These Celebrities COULDN’T Handle Jonathan Winters! – HT

 

 

 

When did trouble start? How old were you when trouble started?  Oh, I would say kindergarten was a problem.   Kindergarten was a problem for me. I remember trying to make a clay rabbit and uh had all day. You know, usually you should be able to make one before lunch.   Jonathan Winters had the ability to reduce respected celebrities into looking like they were just another member of the crowd.

 We’re tough family. So,  you got to call it as easy.  You got cuz she’d survive. I know her. Blow her into a tree, come right out with some squirrel. You know,  these are times celebrities couldn’t handle Jonathan Winters. Jonathan Winter’s drinking parents story makes Johnny Carson lose it.  No, when I came home, this is a moment of grief, but uh for a lot of people, but I I I came home from the war and I was just again talk about Thanksgiving, you know, like yourself, you know, strafing people there in Philadelphia.

Um but I I I came I came home and I went down the Stone Road and my mother was there and uh I said, “You had to queue her a lot.” and she was in show business. She was in radio and an actress, but I’d say, “Mother, it’s me.” You know, and her eyes were not Vaseline at that time. And uh I said,  “Johnny, your son, I see you.

 I see him.” So, it was a very demonstrative family. And um  ran to a lot of the uh the minorities would run and grab grab each other, but boy, when you’re full Caucasian, a lot of times it’s back off, you know.    So,  family stories became dangerous during this Tonight Show appearance when Winters makes it seem like the way he grew up was like a wildly dark comedy.

 Uh, and eventually she grabbed me, the bottle dropped, you know. Oh, hi sweetheart. It is you.  And, uh, so I I went to my room, which about this area in here,  uh, bed, wash bowl, and a commode, and um, place to hang the funny shirts. So, I said, “Mother, you know, it’s great to be home, number one.

” And I said, “Where are my toys?” There’s long paws. She said, “You’re 20 years old, dummy.” And uh  very sensitive at that time, too. I mean, if you if you said that been said to me in the service, and of course, grenade.  So, uh  Jonathan Winters and Robin Williams make Letterman crackup.  Face back like this.

   Coming in final approach.  How long did you guys work together on the TV show?  We worked one year and then they   man named Neielson went both of them. get rid of him.  Well, you had in all difference to you and Pam, they had four years.  Yeah.  And uh  was it fun being  Oh, yeah.

 We used to drive them out, they’d lose all the film and then we kept going.  Yeah.  A good time. Remember, Dad,  you know, just the fact that you’d come over here  with with  Dad, did you sign those papers?  DID YOU SIGN THE PAPERS? WE NEED THE HIGH DADDY.  Robin is already volatile and playful in this moment, but Jonathan’s jokes were the cherry on top for making Letterman crack up. Winter’s roasts Frank Sinatra.

 Around the around the bone in your body that went from here to whatever that bone that  Winters walks into Sinatra’s roast without ever sounding like he’s simply reading roast jokes, roasting Johnny Carson. And  uh we were both you were seeing one doctor and seeing another.  That’s right. Yes.

 And uh I guess it was the it was the weight thing, wasn’t it? To get rid of the  the over overweight we don’t need.  Yeah. So I’ve lost 20. Um  I’ve really been working at it. I  I think the colonel can be real proud of me because I live there at the uh at Colonel Sanders place.  They uh they really put me on an awful lot of chicken.

  And uh I begun to walk a little for it and do a lot of  But you needed the eggs anyway, I suppose.   Johnny is usually the one controlling the rhythm, but here he has to sit there and take the hit.  Not eating any meat.  No meat.  Drinking. You know, the toughest thing to do is uh is eight glasses of water a day.

 Oh, you’re not doing that, are you?  Really keeps you on the go. Uh, you’re moving all the time. You don’t have too much time for any conversation.   Lamar Jean makes Dean Martin crack up.  No, you That’s Dean. That’s Dean Martin. Boy, I’ve never seen been able to set this at a movie store.

 This is the one time I didn’t bring my inatic.  Oh, shoot. Well, I’ll sit down. I guess I’m supposed to anyway. Got no straps. Boy, at one of them rinky dink airlines.  Boy, Mr. Martin, this is the greatest thrill I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve only flown about four times. One time I was overseas when I was in the service.

They flew us one of them old DC6es jumbled surround. We was all sick and everything, but  wish I had something intelligent to say.  I wish I did, too. The Lamar Jean routine works because the joke is not just one line, but strange confidence throughout the whole entire segment.

 Jonathan makes Carol Bernett break.  Questions for Jonathan that  Yeah.  Yeah. Constantly. I lost a lot in my ears. Yeah. It’s it’s a it’s a thing, you know, people say, “How what do you do to lose weight?” Well, you just don’t eat. Period. I eat a lot of uh beautiful colored ads in UH  some of the magazines.  Yeah.  The doors on again.

 The door.   Carol Bernett gives Winters the kind of setting that should feel simple, but he immediately turns audience questions into little comedy traps. Winters takes over. Carol Bernett’s stage.  You like it? You got a zipper on there that you  I don’t need one.  Oh, you just sprayed on.

 No, it just it comes right off. I want to ask you Yeah.  about your Johnny is going to be a neighbor of ours uh in December. He’s going to be doing a show, a weekly television show of his very own. [applause]  I uh  Tell us what it’s gonna be like.  I don’t have any idea what it’s going to be like.

 Um well, no, that’s not really true. Uh we’re still, you know, kind of putting things together. We’re going to have a girl on, a very attractive, pretty girl that you’re going to have on your show tonight. Barbara Eden.  Barbara’s going to be  and Barbara’s going to be on the first show as a guest. And then we’re going to have the doors and the chisels, the hammers.

 Putting Winters near Barbara and Carol Bernett makes for a perfect setup due to the stage already having glamorous TV energy before he starts disrupting it. Diane Warrick can’t handle Winters. a little uh story of a of a surf caster. And this guy’s a big guy and he’s got expensive equipment, you know.

 And he says, “Watch this clown going to cast out there.” How about that? Among the fleet, right? Look at that reel. That’s a $750 reel.  Yeah, that’s some I wish I had some of that.   That little gimpy gear you’ve got. Boy, if I ever get a get a bite on this, huh? That’s a $275 rod, too. Wait.  Okay.

  I ever get a bite on this, buddy. A  This Carol Bernett Show episode became a fan favorite because Winters is placed inside a clean variety format alongside Dion Warick, which makes his unpredictable style pop even more as Warick brings elegance and musical polish.

 While Winters brings the feeling that anything could go wrong, the locker room sketch that almost had Tim Conway in tears. I  want to tell you something, Claymore. You are the dumbest quarterback we have ever had here at Filton High. You understand that?  I’ve been playing for Filton.  A football locker room sketch with Tim Conway and Jonathan Winters has built in promise because both men were experts at making calm scenes fall apart as Winters [music] plays intensity like it’s a malfunctioning machine pushing the football setting beyond normal sports

parody into stranger territory where logic breaks down.  I got one of the best arms. I’m one of the oldest guys. I know that. I know that in football.  You know where you threw the last ball?  I threw it uh I threw it out there.  Yeah. You know where it went? WENT IN THE TUNNEL.   There’s a crowd-pleaser.

 Conway’s reactions are valuable because he [music] knows exactly how to let another comics madness build before answering it. Steve Allen gives Winter’s room to improv.  I’m I’m Lesie Beldenhoffer. So nice to meet you, Mr. Bellen Hoffer. Would you do Merry Christmas after the Merry New Year, sir? Would you position your body between that black mark and that black mark and your belly button right up against that black mark?  I see.

 because we are taping these uh interviews.  Oh,  same reason they do at a banker. You know,  we’ve seen on TV.   Yes.  My sister watches daytime television and nighttime, too. Oh, good. Nothing in the metal, just wild.  Steve Allen was one of the great television hosts for improvisers, and Winters takes full advantage of that freedom, as the fun is watching Allen give him a lane, then seeing Winters turn that lane into five different roads at once using voice posture and sudden character changes, like precision tools that slice through any structure. The

prison routine makes Steven Allen lose it. [applause]  [applause]  Thank you very much, Mr. Allen.  Steve, I guess as a kid or a child, both about the same, I guess. I think I went to a lot of movies and uh I used to go in early in the morning, you know, about 11:00 and get out about 11 at night and I used to like to go to westerns.

 But I I suppose the best movies I enjoyed were the horror pictures, you know, and of course with the guy teasing the villagers, you know, teasing the guy Dr. Frankenstein. There he is. There he is. Get him. You know, you’re kind of funny.  The prison routine starts with Steve Allen setting up what sounds like a simple comedy film piece.

 Then Winters makes the whole idea feel stranger than expected by taking the seriousness of a prison setting and filtering it through his rubber-faced character logic that transforms everything into absurdest theater. Jackpar can’t keep up with Winters.  I guess I’m sure one of the big pictures today is Mutiny on the Bounty.

And you see it in all the magazines, hear about it on radio, television, it’s everywhere. Kids carry little boats with them. You see them standing like this on the street,  you know. Uh I saw it, of course, with Clark Gable and um the other fellow, Charles Lton. The other fellow. Imagine throwing something out like that.

 The other fella,   this Jackpar program episode is valuable because Winters is not just playing to a comedy crowd, but doing his oddball style in the presence of serious old Hollywood energy as B. Davis being part of the episode gives the room a special weight than a normal comedy appearance with a dynamic between comedy and drama.

 For fully 3 minutes, I was saying yes, sir. And uh I and I said a lot of personal things that I thought were the apt to say at the time. And he sucks me in and goes on and he solves the whole Cuban crisis on the phone to me. And then I realized what would the president be telling me about Cuba? I mean, I know they need my help, but not in every little detail.

 See there’s nothing no he can do the he just sounds just like the president not exactly like him. [applause]  Winters thrives in that kind of setting because he can puncture the formality without seeming disrespectful as par was comfortable letting him wander because he knew the wandering was the point where real comedy lived beyond scripted exchanges.

 Mike Douglas tries to keep order with Winters  of the brain is being used.  I don’t I don’t really know why that particular number is chosen. And it’s 8% with somebody, 15% with somebody else.  But the main idea is that we’re using  Nobody has 100% going for him.  How about what do you think? How much how much?  I don’t know.

 Maybe 90 95  I think. So he was 100% you could put 95 people out. I know.  Oh, I don’t know.  What are we going to do?  Well, what are we going to do? Let’s take off our shoes and then  Oh, it’s time to play.  A Mike Douglas show lineup with Ethel Murman, Robera Flack, and Jonathan Winters creates a funny mismatch before anyone says a word.

 As Merman brings huge stage presence, Flack brings calm musical cool, and Winters brings a brain that refuses to stay on a normal path, creating impossible combinations for any host. Douglas has to manage all of that, which makes Winter’s unpredictable timing even more effective. As the best comedy in a mixed panel like this comes from the reactions because everyone is approaching the conversation from a different world with different rules.

Winters can make a small aside feel like a full character sketch which gives the other guests something unexpected to play against as his strength here is not just being loud or strange but making the room adjust to his logic through persistent weirdness that wears down resistance. Winters dominates Bert Reynolds and Paul Lind.

 Oh, what do you want me to do about it?   Well, is that that draw? Uh, are are you asking for a true or false?  Well, or a yes or no.  Or a yes or no.  Mhm.  Well, of course, I’ve always been against the sheep ranchers, uh, cattleman or something.  Oh, I see.  But, uh, we used to bug them a lot, you know, right? Long time cowboy humor.

 Hollywood Squares was already built for fast celebrity jokes, but Winters made the format feel even more unpredictable. As with Bert Reynolds, Ed McMahon, Earl Hollowman, and Paul Lind on the panel, every answer has reaction potential before the contestant even responds, creating comedy anticipation that builds throughout.

 Winter’s best weapon in this setting is that he can make a fake answer sound official, then twist it into total nonsense. As Reynolds’s laid-back presence makes a perfect contrast, because Winters can look completely sincere while everyone else is waiting for the punch that arrives from a weird angle. Paul Lynn’s sharp style also gives the panel a different comic rhythm which makes Winter’s stranger rhythm stand out as the game show format force’s short answers but Winter still manages to make them feel like miniature scenes [music] complete

with character and backstory. A panel with Don Rickles, Sandy Duncan, Bob New Hart, Tony Fields, Jonathan Winters, and Paul Lind is already stacked with people who understand timing as Winters stands out because his comedy is less about insult or dryness and more about instant character logic nobody can predict or prepare for.

 Rickles brings attack energy, New Hart brings restraint, and Winters slides between both by making even simple questions feel slightly deranged. As the reactions are fun, because these are seasoned performers recognizing when a line takes an unexpected angle through years of experience watching comedy, Winters can make a wrong answer funnier than a correct one because he treats the explanation like a performance.

 As this segment is useful, because the celebrity panel becomes the laugh track in real time, creating meta comedy that transcends the game. The game show constraints actually helped Winters by forcing compression, making every word count more than typical talk show meandering where jokes can sprawl without consequence.

 As Reynolds corpsed multiple times, breaking character to laugh at whatever Winters invented. Lindy’s own quick wit meant he appreciated Winters’s speed, even while competing for laughs in the same [music] format, creating friendly rivalry as the contestants forgot they were playing for money, getting caught up in watching celebrity comedy combat.

 Rickles and Winters together inventing an interesting dynamic as attack comedy met character invention with different results. Both effective in their own special ways proving its comedy versatility. New Hart’s deadpan provided perfect counterpoint, making Winters seem even more unhinged through comparison between Control and Chaos as the format’s requirement for brief answers meant Winters had to compress his character work into seconds showing remarkable efficiency.

 Jonathan Winters turned every television appearance into proof that the wildest comic minds don’t need permission to take over a room as long as they’re funny enough to justify the chaos they create. From Sinatra to Carson to Conway, nobody was safe when Winters decided reality was just a suggestion he could ignore whenever a better character idea popped into his head.

 Which Jonathan Winters moment had you laughing the hardest? Let us know in the comments. And don’t forget to subscribe for more classic comedy moments and