RIP Jonathan Winters

Good Lord, we're losing classic-era entertainers by the day! Comedian Jonathan Winters has died at the age of 87.

For those of you who don't know, Winters was a pioneering improv comic; a freewheeling, maniacal, lightning-witted performer who paved the way for the likes of Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Patton Oswalt, and Billy Crystal, among countless others.

Personally, I'm most familiar with Winters on account of two very different roles. The first was his turn in the 1963 all-star comedy epic It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, where he played the truck driver Mr. Pike. In that role Winters had the distinction of starring in perhaps the single funniest sequence of a tremendously funny movie, in which he chases two terrified attendents all around all their gas station, completely demolishing it with his bare hands in the process (the sequence of events that leads to this is too complicated to get into here; they believe he's an escaped mental patient and he's out to take revenge on a con-man played by Phil Silvers).

The other role that springs to mind was one of his rare dramatic performances in an episode of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. In the episode A Game of Pool, Winters plays a deceased champion who returns from the dead to answer a challenge by an up-and-comer played by Jack Klugman. It's an excellent episode, dealing with the question of what it means to be a champion, and whether the effort is worth it. Winters gave a rich, slightly creepy performance as the unpredictable grand master who alternates between being deathly serious about the game and treating the whole thing as a lark. He also gets to show his comedic talents a bit, as his character begins toying with Klugman's late in the game.

I am painfully aware that this barely scratches the surface of Winter's fifty-plus-year career in film and television, not to mention his talents as a writer and painter. Suffice to say, he was one of the last of the great talents of his generation, and he will be sorely missed.

Requiescat in Pacem.