William Windom

your fiend mr. jones

28Sep10

He is the one I remember first from infancy, toddlerhood, childhood. He is one of the few character actors who was a leading man at some point. He was the lead in the sixties sitcom version of the movie “The Farmer’s Daughter” with Inger Stevens. He went on to play the lead in the short-lived (one season) television sitcom-isation of James Thurber’s stories and illustrations “My World And Welcome To It”. I remember this because, as a child, it was a marvel to see a haggard adult, worn down by modern stress, who worked out his issues in animated cartoons. It says something that the show wasn’t cancelled because of low ratings, but because of expense. At that time (1968-9), one could not have a medium-rated critic’s darling that combined live action and animation on the air without paying a king’s ransom. He was rewarded with an Emmy (post-cancellation) for his efforts and accepted saying, “As for myself, I’m available, I can travel and I own my own tux.” It was created by Danny (“Barney Miller”) Arnold with James L. Brooks and Allan Burns (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show”), who all would use Windom again on their more successful endeavors. This would be true for many writers and directors for film and television including Rod Serling (“The Twilight Zone” and “Night Gallery”, for which he won another Emmy for “Tim Riley’s Bar Is Closing” playing an alcoholic adman having a breakdown- he really excelled at breakdowns), Robert Altman (“The Desperate Men” for television and “Brewster McCloud” for film), Levinson and Link (various episodes of “Columbo” including the pilot “Prescription Murder”, as well as being the town doctor on “Murder She Wrote”), John Hughes (“She’s Having A Baby” and “Plains, Trains, and Automobiles”), and so on. I have met him and he was great, bigger than life and kind of a Falstaff, both in attitude and girth. It was odd, given that I remember him most often playing guys on the verge of losing it. Just watch his “Commodore Decker” on the original “Star Trek”. Or his many appearances on sixties and seventies episodic crime dramas. The man was born to play sad. And I could keep writing for two more hours on William Windom alone.