Leader of the Lost Boys and a Poet
A Tribute to the Inspiring Life of Robin Williams
The odd thing about life is that we cannot fully know the extent of how well we have lived it until it is over. It is not until life has ended that its full value is determined. While we live we can only be aware of how we are living, yet once we die, it seems, it finally becomes apparent how well. When life is taken abruptly or too soon (it is truly always too soon) we, as the human race, are far more inclined to deem that life to be of higher value than we would have, perhaps, had it been a quiet and old-age caused death. Though we superfluously give out praise to the more tragic deaths, I would argue that the value posthumously placed on Robin Williams’ life was both appropriate and deserved.
Robin Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1951 to Robert Fitzgerald Williams — a senior executive for Ford’s Lincoln-Mercury — and Laurie McLaurin, a former model. Robin’s early life consisted of a healthy mix of fine arts and sports at the many schools he attended due to his father’s job transfers. He was a shy child, and was occasionally teased for his weight. It wasn’t until Williams became more involved with the drama department at his high school that he exploded from the shell in which he had been hiding and began to develop the characteristically intriguing charisma he became famous for. Williams credited his mother with instilling him with his sense of humor — saying that he often tried to make her laugh in an attempt to gain her attention and approval. As human nature depicts, Robin exemplified the idea that desire for human love and appreciation is strong motivation. We are innately wired with a nearly overwhelming desire to please. If the mind and heart are willing enough, there is virtually no limit to what the body is then capable of doing in order to achieve what the mind and heart so strongly desire. He was a shy child until he became involved in his school’s drama department.
Following his high school graduation, Robin Williams went on to attend Juilliard, on full scholarship, being one of just two students to be accepted into the Advanced Program. The other student accepted alongside Williams was Christopher Reeve — eventual famed Superman actor whose life quickly devolved following a vicious car accident — who remembered his early impression of Robin as so: “He wore tie-dyed shirts with tracksuit bottoms and talked a mile a minute. I’d never seen so much energy contained in one person. He was like an untied balloon that had been inflated and immediately released. I watched in awe as he virtually caromed off the walls of the classrooms and hallways. To say that he was “on” would be a major understatement.” Williams left Juilliard in his junior year, upon being told by one of his professors that there was truly nothing left for Juilliard to teach him.
Williams began his comedy career in San Francisco performing stand-up comedy routines. San Francisco was in the middle of its revolution for drugs, hippies, and rock and roll, and Williams is credited with leading the comedic revolution in San Francisco during that same time. Williams said he found out about “drugs and happiness” during that period, adding that he saw “the best brains of my time turned to mud.” It seems that the possession of wealth and power often leads to the temptation to partake in things uncharacteristic to a man solely due to their unfortunate tangibility. Similarly, without a strong base, it is easy for someone under pressure or in a position of vulnerability to fall prey to the desire to be at ease; the sense of ease which drugs and alcohol may provide appears all too convenient.
Like countless comedians before and after him, Robin Williams also conceded to the lifestyle of recreational alcohol and drug use. He related the habit partly to the stress of his career. Williams described the hardship he faced in the comedian’s lifestyle as, “It’s a brutal field, man. They burn out. It takes its toll. Plus, the lifestyle — partying, drinking, drugs. If you’re on the road, it’s even more brutal. You gotta come back down to mellow your ass out, and then performing takes you back up. They flame out because it comes and goes. Suddenly they’re hot, and then somebody else is hot. Sometimes they get very bitter. Sometimes they just give up. Sometimes they have a revival thing and they come back again. Sometimes they snap. The pressure kicks in. You become obsessed and then you lose that focus that you need.”
During the late 70s and early 80s, the comedy world lost John Belushi to a drug overdose. Belushi and Williams were good friends, and had even been partying together the night before Belushi’s death. Because of this, Belushi’s overdose-induced death seemed to ignite a desire to overcome the temptation of alcohol and drugs for Williams. He began cycling as a release for his built up stress rather than turning to drugs for their comfort. However, in 2006, Williams checked himself into a rehabilitation center in Oregon for being an alcoholic, though he adamantly insists that he never again returned to using cocaine. Williams described his rationale, when asked if he had been using again, by saying, “No. Cocaine — paranoid and impotent, what fun. There was no bit of me thinking, ooh, let’s go back to that. Useless conversations until midnight, waking up at dawn feeling like a vampire on a day pass. No.”
An important fact to note about Williams’ career is that he never outwardly seemed to tip the balance to a point from which he could not redistribute and recover. According to a 1992 interview with Playboy, Williams was questioned about his ability to balance work and play, to which he responded, “There’s that fear — if I felt like I was becoming not just dull but a rock, that I still couldn’t speak, fire off or talk about things, if I’d start to worry or got too afraid to say something … If I stop trying, I get afraid.”
Robin Williams soon moved to Los Angeles to continue his career, and was very soon picked up by keen TV producer George Schlatter, whose intuition helped to push Williams into the role he played in television. Through the accumulation of nods from critics and relationships with powerful men and producers, Robin found himself steamrolling to the limelight and earning roles on highly popular shows. Williams’ career really began when he obtained the permanent role of Mork on Mork and Mindy. He had previously made guest appearances as Mork the alien on the show Happy Days, and was so successful that the producers created a new spin-off for Williams’ character. Robin’s stint as the alien Mork was not as magical and pleasant as one would imagine — his life soon became a whirlwind of habitual partying and drinking, which left the show lacking the ebullient energy that Williams had so readily offered previously. The show fell off network after the producers provided increasing leniency to the script and allowed Williams to add a plethora of more mature content, plummeting the approval rate of the show’s younger target audience.
Despite his struggles in television, Robin Williams’ skyrocket to fame continued to come quickly. He began to accrue numerous awards for his performances in television series and films. Williams began appearing in movies soon after the immense success of Mork and Mindy. He landed the lead in Popeye (1980) and The World According to Garp (1982). However, the first really successful, fame-sparking film Williams starred in was Good Morning, Vietnam. He earned a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Good Morning, Vietnam. Good Morning Vietnam was a film set in 1965 during the Vietnam War — with Williams playing the role of Adrian Cronauer, whose job in the military was to entertain the troops. This role was ideal for Williams. Producer Mark Johnson was quoted saying, “We just let the cameras roll… [Williams] managed to create something new for every single take.” He was allowed to act without a script, thus improvising the majority of his lines and filling the film with his own touch of sarcastic wit and humor.
He soon found himself in roles that catered well to his niche in the more emotional depth. He collected an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as a psychiatrist in Good Will Hunting. Additionally, he gained two more nominations for playing an english teacher in the film Dead Poets Society as well as a homeless man in The Fisher King.
Not only did Williams have a knack for the on-screen productions, his voice was highly unique and heavily in demand. The movie Aladdin’s character of the Genie was written with Williams’ voice in mind. His tone, jargon, and enthusiastic notes became iconic. The Genie was simply a big, blue, bumbling cartoonization of the personality that could hardly be contained within the body of Robin Williams. It strikes me how closely the character of the Genie resembles the character of Robin Williams. Yes, most of the resemblances were intentional — creating a character so convincing that it was impossible not to love him. Yet, there are deeper levels in which the likenesses reside. The Genie is a character with far more depth than meets the eye. The Genie talks a million miles a minute, cracks jokes at every turn, and is filled with so much innocent joy that it is hard not to be drawn into his vivacious and bubbly vibe. Perhaps being trapped in a lamp was how Robin Williams may have felt as well. Later in life Williams opened up about his ongoing battle with depression — drawing a unique parallel to the Genie’s deeper sadness of servitude to his life’s purpose. Was Williams, to some degree, enslaved to the lifestyle of bringing laughter to people?
As his career progressed, Williams became more involved in movies projected towards the younger age group audience, including, but not limited to, roles in movies such as Hook (1991), Jumanji (1995), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Night at the Museum (2014), Happy Feet (2006), and Robots (2005). Williams may have had such success in these roles because his undeniable honesty and avuncular transparency drew children in and poured genuine wisdom into their sponge-like brains.
Though many children, and many adults even, were drawn to the bubbly charisma that Williams radiated, his relationships in life seemed to lack that same depth. Williams married his first wife, Valerie Velardi in 1978 and they shared one child together: Zachary Williams. Williams and Velardi divorced in 1988, and Williams quickly married Marsha Garces in 1989. Marsha was the nanny for Williams and Velardi and was, in fact, pregnant with Williams’ second child. Together they had two children (Zelda Rae Williams and Cody Alan Williams), later divorcing in 2010. In 2011 Williams married his third wife, Susan Schneider. Williams’ love life brings two topics to the table — affairs and relational struggles. There is the obvious affair that lead to his second child with the nanny of his first child. That affair seemed to have ended his first marriage. Additionally, an affair seemed to have ruined his second marriage as well. There is little known evidence of Williams cheating on his wife Marsha Garces, but it is held as closely to fact as can be that it did occur — with half-his-age artist Charlotte Filbert. Williams and Garces had been somewhat estranged prior to his cohorts with the young artist, but the news of the scandalous relationship created quite the stir.
The repetitive occurrence of such affairs as these begs the question of why. For some men it may be the lack of willpower to resist the temptation that a wandering eye creates, and for others it is the impulsivity and entitlement that leads to infidelity. I think for Robin it was deeper — I think that it was both difficult for him to deeply bond with those he entered committed relationships with, and I think the opportunities presented themselves all too easily. I wonder, through all of his films and fame and constant human interaction, if Williams lost, to some degree, the ability to connect with one woman on a deep level. Perhaps his heart was spread too thin in giving his all to everyone all of the time that he couldn’t give his all to his wife. Because of this lack of deep, rooted love, his eyes wandered, and his body followed. I make no excuses for Williams’ actions, I simply seek to understand why. Perhaps Williams should have heeded his own advice in the movie Good Will Hunting when he described love through a monologue to co-star Matt Damon, saying,
“‘If I asked you about women you’d probably give me a syllabus of your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You’re a tough kid. I ask you about war, and you’d probably, uh, throw Shakespeare at me, right? “Once more into the breach, dear friends.” But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap and watched him gasp his last breath, looking to you for help. And if I asked you about love you probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone could level you with her eyes. Feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you…who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel and to have that love for her to be there forever. Through anything. Through cancer. You wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting’ up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term visiting hours don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself.’”
Things for Robin Williams began a not-so-slow decline in March of 2009, when he was hospitalized for heart problems. His aortic valve was replaced and his tour was cancelled. In 2014 Williams once again checked himself into the Hazeleden Foundation Addiction Treatment Center for an alcoholism problem.
On August 11, 2014, Robin Williams was found dead in his home after committing suicide. There was no significant presence of alcohol or drugs in his system, and Williams had died of asphyxiation by hanging. I remember where I was when the world found out. One of the greatest minds and hearts in comedy had completed an action completely void of the joy his outward persona simply exuded. Williams had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease — with which he had been misdiagnosed. A post-mortem brain exam concluded that Williams actually had a diseased called Lewy Body Dementia — which includes early symptoms such as increased fear and anxiety, heartburn, insomnia, and tremors. Eventually Williams also began to suffer from extreme insomnia, paranoia and delusions, memory loss, and high levels of stress hormone. According to William’s widow, “Robin was losing his mind and he was aware of it… he kept saying, ‘I just want to reboot my brain.’”
They say that ignorance is bliss. They mean that it is easier on mankind to not be filled with the knowledge of life and the world that makes it that much more difficult to live aware of the pitfalls of humanity and the cracks in the world we live in. It seems that a greater level of intelligence, an expanded brain capacity, an increased abundance of natural intelligence is closely tied to a heightened realization of the turmoil, pain, and desperate condition of the human race. With more experience comes more knowledge. With more knowledge comes more responsibility. Greater responsibility can easily lead to pressure, stress, and fear.
Perhaps Williams wasn’t simply a phenomenal comedian, but rather his indelible legacy lingers through the hauntingly beautiful and poignantly profound commentary on life both from his own mind as well as those he portrayed in character. Maybe Williams unknowingly made a deep impression on the hearts of those who listened with adoration while Robin spoke words through iconic characters in the most memorable of movies. Williams stole hearts and expanded minds through his roles in movies such as Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society. These films presented characters with a depth who had the ability to permeate the most emotional parts of a man’s heart and capture the attention and love of that man’s’ mind as well.
There was an emotiveness to Williams that will forever be unparalleled. Every role he filled had the potential to stir up something deep within the audience and create a feeling whose description seems just out of reach. There is truly no way to quantify or qualify a man’s ability to do something so powerful as this — to captive and motivate and change people.
Ultimately, Williams’ body came to rest in a place without neither heartbeat, brain activity, nor functional cells. Yet, his soul suffered no death. His spirit is carried through the world, pushed by the winds of laughter, dancing through minds in a “happy thought” that Hook would be proud of, or whispering sweet poetry that would make John Keating’s heart flutter. Humor lives, salacity for life lives, and happiness lives, and so lives Robin Williams through these beautiful things that he so bravely pioneered through the world — making it the smallest bit brighter while he was here. Because, “what’s wrong with death, sir? What are we so mortally afraid of? Why can’t we treat death with a certain amount of humanity and dignity, and decency, and God forbid, maybe even humor. Death is not the enemy gentlemen. If we’re going to fight a disease, let’s fight one of the most terrible diseases of all — indifference.” — Robin Williams.
“Life is fleeting. And if you’re ever distressed, cast your eyes to the summer sky, when the stars are strung across the velvety night, and when a shooting star streaks through the blackness turning night into day — make a wish think of me. And make your life spectacular. I know I did.”
— Robin Williams in Jack
Works Cited
David, Jay (1999). The Life and Humor of Robin Williams: A Biography. New York: Quill.
Biographics. “Robin Williams Biography: His Life Was a Dark Comedy.” Biographics, Biographics, 21 Nov. 2017, biographics.org/robin-williams-biography-life-dark-comedy/.
Smith, Nigel M. “Robin Williams’ Widow: ‘It Was Not Depression’ That Killed Him.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 3 Nov. 2015,www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/03/robin-williams-disintegrating-before-suicide-widow-says.
Vincent, Rebecca Hawkes; Alice. “Nine Ways Robin Williams Made the World a Better Place.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 11 Aug. 2016, www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/08/11/how-robin-williams-made-the-world-a-better-place/.
