Actor William Windom has died at the age of 88. Mr. Windom amassed a pretty impressive list of credits during his career but to some of us, he was first and foremost the star of My World and Welcome To It, a short-lived 1969 situation comedy on NBC that spun off of (some said, bastardized) the writings of James Thurber. Critics thought it was terrific, my friends and I thought it was terrific…and America watched something else at that hour. If you hear of anyone ever putting 'em out on DVD, let me know.
I met Windom but once. Around 1974, I was taking some courses at Santa Monica College and it was announced that late one weekday afternoon, he would be doing one performance of a new one-man show he was developing called Thurber. It had an interesting price of admission: You had to promise to stay around after and give him a "brutal critique."
I went. He came out at the beginning and told everyone he wasn't kidding about the "brutal" part. He said, approximately, "This is a show I intend to tour with and to try and take to Broadway. The critics will not be pushovers and the bookers will be even worse. I'd rather hear what's wrong with it from young, smart people like you now than from them then. Just be honest with me. I've been an actor for years. I can take it."
He then did the show, partly from book and partly from memory. It was assembled from the writings of you-know-who and he spoke as the man. For what little my opinion is ever worth, it seemed to me it could be a great show but that he was about 60% of the way there with it. The beginning was a lot funnier than the end and the biography stuff — Thurber talking about his life — kept getting lost in the readings of his stories, some of which were suggested as more autobiographical than they probably were intended by their maker. But Mr. Windom was an absolute pro.
When it came time for Brutal Critiques, they weren't all that brutal. Mine started silly. I got up and said, "I don't like your pants and I think you need to lose ten pounds and grow a mustache." Then I gave my serious view…and this was back when I was writing Road Runner comic books, rather than material for actors to perform. I remember discussing my comments with him and wondering: If and when I did start to write for people instead of comic book characters, would every actor be as rational and mature as William Windom? He was smart, he was introspective and he really, really cared about input. In the TV shows I later worked on, I rarely encountered that kind of give-and-take and candid, constructive suggestion. But then I never got to work with William Windom.
That's all I have in the way of a William Windom anecdote, I'm afraid. Wish there was more. Here's a short promo film narrated by Hugh Downs to preview My World and Welcome To It. The series lasted longer than this clip but not much longer…