Robin Williams - When the Laughter Stops 1951-2014 (7 page)

This was brought home in an episode (‘Mork Meets Robin Williams’) from 1981 that was frankly self-indulgent. Mindy goes out and buys an album by the comic Robin Williams. On returning home she realises he is the spitting image of Mork. Robin himself then enters and debates the
nature of massive celebrity and, when Mork tunes in to Orson, he tells him, ‘Being a star is a twenty-four hour job and you can’t leave your face at the office… some of them can’t take it.’ He then lists the names of some of those who were destroyed by the pressures of fame: Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon… Given that this episode aired just two months after Lennon’s death, the message was loud and clear: fame can be fatal. It was admittedly an eerie presentiment of Williams’ own fate, to say nothing of an indication of his state of mind, but it was having his cake and eating it. Nor was it funny and it was not what the audience wanted.

It did, however, give some indication of what was happening behind the scenes. In a few short years Williams had gone from virtual unknown to being one of the most famous men in the world and this was bound to take its toll. Even the most balanced and stable of beings would have found it difficult to deal with and he was neither of those things. In addition, a part of him resented that he was now so closely associated with his alien creation: when he went out to perform live at nightclubs, which he still very much did (often after a day’s filming), the audience would shout, ‘Do Mork!’ But Robin didn’t want to do Mork.

Always prone to self-destruction, now the crisis really began. Along with his friend and fellow comedian John Belushi, Williams was getting heavily into drugs and alcohol and this was taking its toll on everything in his life. Now that he was famous and increasingly rich, women
were beginning to throw themselves at him. Frequently drunk and/or high, he wasn’t always turning them down. Of course, this was bound to have a detrimental effect on his marriage and it did. Matters were becoming extremely fraught behind the scenes.

At first Valerie seemed able to cope. She wanted to fight for her man. ‘Look, I’m a product of Goddard College,’ she told
Rolling Stone
in 1982 in an extremely revealing interview that hinted at much greater turmoil in the background. ‘Are you familiar with it? And one thing it’s taught me is that you can guide people; you can make yourself interesting enough and important enough in your lover’s life so that he’ll always come back to you if you just keep growing along with it. If you just be part of their rhythm and give them a lot of freedom and be part of their growth instead of pulling them back from what is titillating and exciting. Let’s face it, Robin is a stimulus junkie.’

He certainly was, far more so than anyone yet realised. Now not only was the situation reaching a point where it was unsustainable, it was also increasingly difficult to live with. But Valerie was putting a brave face on it – for now. Asked about other women, she replied, ‘That means no, in a situation like that – it’s a rough one, because I could be misquoted horribly. See, the thing is, it was never any one woman. It was lots of women, and I’m not sure he had something intimately to do with them all. Most of it was just hanging out. He loves women and he likes hanging out with women. I have this letter from a woman who
Robin was seen around town with. They were supposed to be having a hot, uh, affair, and I got to know her and she was lovely. They just wanted to hang out. I can’t stop him from having dinner with a woman he likes. That’s none of my business, just like I wouldn’t like him to stop me from hanging out with anyone I wanted to go out with. If he can’t have women friends and I can’t have men friends, if you have to keep assuming the worst every time someone finds someone else to enrich their lives in some way, what kind of a world is this?’

What about jealousy? ‘I get jealous. I’d only get jealous if I felt someone were taking my place,’ she went on. ‘And it’s always been very clear that we’ve got it. It’s us. It doesn’t sit right, but under extraordinary circumstances, which we are under, if you don’t make the necessary adjustments, then you can lose precious things. That’s not to say that gives us the license to go off and screw everything that’s around. It’s just the freedom to at least feel like we’re free individuals as opposed to being married and locked in and you can’t go out tonight because I know so and so is there and she’s hot and pretty and I’m afraid you’re gonna get involved with her. He’s never gonna get involved with anyone without me knowing about it. And the other way doesn’t work. You can’t hold somebody in. They resent you, hate you, you become boring and unattractive. If I had jumped the gun and divorced him, I would have lost the most precious thing in my life and it would have curtailed our experience together, which is a lot richer than anything he can get off the street.’

Valerie’s resilience was extremely admirable but it was never going to work. The relationship was becoming increasingly stormy: Robin was essentially doing what he wanted and provoking her so badly that she would storm out, take herself off for a few days’ hiking, sometimes go on holiday and only come back when she had calmed down. Her attitude at that stage was that, while Robin might have been behaving badly, the other women didn’t mean anything to him. She was his wife, after all. But while this was true, it was increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that success had turned her husband into a drug-abusing womaniser. Matters were, in fact, going to get even messier but she was intent on keeping things going for now.

And who can blame her? In some respects, life had improved for her too: being married to a big star might entail its own pressures but, at the same time, the couple were beginning to experience a very decent standard of living indeed. It wasn’t just the best tables at the best restaurants; everyone wanted to meet Robin these days. He was talked about everywhere and that sort of fame opened the kind of doors that are closed to most of us. And then again, of course, when he was on form, Robin was stunningly good company. Valerie, understandably, wanted the relationship to work out.

By now Robin had bought a house in Topanga Canyon and another car: an old Land Rover – ‘I can’t deal with new cars. I like a car that’s like me – you never know what’s going to happen next.’ He was certainly not that interested
in material things for their own sake, although by now the money was coming in fast.

What he did want though was a Hollywood career and, in 1980, he made his proper film debut in what was widely considered to be a disappointment:
Popeye
, with Shelley Duvall co-starring as Olive Oyl. (He had also appeared in a 1977 film,
Can I Do It ’Till I Need Glasses
. Mercifully, this had been forgotten and is almost never mentioned in the Williams’ oeuvre. It sank like a trace and deservedly so.) There had been high hopes resting on this, his latest production, not least because the director was Robert Altman and the producer Robert Evans (the original leads had been scheduled to be Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin), but the musical comedy was a critical flop (although not a commercial one, comfortably raking in twice its $30 million budget at the box office).

One problem was the plot, which was confusing and all over the place. Not all the critics hated it but some certainly did. ‘E.C. Segar’s beloved sailorman boards a sinking ship with this astonishingly boring musical,’ wrote respected critic Leonard Maltin in his movie guide. ‘A game cast does its best with an unfunny script, cluttered staging and some alleged songs. Tune into a few hours’ worth of Max Fleischer cartoons instead; you’ll be much better off.’ The only aspect of the movie to garner praise was Harry Nilsson’s soundtrack, which was well received. But for the rest of it, most people thought it was a bit of a mess.

It was a disappointing debut for someone of whom so
much was now expected but Robin took it on the chin. He had several more seasons of
Mork & Mindy
to go and producers and directors were still queuing up to work with him. While some flops have brought film careers to a premature end, this was certainly not the case here. Williams was riding higher and higher on a wave of adulation as Hollywood continued to savour the talented newcomer and only his inner circle knew that he was paying a terrible price. His drug taking was increasingly out of control and his marriage still suffered because, intoxicated by everything coming his way, he behaved like a child let loose in a candy store when it came to women. Valerie could only look on and despair.

It wasn’t just the wealth and fame that made him attractive either. Robin genuinely liked women and was a terrible flirt. On top of that, his wit and vivacity were enormously attractive in themselves, let alone in someone who was fast becoming such a huge star. Valerie persevered and the marriage was to last for a while yet but it was becoming increasingly difficult for the couple to maintain a happy façade. There were rows and unhappiness and, although Valerie sometimes thought that Robin had turned a corner, the truth was that he hadn’t. He was fast becoming known as a drug-taking womaniser and it would take a tragedy to force him to confront the fact that his demons were now spiraling out of control.

By the early 1980s Williams was certain about what he wanted to do: to go into mainstream acting. This had, after all, been the initial intention: he had trained at The Juilliard as an actor, not a stand-up comic and, if they hadn’t seen his potential there, the fault was with them. And while
Popeye
had been a disappointment, there were plenty more projects in the pipeline. But what he went for next startled everyone.

The World According To Garp
(1982) was John Irving’s fourth novel, a bestseller and winner of the National Book Award for Fiction. It was to be turned into a film, coincidentally also starring John Lithgow in a leading role. (Lithgow later starred in the TV series
3rd Rock From The Sun
[1996–2001], another alien in a suburban-setting comedy, which owed a great deal to
Mork & Mindy
.) It started with Jenny Fields (Glenn Close, at that point not yet very famous – this was her screen debut), a nurse in the Second World War who impregnates herself via a dying soldier known only as Garp. She duly gives birth to a son.

Garp grows up to become a successful writer, married to Helen Holm (Mary Beth Hurt), with whom he has two children, Duncan and Walt, while Jenny turns into something of a feminist icon. Helen becomes involved with one of her students, something Garp finds out about, and he crashes into his wife’s lover’s car as she performs a sex act on him. Walt is killed in the crash and Duncan hurt in one eye. Despite this, the couple somehow reconcile and go on to have another child, Jenny.

The original Jenny is now running a centre for transsexuals, and it is on a visit to the centre that Garp hears about Ellen James, a girl who was gang-raped and then had her tongue cut out so that she could not identify her attackers. Some of the women at Jenny’s centre are ‘Ellen Jamesians’, women who voluntarily cut out their own tongues in a show of solidarity. Garp is horrified by
the practice and learns that the Jamesians have received a letter from Ellen James herself begging them to stop this practice but they have voted to refuse.

Jenny is the subject of death threats and so, too, after he writes a book about Ellen James, is Garp. Jenny is shot and killed by an anti-feminist fanatic. The women at the centre hold a memorial for her but forbid all men from attending. Dressed as a woman, Garp is secreted into the memorial but his identity becomes known and he is in danger from the women, one of whom leads him out and turns out to be Ellen James. However, he, too, is eventually shot and, as he is taken away in an air ambulance, he has one last memory of his mother tossing him into the air as a child.

Mork & Mindy
it was not, nor indeed
Popeye
. This was a solid, meaty dramatic role that needed an actor of some skill and ability to take it on and, given that Williams was known almost entirely for the role of Mork and his stand-up comedy, the world of show business was astounded when news of the casting leaked out.

‘A lot of people thought I was crazy to cast Robin,’ director George Roy Hill (
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid/The Sting
) told
New York Magazine
in an interview before the film was released. ‘But you make these decisions instinctively. I’d seen him as Popeye and didn’t understand a word he said. I’d seen him once as Mork and didn’t understand him either. I thought he was just a stand-up comic. But on meeting him, I felt he had a sense of decency that was important. Garp is an abrasive man, but
his underlying decency is a key part of the character, and I felt Robin was the sort of actor who could provide that. I hope I’m right.’

In fact, he turned out to be one of the first in Hollywood to see that Robin Williams was far more than the comic he had previously been regarded as. A superbly gifted actor, he had the depth and emotional intelligence to take on a more serious role.
The World According To Garp
was billed as a comedy drama, although it dealt with extremely serious issues and was, therefore, bound to be controversial.

‘Robin is an extraordinary talent,’ George Roy Hill said. ‘He’s an actor, a real actor, not just a comedian who is put into a role requiring acting. He can go the whole distance if he puts his mind to it. I’d say he’s one of the brightest men I’ve ever met. He’s got a tremendous mind, and while he’s not an intellectual, he could qualify as one eventually. He’s quick, instinctive, funny, and warm, and one of the few comedians I’ve ever met who, while “on” a lot of the time, is not offensively “on.” Garp’s not a comic character. He’s a very serious character, but there is comedy, most of it based on reality. In the film, Robin has to go from 18 years old to 34. In fact, he’s 29, but he’s always had an old face. I’ve looked at pictures of him at 18 or 19, and he looks older, so he’s believable when he has to play that age.’

All the same, it was to prove a learning experience. Williams had to learn how to control himself: his stand-up comedy depended on a rapid-fire delivery, as did his portrayal of the alien Mork – indeed, his ability to talk so
quickly was one of the many things that made him right for the part. George Roy Hill acknowledged this. ‘Robin had a habit we had to overcome,’ he said. ‘He’s inclined to too fast delivery – it took me a long time to slow him down to a playing speed, since his mind works so fast. I think I’ve got him slowed down enough, although maybe it’s just that I’m getting used to him.’

For Robin, too, it was quite an experience and not just in learning how to slow his delivery down. This was a world away from the kind of material he was used to: a demanding dramatic role that was not particularly easy to pull off. ‘The main problem is in making all the different ages fit together,’ he disclosed in 1981 to
New York Magazine.
‘I have to make all those phases of life and the different relationships believable. I’ve had to go really deep inside myself, to examine painful and wonderful things. There are lively scenes dealing with children; there’s a lot of death and dealing with loss. Scenes with my wife in the film are very personal, no pretense at all. I have to be very direct, very open.’

He also betrayed a real insecurity; the first public hint of a much more vulnerable personality than had ever been seen before. At that stage in his life, Williams was still very much seen as a clown: a brilliantly talented one, of course, but a clown nonetheless. No one really knew about the depths of his depression, the solitary side, the aching void within that drink and drugs and comedy were all being used to kill – no one in public, at any rate. To those close to Robin,
it was obvious that he was nothing like as straightforward as he sometimes seemed.

‘I haven’t gone to see the rushes, because I’m afraid they would jar me,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t think I’ll get a view of myself until the final cut. It’s like drowning, like running for your life. I have no perspective. It’s not like comedy or all-out farce, where I know my instincts. It’s all unknown territory. It’s like being in combat. I finished one day of shooting and thought, “God, I died.” Even though it was only a single scene, I had this bizarre feeling, and I wept for a couple of hours after it. When I finally see the film, I’ll look back and say, “I did that.” I’ll be proud. I feel proud now, but I just can’t say it yet because it’s not over. It’s a gamble. It’s scary, really bizarre, because every time you do something totally new, you suddenly think, “Oh, no. Now it’s over. From now on I’ll be selling the
National Enquirer
door to door.”’

Of course, many actors have that terrible sense of insecurity: that one day they will be found out and will have to return to the life they led before. But in Robin’s case, this was accentuated by the fact that it had all happened so fast. It almost didn’t matter that
Mork & Mindy
was, by now, fast losing ratings and would shortly be coming to an end. He had made the leap into the big time but, in common with so many others, he couldn’t see the strength of his own position. In the midst of the maelstrom that was now his life, he couldn’t see clearly that he was now so sought after that a successful career was pretty much assured from then on.

‘I’m amazed and in shock sometimes,’ he confessed when asked about his fame by
New York Magazine.
‘Sometimes I feel like I could be back to ground zero again. I go through these phases of getting terrified. I can’t really cope with them because they’re debilitating. I have to try new things – like
Garp
– push myself out. You know – the next chance. Because my greatest fear is of becoming mediocre, just falling back into the old rut and turning out the same old stuff without really finding anything new. That’s also true for life – just trying not to get stuck, this fear of falling back, sinking back into myself.’

But at least his relationship with Valerie was currently on an even keel. For Robin wasn’t just slowing his delivery, he was slowing the manic pace of his life as well and was appreciating his wife and his marriage. After all, Valerie had known him before he was famous and one major issue for many of the rich and famous is whether their friends and partners like them because of their status or who they really are. That was not an issue: having married Robin when he was a complete unknown, Valerie was one of the few people with whom he could really be himself.

‘She should really go back and teach,’ he told
New York Magazine.
‘She has a very strong pride about not wanting to be known as Mrs. Robin Williams.

‘In the beginning there were no managers, no press people, just the two of us. She was important just being there, going to clubs with me, hanging out with me. Now we’ve gone beyond that into another phase. It’s sheer emotional.
It’s nice to come home to somebody who knows you. I can sit down and not say anything. Sometimes I pass out. The other day I was wrestling for thirteen hours. I couldn’t say anything when I got back. I don’t have to entertain or do anything. She understands. I love her so much. I look at her sometimes and feel very peaceful. We’ve been through crazy things, the wild and wooly times. Now it’s like, “Look – land!”
Garp
has kicked off something in me. The really simple things please me now. I like taking long walks, being outside, just doing things with friends more than I did before. It’s wonderful. Before, I had to go out and party, perform, and always be “on.” Now I’m content to listen and sit back.’

For now, at least… there was trauma yet to come.

The World According To Garp
was released in July 1982 and Williams was a revelation, to the critics at least. They did not necessarily award the film entirely positive reviews, not least because many appeared to like neither the odd story nor the book upon which it was based, but they were impressed by what they had seen.

‘Robin Williams displays the acting chops that would win him an Oscar,’ said Alex Sandell of
Juicy Cerebellum.
‘Good effort, sometimes nearly great,’ declared Ken Hanke in the
Mountain Xpress.

‘Steve Tesich adapted
The World According to Garp
for the screen, and George Roy Hill directed,’ wrote Frederic and Mary Ann Brussart in
Spirituality and Practice.
‘Tesich’s sterling humanism and Hill’s healthy respect for life’s serio-comic
dimensions made this film one of the best movies of 1982. The performances are all top-drawer. The storyline – true to the spirit of the novel – compels us to consider the ambiguities of love, death, sex, and violence that characterize modern life.’

‘Garp just doesn’t get it, and for good reason. Despite his odd conception and upbringing, he’s the eternal Everyman,’ wrote James Kendrick of
Q Network Film Desk.
‘He just wants to have a good family, and be remembered for something. His life of suburban normalcy pales in comparison to his mother’s feminist resort, populated with tongueless women and sexually altered football players like Roberta Muldoon (John Lithgow). Robin Williams may seem like an odd choice to play such a normal guy, but he actually works well in the role. He’s good at conveying his utter bewilderment at the strange goings-on around him, while Jenny just stands back and smiles, never once thinking that any of this is odd.’

Meanwhile,
Variety
was complimentary about the film, though not entirely sure about Robin. ‘Garp grows up in a placid academic environment, and the grown man in the person of Robin Williams appears after only 25 minutes,’ it wrote. ‘He meets and marries Mary Beth Hurt, raises his family, fitfully pursues his writing while she teaches, has skirmishes with the feminists at his mother’s mansion, and all the while tries to avoid the “undertoad”, the unseen, pervasive threat which lurks everywhere and strikes without warning. Physically, Williams is fine, but
much of the performance is hit-and-miss. Otherwise, casting is superior. Hurt is excellent as Garp’s wife. Glenn Close proves a perfect choice as Jenny Fields, a woman of almost ethereal simplicity. Best of all, perhaps, is John Lithgow as Roberta Muldoon, a former football player, now a transsexual.’

Time Out
also wasn’t convinced. ‘Williams is cuddly enough as the man whose talents for nurturing a family are constantly undermined by a malign fate, and there is a performance of some dignity from Lithgow as a six-and-a-half-foot ex-pro footballer transsexual,’ it said. ‘But it’s the kind of movie which is brave – or stupid – enough to ask the meaning of life without having enough arse in its breeches to warrant a reply.’

Some noted the development in Robin’s career from comic to actor. ‘Mr. Williams is at his most affecting with the children; he makes a fond, playful father, a man perfectly at home in a suit of make believe armor made of welcome mats and garbage-can lids,’ wrote Janet Maslin in
The New York Times.
‘Mr. Williams’s role is a very demanding one, calling on him to age from a teenager to a family man, a process he has trouble with. His performance is engaging but erratic, more effective in the clownier, busier scenes than in those that ask him to recite lines or stand still. Mr. Williams is much less compelling at rest than he is when free to represent Garp through action. When the role doesn’t call for movement of some kind, he falters.’