Robin Williams - When the Laughter Stops 1951-2014 by Herbert Emily

Author:Herbert, Emily [Herbert, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781784183394
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2014-11-04T14:00:00+00:00

Miriam: Oh, thank God!

AWAKENINGS (1990)

CHAPTER NINE

TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY

‘You’re only given a little spark of madness, you mustn’t lose it.’

ROBIN WILLIAMS

For much of the 1990s, Williams’ film career continued to soar. In 1993 there was another seminal role, this time in Mrs. Doubtfire, based on Anne Fine’s novel Alias Madame Doubtfire and co-starring Sally Field. Strangely enough, when first released the film received decidedly mixed reviews but it is now considered to be one of the great classics, ranking 67th in the American Film Institute’s 100 Years, 100 Laughs: America’s Funniest Movies and 40th on Bravo’s 100 Funniest Movies of All Time.

The film, which also starred Pierce Brosnan in his pre-Bond days, told the tale of Daniel and Miranda Hillard, divorced parents of three. Daniel, as luck would have it, is a voice actor (this gave Robin a great many opportunities to clown around) and so, after the divorce goes through and he gets extremely limited custody, he dresses up as a Scottish nanny and works his way back into his children’s lives. In the end, all is revealed and he is forgiven with the message (by this time a great many of Williams’ films had messages) that not only had he learned to become a better father but family triumphed above all else.

(In a rather touching example of the fact that this is actually true, a totally unknown actor called Dr. Toad had a bit part as a bartender in the movie. In actual fact, Dr. Toad was none other than R. Todd Williams, now an acclaimed wine maker and co-founder of Toad Hollow Vineyards and Robin’s oldest half-brother. He had, indeed, been a bartender in his time.)

And Williams certainly managed to pull it off: his performance was absolutely central to the movie. ‘In the film, if Robin’s character doesn’t fool the woman he’d been married to for fourteen years, she won’t hire him – and there’d be no movie,’ director Chris Columbus told New York Magazine in 1993. But it was far more personal than many people realised: Robin himself had recently been through a divorce and was well aware of all the problems caused when parents and children don’t see enough of each other. In some ways, this was as raw as the stand-up material he had once done about taking drugs.

Mrs. Doubtfire was much compared to Tootsie (1982), the Dustin Hoffman vehicle in which he, too, dragged up in order to get work in a soap opera but, while that film was deservedly and immediately recognised as a comic classic, Mrs. Doubtfire was not. It was compared, on the whole unfavourably, with another of the cross-dressing greats, Some Like It Hot (1959) and, even the (sort of) complimentary reviews were a little sharp.

‘I’ve rarely laughed so much at a movie I generally disliked,’ said David Ansen in Newsweek. ‘The dress, the mask and Mrs. Doubtfire’s gentility are inherently limiting, but nothing holds Mr. Williams back when he’s on a roll,’ wrote Janet Maslin in The New York Times.

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