For my final paper I decided to look into Robin Williams because I realized that his comedy in World’s Greatest Dad was the type of comedy that I enjoy. He was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1951. He grew up as a shy and quiet child until he became apart of the school plays. One thing that I learned about him was that he lived for a bit in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. This is interesting to me because that is close to where I grew up and he went to a private school called Detroit Country Day and that was a school that always beat us in sports. Another interesting fact that I found was that he was voted by his class “Most Likely Not to Succeed”. Obviously they were wrong which makes this fact that much more interesting. In 1973 he got a full ride to the Juilliard School in New York. His roommate would say that he had so much energy and that no one believed that this person had this much of it. In his junior year there he decided to leave because everyone had told him that Juilliard could not teach him anything else because of how skilled he was. After that he wound up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid 1970’s and was doing stand up at the Holy City Zoo. He is said to have started the Comedy Renaissance. His first television spot was on an attempt to revive the show Laugh-In. The show flopped but his television career did not. His first major television role was in Happy Days as Mork. The audience loved him so much and William’s did such an amazing job he was given his own spin off show of that that lasted from 1978 to 1982. This is the show that really started his career and made him into the superstar that he was. His first film was in 1977 and it was called Can I Do It… ‘Til I Need Glasses?. After that his first major performance was in Popeye and that was a commercial flop. However, it gave him the opportunity to showcase his comedic and acting skills that propelled him into more and more incredible productions. He had other small time parts but the movie that was considered his big break was Good Morning, Vietnam. He was basically given free rain on whatever he wanted to say. Most of what he said was improvised. The last movie that he starred in was called The Angriest Man in Brooklyn. It was about the value of life. He played a man who was terminally ill and wants to redeem himself. Also during his career he did many voice acting jobs. His most famous being the Genie in Aladdin. In it he was able to improvise much of the dialog and speech and impersonated many famous people such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Robert De Niro. He actually did not want to do this movie because of all the toys and novelty items that they would normally sell. He did it for a couple different reasons. One was that he wanted to be apart of the animation process. Another was that he wanted to do it for his children so that they could watch it and enjoy hearing their dad in the movie. He also made sure that they did not sell anything such as toys and Burger King stuff. He did other animated movies like Happy Feet and Robots and many more. I have actually seen both of those movies and have fond memories of going to the theater to watch them and hearing his voice in them and thinking about Aladdin. When he died in 2014 he had been in four movies that had not been released yet. Those were Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, A merry Friggin’ Christmas, Boulevard, and Absolutely Anything. He was also supposed to be in a sequel to one of his most famous movies Mrs. Doubtfire. That movie was permanently shelved and will not be made. He also did theater shows such as Waiting for Godot.
He had multiple marriages starting with Valerie Velardi in June 1978. In that marriage he had a son named Zachary Pym “Zak” Williams. They were than divorced in 1988. His next marriage was with Marsha Garces in 1989. She was Zak’s nanny and was pregnant with William’s child. They had two children the first being Zelda Rae Williams and the second being Cody Alan Williams. They were than divorced in 2010.
One interest that he had that made him unique was that he was a big fan of cycling. He mostly starting doing it to distract him from drugs and other hindrances. After a while he started to love the sport and would travel to see the events. One being the Tour De France.
One important part of his life was that he helped found Comic Relief USA. It’s goal was to help the homeless and raise money. He talks about how he grew up in a nice home with many privileges that he was honored to have. Because of this, he wanted to give back in any way possible. He would preform for troops as a regular and was said to have been to 13 different countries and preformed for almost 100,000 troops. Also notable organizations that he helped were St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Red Cross, and a mayoral building fund in New Zealand after the earthquake that hit them.
He had many different addiction problems. One being addicted to cocaine. He also did other drugs and was an alcoholic for most of his life. The main reason that he quit drugs and alcohol the first time was a combination of his casual friend John Belushi dying and the birth of his son Zak. As previously stated cycling also helped curve his addiction and he had said once that “cycling saved my life”. In 2003 he had started to drink again while working on The Big White. Than in 2006 he checked himself in a substance-abuse rehabilitation center in Oregon. He came out and said that he had a problem with sobriety, but one thing that he would never go back to was cocaine. A reason that people may have thought that he had killed himself was the fact that before his death he was told that he had early stages of Parkinson’s.
He had a unique style of comedy that set him apart. He never shied away from talking about his own life and his own troubles. He also had a free-form style that other comedians would attach to such as Jim Carrey. His style made him act one way and get the audience going and than he would shift into something else and still keep the audience going. He had a rapid-fire improvisational style that others wanted to be like but no one ever truly tried to copy it.
Robin Williams is someone that touched many lives in his time. He was someone that even today makes people of all ages laugh and enjoy themselves. He was one of the best comedians out there and was always known as a national treasure and will always will be because of his comedy is able to reach out and touch multiple different generations.
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