Free Robin Williams - When the Laughter Stops 1951-2014 by Emily Herbert Page A

act than most people realised. By now he was also developing a trademark look, one that he would stay with for a while: brightly coloured braces (‘suspenders’, as they were known in the States). No one could ever have described him as a snappy dresser but he knew the importance of presentation and creating an individual look that people could associate with him.
    In the event, the show didn’t exactly match the success of the original but it was obvious to everyone that a huge new talent had emerged on the scene. Schlatter signed him up to be part of his regular cast for the
Laugh-In
series of revivals he was planning. ‘You didn’t really need to bother writing for him,’ said the humorist Merrill Markoe. ‘When the camera was on, he blew through what he did and seized the show.’ (Rowan & Martin themselves, incidentally, were not amused: they were not involved in the revival but owned the format to the show and so they went on to sue. They won $4.6 million in 1980.)
    The speed of Williams’ ascent was dizzying but it was to contribute to his problems too. It takes anyone some time to come to terms with being famous but, when it happens virtually overnight, the pressure can be almost too much to bear. Reality, for Robin, was changing very quickly –
too
quickly. Yet another reason to self-medicate began to manifest itself. Fame brings pressure and constant attention and he was having a hard time dealing with both.
    There was also an appearance on
The Richard Pryor Show
but something much bigger was on the cards; something that meant he had to go to court to get out of his
Laugh-In
contract. It emerged that he was earning $1,500 an hour on
Laugh-In
and stood to earn $15,000 per episode if the new deal came off. In the event, he was successful in managing to get out of his contract, married Valerie and looked forward to a bright future. The wedding was a pretty major affair: the couple tied the knot at The Farms Country Club on 4 June1978 in Wallingford, Connecticut, a country club where Valerie’s father Leonard was a member. Both were certainly initially excited about the marriage, but the timing was not good because the sudden and dizzying change in Robin’s status meant that he was about to experience a wild stage of his life. Through just one television appearance, he had made a huge impact and it had come to the attention of some very important people indeed.
    One of the greatest comedians of the day was about to become a household name.
    ‘We were talking briefly about cocaine… yeah. Anything that makes you paranoid and impotent, give me more of that!’
    R OBIN W ILLIAMS

CHAPTER FIVE
NANU NANU
    Mindy McConnell:
I can’t believe you called all my friends!
    Mork:
I can’t believe what they called you!
    Garry Marshall had a problem: the writer, director and producer had a long-running hit on his hands –
Happy Days
– about a happy family growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. It had started in 1974 and was to finish in 1984 but, halfway through the run, Marshall was trying to broaden its appeal. He turned to his son to ask what he wanted to watch and got a slightly unexpected reply.
    ‘My 7-year-old son Scott was reluctant to watch
Laverne & Shirley
or
Happy Days
or any show I did,’ he told
New York Magazine
in 1993. ‘So I asked him, “What do you like?” He said, “I only like space.” I told him, “I don’t do space.” “Well, you could do it.” So I asked him, “How wouldyou do space in
Happy Days
?” And he said, “It could be a dream.” Now, this was the fourth year of the show, and we were trying to find worthy adversaries for Fonzie. So we wrote a guest role for Mork, the extraterrestrial. And my sister the casting agent brought Robin in from my sister Penny’s acting class.’
    As Marshall was later to observe, ‘Williams was the only alien to audition for the role. He came into the room, Garry asked him to take a seat and Robin promptly put his head on the chair. It was