The lastLIFE STORY Words VANE SS A M c u CULLO CH l21 July a1951 – 11 August 2014gh OBIN WILLIAMS WAS His college yearbook ONCE ASKED what he hoped heaven! was like. ‘It called him the would be nice to know that ‘funniest’ in his class, Rthere was laughter,’ he replied. ‘To [arrive there and] hear God go, “Two Jews walked but also ‘the least likely into a bar…”’ to succeed’. So much When the news came in August that the man who had brought joy to millions for that: around the world had decided to bow out of the biggest show of all, his fans flocked Robin Williams to remember him. Flowers and tributes went on to garner piled up around the bench in Boston’s Public Garden that he sat on in Good Will indisputable success: Hunting, at the gates of the California house as an Oscar winner, from Mrs. Doubtfire and the Colorado set of ’70s TV series Mork & Mindy, where it all father, and spreader began. Such was the disbelief at the news of compassion and glee that his Wikipedia page crashed due to traffic. ‘Robin Williams was an airman, 000 marie claire NOVEMBER 2014 marieclaire.co.za 000 LIFE STORY ‘i can’t stAND to see to his high-voltage existence plus a publicised ‘I’m not that. Do I perform sometimes affair with a waitress, his 10-year marriage to in a manic style? Yes. Am I manic all the people ISOLATED Valerie Valderi was beyond saving. They time? No. Do I get sad? Oh, yeah,’ he said, AND ALONE’ divorced in 1988 and a year later he married before turning once more to a joke. ‘I get Marsha Garces, a painter and sculptor who depressed that I wasn’t on American Idol. a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, studied acting together at The Juilliard had also been Zachary’s nanny; they had two I can sing, you know?’ a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and School) suffered a riding accident that left children, Zelda and Cody. Marsha was His second marriage also faltered but he everything in between,’ President Obama him a quadriplegic, it was Williams who credited as a calming influence on Williams. always said he was on good terms with his said. ‘But he was one of a kind.’ lifted his spirits. He burst into the hospital ‘When he’s at home,’ Marsha said in a 1990 exes – divorce, he said, was ‘ripping your He was also an unrivalled talker, room in a medical gown, declaring in family and friends FROM TOP interview, ‘he can relax enough to know he’s heart out through your wallet’, joking that interviewers reportedly drowning in a torrent a Russian accent that he was a proctologist In black tie loved even when he’s not being funny.’ they should have called it ‘all the money’, ABOVE Robin of words, unable to keep up. In an interview and it was time for Reeve’s examination. with Robin McLaurin Williams was born in not ‘alimony’. In 2009 he had to have major Williams with Christopher in the ’80s, talk-show host Barbara Walters ‘Thank God I wear a seat belt in this second wife Reeve, 1980; Chicago, the only son of a fashion model heart surgery halfway through a comedy asked a young Williams: do you ever just talk wheelchair, because I would have fallen out Marsha Garces promoting the mother and a Ford executive father. He was tour. ‘You do appreciate the little things – Williams. straight? ‘Yeah sure,’ he replied. ‘I can talk laughing,’ Reeve later said on the Today show. movie Hook a shy child, raised by nannies. He described like breathing,’ he said on The Jonathan Ross RIGHT A pic with Dustin straight for hours at a time. I don’t like to, ‘In the middle of a tragedy like this … a posted by Williams Hoffman, 1992; his mother as someone whose ‘idea of Show. But he found love again with Susan because it’s more fun to play.’ depression, [he showed me that] you can still on Instagram just with third natural childbirth was giving birth without Schneider, a designer and fellow recovered before his death experience joy and laughter and love.’ wife Susan make-up’, but said that she was ‘always alcoholic, who he married in 2011. – with his young Schneider, 2010. mprovisation and impersonations were Giving hope to others was something daughter, Zelda. funny’, sharing jokes and poems. She Williams ended his life on 11 August his comedy cornerstones. As the genie in Williams did throughout his life, quietly. He believed that ‘man was put on earth to know 2014. The heartbreaking details of his I Disney’s Aladdin (originally scripted as had immense empathy for the homeless, most loved characters, as a divorced-dad- Writing in The Guardian, comedian Russell great joy’; it was for her that Williams started suicide have been blasted out from every a small role), Williams conjured up 56 raising huge amounts of money for Comic turned-cross-dressing-nanny, Mrs. Doubtfire. Brand described Williams as being ‘on a doing little routines at home, aged 12. news source. He was being treated for different voices, from Robert De Niro to Jack Relief (‘I can’t stand to see people isolated ‘Moviegoers detected the ache in his comic geyser of comedy’ that would come ‘bursting ‘I basically started performing for her, going, serious depression, he had been back to Nicholson, and 23 hours of improvised and alone,’ he once said). His father had been panache and the sad sweetness at his core,’ through in effervescent jets’. Brand, himself “Love me!”’ he told Parade. ‘I learnt that by rehab to ‘fine-tune his sobriety’, he was material. Legend has it that the scriptwriters a WWII veteran who hated war and so, Time wrote in their tribute issue. ‘They loved a recovered addict and alcoholic, recognised being entertaining, you make a connection suffering from early stages of Parkinson’s for Mork & Mindy, the show in which he in echoes of his role in Good Morning, Vietnam, the guy. Didn’t he know that?’ Williams’ comedy high and saw his talent as with another person.’ When he won his disease… And so the news kept coming but starred as an alien, would leave blanks and he visited Iraq to entertain US soldiers. He In tributes the phrase ‘comedy genius’ has ‘always mischievous, always on the brink of Oscar for Good Will Hunting in 1998, it was his the answers didn’t. Was it money worries? simply write: ‘Mork does his thing.’ In Good called the soldiers ‘the best audience’ he’d been used with no sense of hyperbole. going wrong, dangerous and fun’. father who he thanked in his speech: ‘The Work overload (he’d filmed four films the Morning, Vietnam he was allowed to make up ever had, saying he believed that comedy was Comedian Nigel Planner remembers man who, when I said I wanted to be an previous year)? Or disappointment that his entire scenes as a verbally acrobatic, military a cathartic way to deal with personal trauma. Williams at The Comedy Store in London he early days of his career were fuelled actor, said, “Wonderful, just have a backup TV show The Crazy Ones was cancelled after DJ. ‘He had funny ideas … travelling at the Closer to home, he set up a scholarship for where stand-ups performed until the by cocaine and alcohol. He told David profession, like welding.”’ one season? speed of light,’ said director Barry Levinson, The Juilliard School, which one year enabled audience decided they were off and a gong T Letterman in 2013 that his memories His daughter Zelda, an actress and adding that there was also ‘an innocence to Jessica Chastain to study there, making her was struck. It was the ’80s, and Williams was of that time were hazy. ‘Thank God [celeb- illiams was on a career high, screenwriter, said it best: ‘He was always his thoughtful intelligence. If there were an the first person in her family to be educated an unknown name in the UK. Most gossip site] TMZ didn’t exist, because I’d have but fast-forward a decade and warm, even in his darkest moments. I’ll never endangered species list for mankind, he beyond school level. ‘It changed my life comedians lasted 10, maybe 20 minutes on been on 24 hours.’ He was with comedian W he was worried. ‘My film career understand how he could be loved so deeply would have been first on that list.’ forever,’ the Oscar-nominated star has said. stage. After an hour, Williams was still going. John Belushi at Hollywood’s Chateau wasn’t doing too well,’ he told Parade. Years of and not find it in his heart to stay… The Here was a man with twinkly eyes, a lot of When the jokes were done, Williams’ ‘It was breathtaking,’ Planner wrote in The Marmont in 1982, hours before Belushi sobriety unravelled while he was filming The entire world is forever a little darker, less hair (he once joked on Graham Norton’s sensitive side shone through in interviews. Observer. ‘He was cleverer, faster and madder overdosed. That, and the birth of his son Big White in Alaska alongside Robert De colourful and less full of laughter in his TRUNKARCHIVE.COM/PEGGY SIROTA AND REX FEATURES TRUNKARCHIVE.COM/PEGGY SIROTA show that when two beauticians waxed his Parade magazine described him as having than his audience. The only trouble was, he HS Zachary a year later, shocked him into sobriety.