Williams.”
a San Francisco spin-off of Chicago’s Second City: “Scripps to Present Improvised Theater,” Pomona (CA) Progress-Bulletin, October 13, 1971. Among the connective tissue that these theaters shared, they each employed Del Close, the revered actor and director who codified many of the rules still used in contemporary improv.
“not only a way to do theater”: Author interview with Bob Davis.
“It’s actually quite a good life theory”: Author interview with Paul Tepper.
create Claremont’s earliest improv group, known as Karma Pie: Ibid. The group was also sometimes known as Karma Pi, for reasons its own members cannot entirely recall.
A local newspaper critic who attended one of their performances: Joseph H. Firman, “College Actors Have More Fun Than Audience,” Pomona (CA) Progress-Bulletin, January 16, 1970.
“He was doing it the same way all of us were doing it”: Author interview with Bob Davis.
“I’ve got to say that he doesn’t really follow the rules of improv”: Author interview with Mary Alette Davis.