United States | Robin Williams

A genie of jest

The day the laughter died

The magic is no more
|LOS ANGELES

ROBIN WILLIAMS was used to audiences of millions. But three years ago he performed for a few hundred people a day in a Broadway play, “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”, set in post-war Iraq. He played the ghost of a slaughtered tiger, trying to make sense of life’s disappointments and human cruelty. This performance is not what he will be best remembered for, but it was soulful, dark and real. When the play ended Mr Williams seemed surprised and grateful to receive applause, let alone a thundering, standing ovation.

On August 11th Mr Williams was found dead. He had hanged himself in his home in Tiburon, near San Francisco. Sometimes the cleverest, funniest people are the most unhappy. Mr Williams had battled cocaine and alcohol addiction in the past, but that was in private. In public he was insouciant, boundless and brave. He could improvise like no other actor. He played an adult Peter Pan in “Hook”, a Scottish nanny in “Mrs Doubtfire” and a psychologist in “Good Will Hunting” (for which he won an Academy Award). As the voice of the genie in “Aladdin”, Mr Williams riffed manically, forcing the animators to change the character’s shape to follow his magic-carpet ride of jokes. No previous cartoon had adapted a character so radically to suit a voiceover artist’s comic stylings.

Everything he did looked effortless. When Mr Williams was young and warned his father, an automobile executive, that he wanted to act professionally, his father replied: “Wonderful, just have a back-up profession, like welding.” Mr Williams never needed one. His career started two years after he dropped out of the Juilliard School, a performing-arts conservatory in New York, when he guest-starred as a goofy alien called Mork in an episode of the television show “Happy Days” in 1978. His character was so well-liked that it spawned a spin-off sitcom, “Mork And Mindy”. He went on to star in many films and do stand-up comedy on television. In love, like work, Mr Williams also found riches—but also strife. He was married three times.

He occasionally upset people. In one monologue, he imagined Osama bin Laden arriving at the gates of Heaven, where he meets George Washington and 70 members of the Continental Congress. They beat the stuffing out of him. Bin Laden protests that he was expecting a gentler welcome from 71 virgins; Washington replies that it’s actually “71 Virginians, you asshole!” Jihadists on Twitter were torn between crowing that Mr Williams would burn in Hell for insulting Islam and admitting that they really enjoyed “Jumanji”.

Mr Williams called San Francisco home for decades. On August 12th the house that had been the set for “Mrs Doubtfire”, on a quiet street in Pacific Heights, served as a memorial. So did a bench in Boston, which had featured in “Good Will Hunting”. Those who met him in real life felt his magic. As a young girl, your correspondent saw him in a playground, soon after he had starred in “Hook”. “Look,” she said. “There’s Peter Pan.”

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "A genie of jest"

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