(2 of 3)
The man behind this comic madness is the product of a comfortable but solitary upbringing. The last child of a Ford Motor Co. vice president, Williams grew up in Chicago, the Detroit suburbs and Tiburon, near San Francisco. When left alone, he summoned up his own world, maneuvering his toy soldiers and cloning his own versions of wacky Jonathan Winters characterizations like Maude Frickert. After two stabs at college in California, he moved to New York City to study acting. For spending money, he and a partner did white-faced comedy mime in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, occasionally matching acts with Acrobat Philippe Petit, who went on to walk between the towers of New York's World Trade Center. On a boffo day, Williams made $75.
Eventually Williams returned to San Francisco, where he hung around the city's small comedy clubs. While tending bar, he met a dancer named Valerie Valardi, whom he married last June. Valerie urged him to try the clubs in Los Angeles; she helped catalogue his material and shape his act. Once Williams had played Los Angeles' Comedy Store and Improvisation, he began to get TV work.
Mork appeared first when Robin played him in a one-shot appearance on Happy Days. The mail response to the episode was so large that a spin-off series was created for Williams. Mork & Mindy was a hit even before it went on the air. Director Howard Storm recalls the series' first taping: "Most of the time the studio audience for a new show is down. They don't know the characters. With Mork, they went crazy."
Now that he is famous, Williams tries to live in the same casual way. He and Valerie still like to practice yoga, play backgammon and chess, ski, surf and drive around Los Angeles for the fun of it. Privacy, however, is becoming increasingly elusive. The other day he was roller-skating in Venice, a funky, fashionable section of the city, where people like to walk around on wheels. He coasted into a phone booth to make a call, but was quickly surrounded by fans peeking through the glass. Said he: "I felt like I was in the San Diego Zoo."
Williams finds TV's ratings struggle frightening. This season he became fascinated by a short-lived NBC sitcom, Who's Watching the Kids?, that was shot on a lot near Mork. "I saw its birth and death," he says wistfully. "I watched people fight for it. It is strange for me to know that I'm being used to cut the guts out of other new series." He chuckles at the talk that Mork & Mindy may soon have its own spinoff. "What would they spin off? It would be more like a skin graft."
Williams has an inhibiting five-year contract to play Mork, but he is moving beyond television. A comedy album is on the way, and next January he will star in the movie Popeye. Williams hopes that five seasons of Mork will not be too much. Says he: "If you find yourself stiffening up and not taking chances, then you become a situation comedy comedian."