Jonathan Winters: Warped and wonderful

Both straight-faced and antic, Jonathan Winters could get a laugh out of Leviticus. His face had more rubber than a set of Goodyear tires.

There are comics who can make you laugh, and there are comics who can make you hurt. Winters was one of those.

Yep, the folksy, Ohio-born comic could be lethal with laugher and goes down as one of the funniest men of his time -- of all time -- right up there with Groucho, Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar. He may not have been the king of comedy, more like its reigning court jester. He could never leave a straight line alone.

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“The warm-up on ‘Mork & Mindy’ was funnier than the show,� recalled producer Garry Marshall by phone Friday morning. “People would come from all over the Paramount lot to watch Robin [Williams] and Jonathan ad-lib before the show.�

They say Winters, who died Thursday at age 87, could be crazy, literally; that’s always a fine line. Show me a comic who isn’t half nuts and I’ll show you a guy working the Sunday show at the Minneapolis Hyatt.

Indeed, the best ones are all a little nuts. When the rest of us hear noise, they hear rim shots. As eternal third-graders, their minds frolic in places we can never see. They make a life of puffing on the wrong end of the cigar.

PHOTOS: Jonathan Winters | 1925-2013

I’m not sure if it’s a slightly warped frontal cortex, but I do know that it’s occasionally genius -- a whimsical rearranging of the norm, a way of making us laugh in fresh and beautiful ways.

Their loopiness keeps the rest of us sort of sane.

“It’s a sad day,� said Marshall, who first met Winters as a writer for Jack Parr. “You could never guess where his mind might go.�

How funny was Winters?

“He invented a new category of comic genius,� Albert Brooks tweeted Friday.

VIDEO: Jonathan Winters’ improv genius on TV

In the 1970s and ’80s, he seemed to be everywhere, one of the rare guests who could make Johnny Carson do spit-takes. He was on “Hollywood Squares,� and appeared in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.� With Woody Allen, he even voiced a Saturday morning cartoon called “Hot Dog.�

Then came the fourth season of “Mork & Mindy,� when he appeared as the middle-aged Mearth, the newborn offspring of Williams, in one of the great casting decisions in TV history.

“It was Robin’s idea originally,� Marshall said. “Robin loved him and idolized him. They were sensational together.

“When [Winters] got going, it was one of the few times you could see Robin stop talking.�

RIP, you warped and wonderful comic genius ... Maude Frickert right by your side.

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Jonathan Winters, comedy giant on TV and in films, dies at 87

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