Someone asked me recently what Jonathan Winters was like off-camera. In my experiences, he was very much like Jonathan Winters on-camera. For some of the time I had an office at Hanna-Barbera, I was located right outside the recording studio and when a Smurfs voice session ended, Mr. Winters would go prowling in search of an audience. He learned he could often find one in my office where other writers were known to congregate. I didn't go into the studio every day but for a while, I would try to be there when The Smurfs was recording, just in case Jonathan was in and wanted to play.
There'd be three or four writers in my office and when he poked his head in, we'd never greet him by name. I'd say, "Hi! Are you the local game warden" or something like that…and Jonathan would instantly become the local game warden and commence a lecture about how to not have a bear eat your face off. Once in a while when he was Jonathan Winters and not a character, he would tell show biz stories. The ones I recall best were the ones that expressed his distaste for Bob Hope…
…and when you think about it, he and Hope were pretty much opposites. Jonathan could not work with pre-scripted lines and cue cards while Hope — at that age — couldn't perform without them.
Here's Jonathan on with Johnny Carson. The date is 12/8/1988 and I doubt you'll ever see anyone do better sitting in Carson's guest chair…and you can see the delight on Johnny's face throughout. And yet I wondered why he didn't have Jonathan on very often. Winters at the time was living in Toluca Lake, I think…literally about a five-minute drive from where Johnny taped. And Jonathan was rarely unavailable. You'd think that when a guest scored this well, Johnny would tell his people, "Let's have that guy on every three or four weeks." But I'd be surprised if Jonathan was on more often than once every other year or so.
Don't ask me why. I have no idea…