It’s hard to believe but it’s been nine years in August since we lost Robin Williams and I still believe the world has never laughed the same since. Today marks what would have been his 72nd birthday and he is still (and always will be) remembered as a sheer comedic force to be reckoned with who demonstrated genius the likes of which we will never see again and also countless stories of his kindness and warmth to humanity.
What isn’t perhaps well known is his connection to our galaxy far, far away. It’s well documented of his friendship with George Lucas thanks to a shared love of sci-fi and technology and for that matter it’s probably easier to list the folk in tinsel town that Williams wasn’t friends with as he counted the much missed Carrie Fisher as a dear friend too. Williams was even reported to have surprised Lucas at a birthday party once by hiding in a giant cake and another well-known story is how he kept Steven Spielberg sane during the making of Schiendler’s List as Spielberg would phone him every night after shooting and Robin would perform routines and voices for him down the phone.
Now, cast your minds back to the late 70’s. Star Wars explodes onto the big-screen and takes the world by storm. This is May ’77. But in September ’78…a sitcom named ‘Mork and Mindy’ made its debut on American television starring night-club comic Robin Williams and the very-talented Pam Dawber. The series followed Mork from Orc as he came to Earth to investigate life and report back to his leader Orson on his findings. In short, it was simply the launchpad for Robin’s career as his lightening improvisation made the show a phenomenon. Fun fact: this show was the birth of what became known as the ‘three camera set up’. This meaning; one focused on centre-stage and two placed either side to track expression from different angles. This wasn’t the norm up until then and the reason for this was that Williams was so hyperkinetic that one camera couldn’t keep up with him around the set.
How did Mork and Mindy come to be though? This show was actually a spin-off from iconic series ‘Happy Days’. That show had been on-air for several years but had hit somewhat of a creative slump. (More was to come as this show is what spawned the phrase ‘jump the shark’ in which the writers had seemingly run out of ideas that badly that they had the Fonz literally jump a shark in the later years.)
It was June 1977 and Gary Marshall, creator and producer of Happy Days, asked his son, then aged 9, what would keep him interested in watching Happy Days. Marshall often used his son to gauge the latest trends. Hearing the question and without missing a beat, Marshall’s son replied; ‘I’m not really interested in much apart from Star Wars now. If there was an alien on Happy Days then I’d watch it again.’
And so history was made. That was it. Marshall ordered an episode in which Ron Howard (future Solo director) was to be met by an alien. Yes, there was an alien in Happy Days. (later revealed to be a dream sequence though this plot point itself was cut in reruns.) This alien was Robin Williams. It was meant to be nothing more than a gimmick to cash in on the Star Wars craze sweeping the globe but spawned everything we know now.
So the legend goes, Williams got the role not only on the strengths and now popularity of his wild stand-up but because when he went into the audition room he was asked to sit down and Williams did sit down…but he sat on his head with his feet in the air. ‘Ah,’ said one producer. ‘That’s something an alien would do.’
As I say, it is a legend. But, as Ahsoka Tano herself once said; ‘There’s always a bit of truth in legends.’
And so…Happy Birthday Robin!
It has been said that no one’s ever really gone and never a truer line has been spoken for you.