Reflections on Celebrity Deaths and Genius

The deaths of Richard Attenborough and Robin Williams have--as all deaths do--have caused me to reflect upon genius and its different facets--the mild mannered genius of a Manet or Tom Hanks and the mad genius of a Van Gogh or Andy Kaufman..

Attenborough lived to the age of 90 and had about a as well-rounded and as fruitful a career as one could have.

When he was just 18, Noel Coward gave him a memorable part in the 1941 movie In Which We Serve. Attenborough went on to play a teen-aged hoodlum in Brighton Rock (1947), the really solid planner of the great escape in the Great Escape (1963),  comedy roles in movies like I'm All Right, Jack (1959) with Peter Sellers, and even sang and danced in Doctor Doolittle (1967), in which his number "I've Never Seen Anything Like It" is the liveliest part of that overlong and overdone film.

As a stage actor, Attenborough in 1952 had a leading role in the original cast of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which has the record for the longest run of any play in London or Broadway. He received a percentage of ticket sales which, since it is still running, was quite remunerative.

But Attenborough wanted to direct films, beginning with one of my favorites and a terribly underrated one, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), from Joan Littlewood's theatre piece blending songs of the period with the horror of World War I--it was antiwar and about Vietnam just as MASH (1970) was set in the Korean War and about Vietnam. He next directed two respectable historical dramas--Young Winston and A Bridge Too Far--and spent 20 years and money from The Mousetrap getting Gandhi (1982) to film. It won the Oscars for best direction and best film. He later directed Chaplin (1992) which brought Robert Downey Jr. an Oscar nomination for  playing the title role. Attenborough directed Downey in doing the impossible, mimicking a slapstick comedy genius, just as Geoffrey Rush was able to do in the Private Life of Peter Sellers.

His films made money and won awards. Later critics have faulted the quality of Gandhi,but  it won Oscars for 8 out of 11 nominations so it was certainly appreciated in its time.

And then Attenborough was able to come back as an actor later in life and star in the blockbuster Jurassic Park (1993), winning new fans and recognition. He was also married to his Mousetrap co-star for nearly seven decades. It was quite a successful and happy career and, at least evidently, life.

Robin Williams died two weeks prior at the age of 63. He too had a successful career, was universally loved and respected, and he killed himself, bringing up the question of the link of genius with madness.

The link between creativity and what is loosely called "madness" was recognized as far back as the ancient Greek philosopher Artistole--"Even the most excellent soul will have a mixture of madness"--and the roots of Greek music and drama in the myths and rituals of Orpheus and Bacchus. Painters such as Vincent Van Gogh have been thought mad and committed suicide and poets such as John Berryman. I wrote a long article some years back on the film actor John Barrymore that appeared in the Washington Post. He feared that he would go mad like his actor-father who died in an asylum. John Barrymore killed himself by alcohol.

You can obviously have a career like Attenborough's and not have the issue of genius and madness come up. Some could argue that Attenborough was a craftsman and not a genius, or at least not as much a genius as Williams.

With Williams, it was as if he was inspired by all these Greek muses at once. His breakthrough role was that of the alien on earth Mork from Ork in the tv show Mork and Mindy. His physical and mental agility were amazing. It was manic, Bacchian frenzy on the tube. With the premise that he as an alien had learned of earth's culture from tv and radio transmissions, he was able to seemingly have all of the last century of U.S. media explode out of him, for instance when he suddenly said in the voice of Lucille Ball, "Oh, Ricky, please let me be in the show!" and he'd answer as Desi Arnaz, "Lucy, you con't be intha show!"

He then effortlessly moved chameleon-like into movies, starting with Popeye, The World According to Garp, the Survivors, Moscow on the Hudson, and then a string of more serious roles, including Hello, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, Awakenings, The Fisher King, culminating in an Oscar for Good Will Hunting. He did standup, he did Broadway,  he did the tv specials "Comedy Relief," he took cameos in friends' movies, he gave voice to the Genie in Disney's Aladdin (1992) and sang the Oscar-nominated song "Friend Like Me,"--he could do anything.

Initially, he was fueled in part by drugs, but after his friend John Belushi died in 1982 of a drug overdose Williams was sober for 20 years. But someone who pored such energy, who played so many voices, sometimes as if he were possessed--the line between genius and what some see as madness is a thin one.

He suffered from depression. He was said to work so much because it distracted him from his inner demons. He underwent open heart surgery in 2009. It slowed him down. He was also aging. He turned 60 in 2011. After he died, the tv media show Entertainment Tonight and other programs broadcast early and late interviews with Williams, and in the later ones he seems so much more quiet and reserved.

The last movies in which he had leading roles did not do well at the box office, and he seemed to focus on supporting or cameo roles. He returned to television in 2013 in a show called The Crazy Ones. It was cancelled after one season. And then he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

Michael J. Fox  ten years younger, also started in television and then branched out to movies, experiencing great success in the Back to the Future franchise. Both Williams and Fox excelled at both verbal and physical comedy.

Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease when he was 30. He did not disclose it for six years until his symptoms became more pronounced. He left his hit tv show Spin City in 1996, established a foundation for Parkinson's Disease, and after five years, aided by advances in medical research, returned to television in Boston Legal and The Good Wife, playing characters who were handicapped.

Fox's comeback was remarkable. Also in 2013, he returned to television in The Michael J. Fox Show portrayal a character dealing with Parkinson's. Fox's show was cancelled sooner than Williams'. I have heard some people saying that it was difficult to laugh at or with Fox, seeing him struggling with the disease.

Williams, having been diagnose with Parkinson's, whose verbal and physical fury had made him a star, surely looked at Fox and may have told himself that that was the best that could happen to him.

Williams already suffered from depression and such news would surely worsen it.

I had a relative who killed himself. He had lost his job, moved across the country where he heard there were jobs, failed the employed test, couldn't pay his bills, wrecked the car and was threatened with being sued--and he slit his throat with a scissors.

As a young man at the time, I told myself, glibly, that the thing one had to do was just separate all of the things that were weighing down on you--okay, you'll find another job, you'll look into loans, part-time work, anything to pay your bills, you'll get a lawyer. As I've gotten older, I've seen that it might not be that easy, especially if one suffers from depression.

Williams evidently fought his depression by working. And then it looked like he might not be able to work.

And then there were all the voices in his head.

Williams' family issued statements that they didn't want the manner of his death to detract from the memory of his work. And that is absolutely as right for him as it is for Van Gogh and Berryman and Barrymore. But it does sadden the memory, and it make you think.

If you could choose a successful career in film, would you pick Attenborough's--distinguished and maybe a little short of greatness--or Williams'?

If you had a career like Attenborough's' would you perhaps prefer to have had a briefer and maybe more brilliant career and be called a genius, even if it could mean demons and suicide? Would someone like Williams have preferred the longer and smoother train ride that included old age and honors but also fewer creative firework highs that touched the horizon?

Well, of course, you can't choose. We are ruled, to a large extent, by our genes and by chance. And who could really make that choice?

The accomplishments of both Attenborough and Williams are to be admired and envied.

But we are still sad for Williams, whose life was briefer than we would have liked and because he evidently didn't experience the joy of his work as much as we did.

By John T. Aquino

Copyright 2014 by John T. Aquino