Jonathan Winters

            On Friday morning I gathered a couple more images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 228 now and I don’t think I’ll need more than another 20. 

            I weighed 88.15 kilos before breakfast. I drank Earl Grey tea for the first time in two weeks and was buzzing during song practice. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice and it went out of tune during almost every song. 

            I had planned on going for a haircut today but it was raining and if I’d ridden my bike up to Yonge and St. Clair I would have looked like a sewer rat that’d been doing the back stroke. So instead I stayed home and finished painting the first coat of “blue bliss” on my bathroom door frame. On the next painting day I’ll do the first coat on the bathroom door. The frame and door will probably only need one more coat but we’ll see. After that I have the bathroom rack to paint blue, then I want to mount it on the wall rather than keep it sitting on the back of the toilet. Then the lazy Susan needs to be painted and the bathroom mirror painted and mounted. When that’s all done there’ll just be the cleaning up of all the paint that got splattered on the tiles, the tub, and sink. 

            I weighed 89 kilos at 14:10. I was running late because of my painting and so I didn’t break my fast but just had grapes for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. I wanted to stop at Queen Fresh Market but I had to pee so I went home first. Then I walked back and bought two bunches of scallions. 

            I weighed 87.65 kilos at 18:35, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since December 16.

            I was caught up in my journal at 20:42. 

            I made a lettuce, cucumber, scallion, mushroom, tomato, and avocado salad with maple-Dijon dressing while watching season 1, episode 12 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            The first skit is the VIP interview show and in this episode Harvey interviews Santa Clause played with no beard by Jonathan Winters. He shows Harvey his buxom wind-up woman Pat Pending. Harvey asks how it works and Santa says, “A doll that looks like this doesn’t have to work”. 

            The second skit is another one based on Carol’s biography. Carol has planned a surprise birthday party for her husband Roger. All the guests are supposed to arrive before Roger and then wait in the kitchen until she calls out “Now!” and then to rush out and yell “”Surprise!” But Roger comes home early and Carol has to keep moving Roger away or distracting him so the guests can get to the kitchen before Carol calls out “Now!” and they all rush out. But when they do they hit Roger with the door and knock him out. 

            The second guest, Barbara Eden does a song and dance number to “Bend it!” by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley. The song is inspired by Zorba’s dance from Zorba the Greek and so the dancers and Barbara perform a Greek style dance. 

            In the third skit Carol plays Fran, the wife of an invisible man. She wonders what she ever saw in him. Her Aunt Martha says, “Looks aren’t everything” but Fran responds, “His looks aren’t anything”. Martha asks, “Are his parents invisible?” Carol answers, “His father is but his mother is only invisible from the waist up. It helps her in her work because she’s a topless waitress”. Harry comes home and he’s very handsy. He fondles Fran and gooses Aunt Martha. He does a tango with Fran and wakes up the baby. She tries to give her child its bottle but has trouble finding its mouth because it’s invisible too. Fran gets an experimental formula to make the baby visible but Harry says to try it on him first to see if it’s safe. Harry drinks it and then we see he looks like Leonard Nimoy made up as his character Mr. Spock from Star Trek. 

            The fourth skit interrupts the program Frontier Hairdresser for the documentary, The Wonderful World of Prisons. Walter Crankcase played by (Harvey Korman) interviews the warden Louis Hack (played by Jonathan Winters) at Leavenwurst Prison. Behind these walls are housed some of the most hostile members of our society: the prison guards. Hack says he worked his way up to his job from being a prisoner. Crankcase comments that the prisoners are very well behaved. Hack says they try to use psychology along with the constant beatings. He says he’s like a father to the prisoners and he is a father to one of them. His child inadvertently set fire to a house while burning his draft card. The men get lots of exercise because the guards have the dogs chase them so the dogs and prisoners get fit at the same time. 

            The next skit is part of the same documentary. Carol plays a wife visiting her husband with Lyle Waggoner playing a guard standing nearby. She says, “My darling I can’t take it any longer! I want to be with you! I can’t go on just looking at you when I want to touch you!” She finally jumps up and runs to the other side of the barrier into the guard’s arms.

            In another prison related sketch Crankcase interviews an elderly woman who comes regularly to visit the prisoners. It’s Jonathan Winters playing his character Maudie Frickert. She says she’s wearing her dad’s dress. She says, “I’m 86. Be nice to me or I’ll coldcock ya!” 

            Next Carol’s character the Charwoman is picking up trash in a playground and starts to play with the equipment and fantasize about her childhood. She sings “I Believed it All” by Jimmie Rodgers.

            Jonathan Winters had a lonely childhood and spent a lot of time in his room creating characters and interviewing himself with different voices. He studied cartooning at the Dayton Art Institute where he met his wife Eileen Schauser in 1948 and they were married until she died 60 years later. He won a talent contest which led to work as a radio announcer. He starred in a children’s show on a local Dayton station in 1950. He then hosted a game show and a talk show for the same station. When they denied him a raise he quit and with $56 moved to New York leaving his wife and kids in Ohio until he could send for them. Within two months he was getting bookings in night clubs. His TV debut was on Chance of a Lifetime in 1954. His first appearances on a nationally televised show were on Omnibus. He appeared frequently on Jack Paar’s Tonight Show from 1957 to 1962. Jack Paar said that the 25 funniest people hed ever known were all Jonathan Winters. From 1967 to 1969 he starred in The Jonathan Winters Show, on which RCA broadcast the first demonstration of colour videotape. He was the first to use video to make himself into two interacting characters. He co-starred in the Twilight Zone episode A Game of Pool. He was a regular on the Andy Williams Show. He was a regular panelist on Hollywood Squares. In the mid-70s he did humourous film reviews for Good Morning America. He was a regular on the children’s series Hot Dog. He starred in The Whacky World of Jonathan Winters from 1972 to 1974. In the final season of Mork and Mindy he played Mork and Mindy’s child Mearth. He was a regular on Hee Haw from 1983 to 1984. He’s released several comedy albums and had eleven Grammy nominations, winning two. He co-starred in It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe), The Loved One, The Russians Are Coming, Viva Max, The Shadow, Swing, . He co-starred in the sitcom Davis Rules (for which he won an Emmy). He was nominated for an Emmy for his appearance on Life With Bonnie. He was the voice of Grandpa Smurf on the animated TV series and of Papa Smurf in the two movies. He considered James Thurber to be one of his main humour influences. Robin Williams considered Winters to be his comedy mentor. He was an accomplished abstract painter and his work was collected in a book called Hang Ups. He wrote a collection of short stories called Winter’s Tales. He won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour in 2000. He was one of the first performers to speak about their struggles with mental illness.