Jonathan Winter

Winters was originally cast in Big Finish (2014), during pre-production. It is a comedy set in a retirement home. His scheduled role was to appear alongside Jerry Lewis and Bob Newhart.

A pioneer of improvisational stand-up comedy with a gift for mimicry, impersonations, various personalities, and a seemingly bottomless reservoir of creative energy, Winters was one of the first celebrities to go public with a personal mental illness issue and felt stigmatized as a result. According to Jack Paar, "If you were to ask me the funniest 25 people I've ever known, I'd say, 'Here they are—Jonathan Winters.'" He also said of Winters, "Pound for pound, the funniest man alive."

Two of his most memorable characters, cranky granny "Maude Frickert" and bumpkin farmer "Elwood P. Suggins" ("I think eggs 24 hours a day"), were born from his early television routines. Robin Williams once told Playboy why Mr. Winters inspired him. "It was like seeing a guy behind a mask, and you could see that his characters were a great way for him to talk about painful stuff," he said. "I found out later that they are people he knows—his mother, his aunt. He's an artist who also paints with words. He paints these people that he sees."

Winters died of natural causes on the evening of April 11, 2013, in Montecito, California, at the age of 87. He was survived by his two children, Jonathan ("Jay") Winters IV and Lucinda Winters, and five grandchildren. He was cremated and his ashes were given to his family.

Fans of Winters placed flowers on his Hollywood Walk of Fame star on April 12, 2013, at 1:30 p.m.

Many comedians, actors, and friends gave personal tributes about Winters on social media shortly after his death. Robin Williams posted, "First he was my idol, then he was my mentor and amazing friend. I'll miss him huge. He was my Comedy Buddha. Long live the Buddha." In September 2013, at the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards, Williams again honored the career and life of Winters.

Winters was coaxed out of retirement to voice Papa Smurf in The Smurfs (2011), the first-ever animated/live-action Smurfs film, and later in The Smurfs 2 (2013), his final film project. He died only nine days after he finished recording Papa's voice.

On January 11, 2009, Winters' wife of more than 60 years, Eileen, died at the age of 84 after a 20-year battle with breast cancer.

In 2008, Winters was presented with a Pioneer TV Land Award by Robin Williams. That same year, PBS aired Pioneers of Television, and Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America in 2009, both featuring Winters.

In 2004, Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time ranked Winters as the #18 greatest stand-up comedian. In 2005 and 2006, Winters appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Winters had various roles and appeared in numerous television features throughout the early to mid-2000s. In 2000, Winters appeared in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. In 2003, he appeared in the film Swing.

When he was seven, his parents separated. Winters' mother took him to Springfield, Ohio, to live with his maternal grandmother. "Mother and dad didn't understand me; I didn't understand them," Winters told Jim Lehrer on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer in 1999. "So consequently it was a strange kind of arrangement." Alone in his room, he created characters and interviewed himself. A poor student, Winters continued talking to himself and developed a repertoire of strange sound effects. He often entertained his high school friends by imitating a race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

In 1999, he was awarded the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, becoming the second recipient.

Winters received eleven Grammy nominations during his career, including eight for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album; he won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Comedy Album for Crank(y) Calls in 1996.

In 1996, Winters played himself in Bloopy's Buddies, a children's TV series on PBS designed to teach children about health and nutrition and to encourage them to exercise.

In 1994, Winters appeared as a fired factory worker (credited as "Grizzled Man") in The Flintstones. In an interesting role reversal, he was the serious-minded secular police chief and uncle of the character Lamont Cranston (played by Alec Baldwin) in The Shadow. That same year he voiced Stinkbomb D. Basset in the episode "Smell Ya Later" on Animaniacs.

In 1991, Winters won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for playing Gunny Davis in the short-lived sitcom Davis Rules. 1999 saw Winters become the 2nd recipient of the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. In 2002, he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his performance as Q.T. Marlens on Life with Bonnie. Winters was presented with a Pioneer TV Land Award by Robin Williams in 2008.

In 1991 and 1992, he had a supporting role on Davis Rules, a sitcom that lasted two seasons (25 episodes), for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. He played Gunny Davis, an eccentric grandfather who was helping raise his grandchildren after his son lost his wife.

In a 1991 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Winters likened the entertainment industry to the Olympics, with actors standing on boxes to receive gold, silver, and bronze medals. Winters claimed, "I think my place is inside the box, underneath the guy receiving the gold medal. They're playing the national anthem and I'm fondling a platinum medallion."

Winters also spent time painting and presenting his artwork, including silkscreens and sketches, in many gallery shows. He authored several books, with his book of short stories entitled Winters' Tales (1988) making several bestseller lists.

In 1987, Winters was featured in NFL Films' The NFL TV Follies. That same year he published Winters' Tales: Stories and Observations for the Unusual.

Winters became a regular on Hee Haw during the 1983–1984 season. He was later the voice of Grandpa Smurf from 1986 to 1990 on the television series The Smurfs. Additionally, he did the voice of Bigelow in the 1985 TV film Pound Puppies and voice-acted on Yogi's Treasure Hunt in 1985, among other voice roles throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Jonathan Winters was a guest star on The Muppet Show in 1980. That same year, he also appeared in I Go Pogo (a.k.a. Pogo for President). In 1981 he was a guest on the short-lived comedy series Aloha Paradise.

With a career spanning more than six decades, Winters also appeared in hundreds of television shows and films, including eccentric characters on The Steve Allen Show, The Garry Moore Show, The Wacky World of Jonathan Winters (1972–74), Mork & Mindy, Hee Haw, and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He also voiced Grandpa Smurf on The Smurfs TV series from 1986 to the show's conclusion in 1989. Over twenty years later, Winters was introduced to a new generation through voicing Papa Smurf in The Smurfs (2011) and The Smurfs 2 (2013). Winters died nine days after recording his dialogue for The Smurfs 2; the film was dedicated in his memory.

Winters made memorable appearances on both The Dean Martin Show and The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, as well as a regular on The Andy Williams Show. He also performed regularly as a panelist on The Hollywood Squares. In the mid-1970s, he appeared on ABC's Good Morning America doing humorous reviews of films.

From December 1967 to June 1969, Winters helmed his own hour-long weekly variety program on CBS (similar to the then-popular Red Skelton and Carol Burnett shows on the same network). It featured guest stars (including The Doors), comedy sketches (often featuring Winters characters such as Maudie Frickert, rural Elwood P. Suggins, drunk Harold Nermlinger, Norwegian Yorny Bjorny); and an audience-request section where Winters did impressions of persons, animals, etc. in various situations (e.g. John Wayne on the moon). Choice bits from the latter were collected and released on a 1969 Columbia LP, "Stuff 'n' Nonsense".

On The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–92), Winters usually performed in the guise of some character. Carson often did not know what Winters had planned and usually had to tease out the character's backstory during a pretend interview. Carson invented a character called "Aunt Blabby," which was similar to and possibly inspired by "Maude Frickert."

Winters had a dramatic role in The Twilight Zone episode "A Game of Pool" (episode 3.5 aired on October 13, 1961). He also recorded Ogden Nash's The Carnival of the Animals poems to Camille Saint-Saëns's classical opus.

Winters recorded many classic comedy albums for the Verve Records label, starting in 1960. Probably the best known of his characters from this period is "Maude Frickert", the seemingly sweet old lady with the barbed tongue. He was a favorite of Jack Paar, who hosted The Tonight Show from 1957 to 1962, and appeared frequently on his television programs, even going so far as to impersonate then–U.S. president John F. Kennedy over the telephone as a prank on Paar.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Winters acted in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), had a weekly CBS show called The Jonathan Winters Show from 1967 to 1969, and appeared in Viva Max! (1970). Additionally, he was a regular (along with Woody Allen and Jo Anne Worley) on the Saturday morning children's television program, Hot Dog in the early 1970s. He also had his own syndicated show called The Wacky World of Jonathan Winters, from 1972 to 1974, the Music Director of which, Van Alexander, was nominated for a 1973 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction of a Variety, Musical or Dramatic Program.

On February 8, 1960, Winters received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

From 1959 to 1964, Winters' voice could be heard in a series of popular television commercials for Utica Club beer. In the ads, he provided the voices of talking beer steins, named Shultz and Dooley. Later, he became a spokesman for Hefty brand trash bags, for whom he appeared as a dapper garbageman known for collecting "gahr-bahj," as well as "Maude Frickert" and other characters.

In his interview with the Archive of American Television, Winters reported that he spent eight months in a private psychiatric hospital in 1959 and again in 1961. The comic suffered from nervous breakdowns and bipolar disorder. With an unprecedented frenetic energy, Winters made obscure references to his illness and hospitalization during his stand-up routines, most famously on his 1960 comedy album, The Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters. During his classic "flying saucer" routine, Winters casually mentions that if he wasn't careful, the authorities might put him back in the "zoo", referring to the institution.

His big break occurred (with the revised name of Jonathan) when he worked for Alistair Cooke on the CBS Television Sunday morning show Omnibus. In 1957 he performed in the first color television show, a 15-minute routine sponsored by Tums.

Winters made television history in 1956 when RCA broadcast the first public demonstration of color videotape on The Jonathan Winters Show. Author David Hajdu wrote in The New York Times (2006), "He soon used video technology 'to appear as two characters,' bantering back and forth, seemingly in the studio at the same time. You could say he invented the video stunt."

After promising his wife that he would return to Dayton if he did not make it in a year, and with $56.46 in his pocket, he moved to New York City, staying with friends in Greenwich Village. After obtaining Martin Goodman as his agent, he began stand-up routines in various New York nightclubs. His earliest network television appearance was in 1954 on Chance of a Lifetime hosted by Dennis James on the DuMont Television Network, where Winters again appeared as "Johnny Winters."

During his senior year at Springfield High School, Winters quit school to join the U.S. Marine Corps at the age of seventeen and served two and a half years in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Upon his return, he attended Kenyon College. He later studied cartooning at Dayton Art Institute, where he met Eileen Schauder, whom he married on September 11, 1948. He was a brother of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Lambda chapter).

Winters' career started as a result of a lost wristwatch, about six or seven months after his marriage to Eileen in 1948. The newlyweds couldn't afford to buy another one. Then Eileen read about a talent contest in which the first prize was a wristwatch, and encouraged Jonathan to "go down and win it." She was certain he could, and he did. His performance led to a disc jockey job, where he was supposed to introduce songs and announce the temperature. Gradually his ad libs, personae, and antics took over the show.

Jonathan Harshman Winters III (November 11, 1925 – April 11, 2013) was an American comedian, actor, author, television host, and artist. Beginning in 1960, Winters recorded many classic comedy albums for the Verve Records label. He also had records released every decade for over 50 years, receiving 11 Grammy nominations, including eight for Best Comedy Album, during his career. From these nominations, he won the Grammy Award for Best Album for Children for his contribution to an adaptation of The Little Prince in 1975 and the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Comedy Album for Crank(y) Calls in 1996.