How did ‘Star Wars’ help launch Robin Williams’ career?
Robin Williams was a star who could seemingly do anything. As one of the greatest standup comedians of all time, he proved that he could also take on emotionally complicated roles in heavy-hitting dramas and deliver pitch-perfect performances. While most other comedians choose to stick with comedy when they turn their careers toward the film industry, he tried almost everything and excelled at every turn.
Fans of the actor know that he found modest fame in the comedy world in the 1970s before landing the lead role in the sitcom Mork & Mindy. When he transitioned to film roles in movies like Good Morning, Vietnam and Mrs Doubtfire, he swiftly became one of the most prominent celebrities of his generation. In hindsight, Williams’s comedic genius was so explosive that his ascension to the A-list of Hollywood seems nothing short of inevitable, but if it hadn’t been for Star Wars, he might have remained a big fish in the small pond of standup comedy until being unceremoniously shunted aside by the next up-and-comer.
Director Garry Marshall was hard at work making his beloved teen sitcom Happy Days in 1978 when he went to see the original Star Wars movie at the cinema with his young son. Like many children who watched A New Hope for the first time, the boy was captivated by it and begged his dad to make a space-related episode of Happy Days. This was no small task. The sitcom was set in a small Midwestern town in the 1950s and ‘60s and, therefore, had very little to do with science fiction, but as any doting parent would, Marshall decided to give it a go.
The initial script for the episode ‘My Favourite Orkan’ was a disaster. The concept was that Richie (Ron Howard) would be visited by an alien named Mork, who wanted to take him back to his home planet as a specimen. The first actor hired to play the character quit, and Marshall started looking for a quick replacement. Al Molinaro, who played the diner owner on the show, recommended a little-known comic who he had met as an acting student.
When Williams auditioned for the part, Marshall was stunned by his lightning-speed improvisation and infectious energy. He quickly hired him, and when the time came to record the episode, the live audience went wild. “He immediately took over,” Howard remembered, adding, “We just never had never seen a burst of genius quite like that.”
The network clearly hadn’t either. Within four days of the episode airing, they signed a deal with Williams to prevent anyone else from swooping in and commissioned a series based on the character. Mork & Mindy ran for four seasons and gave Williams the audience and canvas he needed to demonstrate his generational talents.
Although the actor might have found a big break somewhere else along the line, it’s hard to imagine a more meteoric rise. By being offered such an offbeat character on such an established sitcom, Williams was able to showcase his frenetic, singular energy in a way that he wouldn’t have been able to with a run-of-the-mill supporting character on a smaller show. Thanks to one kid’s fascination with Star Wars and Marshall’s willingness to indulge it, we got to enjoy decades of Williams’s unparalleled screen presence.
