Jonathan Winters
Jonathan Winters
Jonathan Harshman Winters IIIwas an American comedian, actor, author, 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 nominations for Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album during his career and winning a 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComedian
Date of Birth11 November 1925
CountryUnited States of America
My mother and father were very strange people. They tried to be funny which is always very sad to me.
I started out as an artist, and what I do is verbal paintings. I paint a picture. Hopefully, you'll see the characters and what they're doing and what they're saying.
I don't do anything the same every day. Discipline is tough for a guy who is a rebel.
The most terrible fear that anybody should have is not war, is not a disease, not cancer or heart problems or food poisoning - it's a man or a woman without a sense of humor.
I love improvisation. You can't blame it on the writers. You can't blame it on direction. You can't blame it on the camera guy... It's you. You're on. You've got to do it, and you either sink or swim with what you've got.
I don't paint every day. I'm not that motivated. I don't do anything the same every day.
My paintings and comedy have a lot in common. They are both improvisations based on observation.
I was talking to a businessman, and I said, Don't you think most men are little boys? And he said, I'm no little boy! I make seventy-five thousand dollars a year. And I said, Well, the way I look at it - you just have bigger toys.
As a kid, I always wanted to be lots of things. I was a Walter Mitty type. I wanted to be in the French Foreign Legion, a detective, a doctor, a test pilot with a scarf, a fisherman who hauled in a tremendous marlin after a 12-hour fight.
Discipline is tough for a guy who is a rebel.
I was always an observer, even as a child. I could be satisfied to sit in a car for 3 hours and just look at the street go by while my mother went shopping.
My mother had a radio show - a Barbara Walters type of gal and was very successful for about 20-some years on a radio station.
I'm from the Delbert Home for the Unusual.
Now the freaks are on television, the freaks are in the movies. And it's no longer the sideshow, it's the whole show. The colorful circus and the clowns and the elephants, for all intents and purposes, are gone, and we're dealing only with the freaks.