Winters Discontent

Or

A Dearth of Mearth

(An epitaphany shared by Don and Phil)
Jonathan Winters, best remembered as Gunny, Randy Quaid’s father on Davis Rules, has died at the age of 87. Winters emerged as a stand-up, eschewing jokes for more character-based, stream of consciousness humor that left TV hosts and straight men in the dust as he introduced audiences to sweet/tart grandma Maude Frickert and Midwestern Everyman Elwood P. Suggins. Or he might re-create Hollywood movies, complete with sound effects, or be the one prop comic you didn’t hate, creating comic gems with just a pen and pencil set and a hat. While this made for hilarious late night appearances with Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and David Letterman and memorable set pieces in films like “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” “The Loved One” and “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” no sitcom could sustain him, until he landed a spot alongside his comedic progeny Robin Williams on Mork & Mindy in its shark-jumping final season. He even tried his hand at sci-fi, appearing as late pool great “Fats” Brown, who lost to Jack Klugman in the Twilight Zone episode “A Game of Pool,” but Winters outlasted Klugman by 5 months in the game of life.