Robin Williams and first wife Valerie Velardi
How many times must we see our so-called heroes unmasked before we learn our lesson?
To separate actors like Robin Williams from the characters they play in movies and on dumbed down appearances on the Tonight Show. To remove them from the pedestals they may or may not deserve and reserve our worship for more worthy subjects who might not happen to be big movie stars or play for the Royals or Chiefs.
Of course, that tends to run counter to human nature.
Take Kansas City Star entertainment and celebrity gossip writer Lisa Gutierrez‘s brief today, “Laughing through our tears: RIP, Robin Williams.”
“Some celebrities touch us so deeply with their work that when they die it hurts like the loss of a family member,” Gutierrez writes. “Robin Williams, who died Monday, was one of those actors…So for now, let us remember how he made us roar. But gosh darn it, it’s so hard to laugh through the tears.”
Journalists like Gutierrez are usually among the first to pounce when someone like Williams, soccer star Hope Solo or O.J. Simpson cross that all too familiar line over to the dark side.
Forget about laughing through those tears.
Not being a big Robin Williams fan, I had to do some extra research before interviewing Craig Glazer about the time Williams played Stanford & Sons in the late 1980s.
And what did I discover?
That likable though Williams many movie characters were, he was basically a dirtbag.
Instead of being affable Patch Adams, the movie MD who treated his patients with laughter or the endearing gay character who owned a South Beach drag club in The Birdcage, Williams was a skirt chasing wild man of epic party proportions.
He was the actor who married first wife Valerie Velardi, just as his TV career as space alien Mork was starting to take off, had a kid, embarked on an extramarital affair with a cocktail waitress who then sued him for giving her Herpes (and won.) After which Velardi dumped him, whereupon Williams married his son’s Filipino nanny who just happened to be pregnant with his child.
And on and on and on.
Glazer’s take on Williams:
“Look, he was a big star. I think any guy that’s that big of a star has a lot of options. Not everybody is Ron Howard.”
Glazer met Williams in 1981 when he was in LA pitching his first life story “Outlaws” to movie studios.
“Mork and Mindy was being cancelled and his movie Popeye had come out but hadn’t done that well, so Robin was planning to make a living as a standup comic,” Glazer says. “But he bombed that night at The Improv on Melrose.”
From the get-go, Glazer could see that Williams was a player.
“When I first met him we did blow in the bathroom at the Improv,” Glazer says. “And it wasn’t mine, it was his.”
Glazer talked Williams into doing a standup gig at Stanford’s in Westport to help bolster his standup career.
“The big story out of that was he had an affair with one of our waitresses and that was a disaster,” Glazer says. “His wife found out and that probably contributed to his divorce.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only time Glazer stumbled onto Williams wicked ways.
Years later a girlfriend of Glazers – who was a Penthouse magazine centerfold – woke him late at night and asked him to come get her out of jail.
“She had gotten a DUI,” Glazer says. “But by the time I got down there she’d already been bailed out…by Robin Williams. I was pissed because I wouldn’t have known anything about her seeing Williams if she had not gotten the DUI. And later she fooled around on me with O.J. Simpson.”
Having a hard time picturing Robin Williams as a Casanova?
Take a number.
“He wasn’t that bad looking,” Glazer says. He was kinda nice looking but man was he hairy – his arms – he was like Sasquatch. But at the end of the day, he did us a service. Because to have a star like Robin Williams play our little club in Westport was a really big deal. It put us on the map.”
WTF Hearne? Glazer “made” Robin Williams? I know there is nothing in this world that you love more than someone’s death so you can produce a story to get page views….but this is crazy. Just straight up crazy
No man Robin helped make us.
I know it’s blasphemy to say it now but I found Robin Williams to be one of the most unfunny comedians around. Lots of energy but he just seemed to throw mounds and mounds of comedic crap against the wall and hoped some of it would stick. It seemed to get worse, and more desperate, as he got older.
He quit doing coke, what can you say?
I’m kind of with Hot Carl on this…
Went to the Birdcage, Mrs. Doubtfire and maybe a couple other of Williams’ movies, but his humor just wasn’t my thing.
As for Jess comment above, obviously Glazer didn’t “make” Robin Williams.
Quite the opposite.
Glazer is quoted as saying that Williams playing Stanford’s early on helped “make” the club
Your treatment of celebrity death continues to be a guilty pleasure of mine. I am sure Robin Williams would have wanted you to use his death to take a swipe at a Star writer.
Geez Mysterious, you do unleash some interesting takes…
The Star item just jumped out at me – and of course was local – as the perfect example of how superficial people can be.
To anoint Williams with tearful reverence for merely being good at play acting out the words and deeds of others, while completely ignoring his unseemly words and deeds
People have to the point that Williams killed himself. He’s hurt his family and the people who loved him.
He cut both his wrists and put a belt around his neck so that he knew he would die.
Suicide only hurts those left behind. His wife and children will probably be more wealthy than their wildest dreams now — but at what cost.
sad
should have read ‘People have to come to the point’
It is sad, Jack Springer…
But reviewing the landscape of Williams life, he laid down plenty of other “sad” for his many wives and kids.
It wasn’t like his suicide popped some kind of a Walt Disney-like bubble of a life well lived.
Fooling around countless times on his wives, exposing women to Herpes without warning them in order to have condum-less sex, impregnating the babysitter.
Good thing he landed all those heart warming movie roles so people like Lisa Gutierrez can tear up and remember him for the man he wasn’t rather than for the man he actually was.
I guess that’s human nature, but a little reporting and putting things in perspective would have been nice
The man seemed so intensly manic at all times, he probably felt the need to sedate himself with drugs, alchohol and women. I really wonder exactly how much control we really have over the chemicals in our bodies and the effect they have on the decisions we make.
Hearne seems to imply he was a bad actor and calls him a “dirtbag”. Sheesh… Over the course of his 63 year life he had extramrital affairs and did blow. Williams is Single a Ball tops on Hollywood and, for that matter, Kansas City’s list of well known sh*theels.
I think Hearne is breaking the butterfly on the wheel in order to grind a Kansas City Star axe. Glazer gets that amount of heartbreak and chaos in the bank before 9 AM.
The guy never even puched out a photographer, or, anyone! No blood, no foul.
He was a good guy.
Yeah, I have heard some stories from a lot of anonymous people about the great stories where he was a sincere and nice guy. Perfect? Nah, the guy was human, he had his demons and made some mistakes. In his case I would say the good greatly outweighed the bad.
oh I thought you were talking about Glazer there at first, chuckles.
Well put Chuck. I think Robin was no different than most top level celebrities in this nation. Wine, women,song,etc….dirtbag, no I don’t see that. Cheating on his wives, seems most married men do at some point, especially the rich and famous. I wish it weren’t that way but it is….as for someone saying the first paragraph could have been about me…. well I’d have to agree.
Hey Chuck, no KC Star axe here…
I know Lisa well and she’s a very nice person. She simply provided the perfect (and local) example of ignoring who a person actually was while celebrating his acting out the words and deeds of other.
Williams didn’t script those movie roles, he was cast in them.
Craig
And say what you will about philandering, Williams approach stood in such stark contrast to his actor image that it was worth noting at the very least.
Craig BTW was true blue during his marriage. I can pretty much attest to that.
He wasn’t thrashing any baby (dog) sitters or passing along Herpes to cocktail waitresses. And doing it in a serial fashion that was no doubt extremely hurtful to his first wife.
As for Craig doling out heartbreak, that’s a cheap shot.
While Craig is no boy scout, he’s also not a pretender. He is who he is and the women that associate with him know exactly what they’re getting…right up front.
And truth be known, despite that Craig has dated a number of strippers, etc he’s no dirtbag. He treats the women he goes out with with a measure of respect that far exceeds that which they probably get from the married guys on the lam from their spouses and the loser boyfriends that they “date” otherwise accompany
He should have left LA a long time ago. He hung himself for the same reason that most adults who chose suicide do – financial pressures.
Glenn do you know anything on that? I don’t? I agree suicide usually is money or failed love..or both..I wonder about it. He was a strange bird.
perhaps you should follow his example! we wont have to read 10 ‘stories’ a day on here from you!
You first. Fake namer.
Did you used to live in LA, glenn?
Financial struggle seems plausible, considering that he had to “downsize” after his second divorce, according to a recent interview. Plus he was in and out of ‘rehab’ lately. And I say rehab in quotes because it now suggests that it was more likely a psych ward…out in Minnesota of all things. That last photograph of him with a Dairy Queen worker was sad. He looked gaunt and emaciated standing next to that girl. You could tell it was the beginning of the end for him judging by his appearance.
Sorry to bring it up, but I also immediately thought of Don Harman when I first heard about Williams’ sudden death. Harman also had a disheveled look during his final newscast. The point is, the signs are there. I think we as humans need to be a little more observant of one another and not be afraid to ask if something is wrong to someone who may seem a little off–as in sad, mind you.
And Hearne, I know the angle you were trying to get with Williams to prevent the piece from reading like the rest of the run-of-the-mill tribute stories. Nobody’s perfect and we have all have our bad traits, but then again he was a celebrity. When you’re at that level, you probably feel entitled to virtually anything, which in contrast would make an average Joe feel disgusted.
I don’t give a shit about celebrities, but his untimely death struck a chord with me. I guess it’s because we all have our persona/mask. Plus it goes to show that even the most energetic/jovial people have more demons than realized. Scary. Makes me want to research psychology a bit more.
As for Robin Williams, Kerouac did not find him especially funny in life, subjectively, find him less so even, in death. As to his final ‘act’, the old adage ‘always leave your audience wanting more’, seems, oddly apropos now.
Post act, “it was a selfish, cowardly act” critiques usually append, these self-righteous subjective reactions to someone else’s conduct. Perhaps a nod their own conscience or underlying fear of mortality the impetus such sentiment, human beings are by nature selfish. Those contemplate/complete suicide cite a lack of ‘hope’ and not ‘cowardice’ as precursor.
If the choice to commit suicide is the act of a coward, choosing live is same: we know life but not death, by default ‘to be’ holds the greater sway than ‘not to be’, for most. We’re no more ‘captive’ here than we were ‘free’ prevent our birth… every entrance requires egress.
Living (only for, or more so in consideration of another being/s) is neither heroic nor selfless… it is close/r to bondage. Suicide is personal/unique as the one contemplates/ completes the act. One size does not fit all… a sui generis choice exists be judge, jury and executioner; to each their own.
K interesting as always. Robin was funny. He was fast, and much like his idol Johnathan Winters. You don’t climb that high and not be talented. He was a fine actor as evidenced by his Academy Award and other nominations. Look some people didn’t find Richard Pryor funny. Different strokes for different…
As for is suicide a cowards way out? I don’t think so. We are all going out, just a matter of when and how. At 35 most of us start thinking of our time beginning to run out. At 45 we can’t believe we are near 50. At 55 OMG we turned into our parents, even our grandparents. At 60 and up well now its nearly a weekly thought, when is this ride ending. In our senior years 70/80’s its likely man this was a long run and was it worth it?
So its a when, where,why and damn. Lauren Bacall died yesterday. Not nearly the fanfare, though she sured deserved it all. Nearly 90, did everything was a winner. Still sad to see her gone. Seemed so many fewer cared it was a brief news spot compared to Williams. Sure he is more current and most people under 35 have no clue who Bacall is or was, hell some don’t know Williams.
There is no answer to lifes value. I wish there was.
You’re glorifying murder.
CG, yes Williams was funny, very to many… just not among my faves, comedy. Venue & timing too plays a part: never saw him live, whereas did see others in real time, including both an at his peak Sam Kinison and later aft he as a shadow of his former self, approximately 2 weeks before his death; the drop-off was both obvious and extreme. As you say, different strokes.
~
JS, don’t know if your comment was in reply mine, if so, you’ll have to elaborate on “murder” and “glorifying.”
Regardless the public persona, how a private act performed the privacy one’s home, unwitnessed apparently, glorifies, escapes me. Unless as another blogger referenced, some folks put upon pedestals their heros or God’s otherwise, variously. The human being, deified or not, will always let you down, some point, some way, someday.
Selfishness cuts both ways: is it any less selfish to continue living moreso for the benefit of another, than for oneself? Is it any less selfish choose save ‘a’ life when two or more, family members or otherwise, are in danger drowning? The answer is ‘to each their own’ – the point in all of this, walk a mile the shoes a protagonist.
Kerouac does not believe there is any merit a distinction. Whose life & death is it? If one believes they are their brother’s keeper, so be it. My take: final exit a pseudo stage of life, performed for reasons understood by the actor alone, if perhaps by no one else.
Upshot – the actor is also writer and narrator his own one-man device, every problem theirs in this life considered ‘solved’. The collateral damage an unfortunate aside that by the very nature, must be subservient.
Perhaps the notion embraced by some that we are all connected beyond a blood tie regardless spiritual beliefs, gives pause some.
Kerouac dissents.
I subscribe to Orson Welles “we’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love & friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone”, ‘Citizen Kane’ nails it as well anyone.
~
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”, nod Bill Shakespeare, via his ‘MacBeth’:
“And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.”
Least , that’s how Bill & Mac/Kerouac done saw/sees it.
Never could understand people that feel some “connection” to complete strangers when death comes knocking. Just seems so strange to me. It would be a pretty pathetic and sad life if I spent my days mourning the death of the millions of people worldwide that I never knew. Jesus. What are all the celebrity obsessed people going to do when one of the Kardashians offs themself?
Well said, Jim a.k.a. BHW
I have been a casual reader of this blog for many months now and oftentimes enjoy its take on local and sometimes national happenings. But, for the love of all things journalistic, find a new source. CG can’t be your source for all things sport and entertainment and politics. Otherwise, this is not an actual source of alternative views, but just his views. Its becoming his personal diary. I am sure he is a swell, humble, connected and erudite guy, but move on. There is nothing new in your article, he had a drug problem and did wild things. The best take on depression and this situation was from NPR here – http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/08/12/robin-williams-depression.
Hey husbanddadequ,
Had to touch base with Craig on this one – as did I think just about every local TV news station and a number of radio stations.
That said, I’ll take you critique to heart
Thinly veiled jab at the Star – check
Commentary from CG – check
Trashing a celebrity for his behavior 30+ years ago – check
Good job Hearne – your day’s work is done
Hearny takes all opportunities or creates them to sharpen his axes and get page views!!
Thirty years ago?
Get real.
Drug addiction aside, Williams lead a very dark, unseemly life in real life.
We’re talking character here.
And focussing on the “character” of some of the movie roe characters that he played just struck me as very superficial.
Now Lisa at the Star was not alone in this obviously. But she was a local example and local trumps national on KC Confidential
1.williams was funny. Just needed to be in the right stage of mind tosee his
comedic genius.
2. yea…okay he partied with drugs/slept with other women/was different in front
of the camera than in back of it.
3. yes…it seems he felt he had some financial pressures (with a 30 million dollar home)
god bless him and his family and friends.
Glazer had the blow and picked up the bar tab. Said no one ever!
HA!
Hmmmm!