118 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2018
REAR VIEW
ROBIN WILLIAMS: SPARK OF MADNESS
By ANNIE WILKINSON
“You’re only given one little spark
of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”
—Robin Williams
In the summer of 1981 on Fishers
Island, Robin Williams was on top of
the world — literally.
Every Friday night, a plane piloted
by his good friend swooped down,
picked him up, and off they’d soar.
The pilot was Christopher Reeve,
famous as the superhero star of Superman
films. Williams was a wellloved
comedic master starring in The
World According to Garp.
“Those were the heady days for
them both,” said actress Glenn Close,
Williams’ co-star. “They were living
the kind of fast and crazy life that our
business can hand to you if you become
a wildly famous phenomenon.”
Fishers Island will never forget
Williams. And the world will always
remember the gales of emotional
laughter he gave us before his untimely
death.
FISHERS FUNNYMAN
Garp shot one scene outside the Roslyn
movie theater, but the film’s centerpiece
was the spectacular, massive
Wilmerding hilltop estate near Plum
Island that looked out over sweeping
lawns and Hay Harbor. Many of the
250 Fishers locals said that Williams
displayed no egotistical airs, and knew
the names of everyone on the crew.
They witnessed rapid-fire ad libs:
When Jeff Miller of The Suffolk
Times asked Williams about Garp,
Williams quipped, “It’s a fairy tale
written on acid.” Williams could
make sense one minute then erupt in
nonsense, savaging the news, people,
and events. Close described how he
spontaneously “wove it all into a cohesive
whole with no notes, nothing
but his genius.”
But Garp’s Oscar-winning George
Roy Hill, who had directed luminaries
such as Paul Newman and Robert
Redford, rejected improvisation,
yelling “Cut!” and stopping filming.
Williams cooperated, relying on his
early drama lessons.
“STIMULUS JUNKIE”
Robin McLaurin Williams was
born in Chicago in 1951. He recalled
that his mother influenced his sense
of humor; he tried getting attention
by making her laugh.
Raised mostly by a maid, in a
40-room farmhouse near Detroit, the
shy, quiet child had an uncanny ear
for dialogue and recorded himself
voicing different characters. After
he moved to Northern California,
high school drama courses revealed
his explosive talent; he was voted
“Most Likely Not to Succeed” and
“Funniest.”
In 1973, Williams beat out 2,000
applicants to a Juilliard School
full-scholarship advanced drama
class. The only other student was
Christoper Reeve, who remembered,
“He was like an untied balloon that
had been inflated and immediately
released … he virtually caromed off
the walls.” They studied conservative
dramatic acting techniques and became
lifelong friends.
Williams first stepped onstage
in San Francisco in the mid-1970s.
By 1977, he was wowing them at the
L.A. Improv, and in 1978 he starred
in Mork & Mindy. In 1981 Williams
cracked up Johnny Carson, debuted
on Saturday Night Live, and made
Garp. He was so turned on by life
— and by sold-out TV specials and
major films — that his third wife Susan
Schneider called him “a stimulus
junkie.”
LOSING IT
Garp was just the second of many
comedies, fantasies, and tragedies
he would star in. He won multiple
Emmys, Golden Globes, Grammys,
and a best supporting actor Academy
Award for Good Will Hunting
in 1997. But he battled depression
and fueled his performances with
cocaine and alcohol before getting
sober in rehab.
In 2013, extreme depression, anxiety,
and paranoia, along with stomach
and vision problems, tremors, and
insomnia, assailed him. He forgot his
lines. He feared he couldn’t be funny.
The diagnosis: Parkinson’s disease.
His wife said he was mad at himself
for what his mind and body were doing.
Unable to retaliate, on August 11,
2014, the 63-year-old committed suicide
by hanging himself. An autopsy
disproved the diagnosis: Williams actually
had severe Lewy body disease,
an incurable, aggressive dementia.
Close recalled that although his
humor and insights came from a
place of pain and uncertainty, they
“connected us and reminded us of
… how we are capable of moments of
inspired transcendence and others of
unspeakable despair.”
Robin Williams at the 2011 BAFTA/LA Britannia Awards at the Beverly
Hilton Hotel. (Photo by Paul Smith / Featureflash)