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Robin Williams

Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian. Known for his improvisational skills and the wide variety of characters he created on the spur of the moment and portrayed on film, in dramas and comedies alike,  Williams is regarded as one of the greatest comedians of all time. He received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, five Grammy Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Williams was awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2005.

Williams began performing stand-up comedy in San Francisco and Los Angeles during the mid-1970s, and released several comedy albums including Reality ... What a Concept in 1980. He rose to fame playing the alien Mork in the ABC sitcom Mork & Mindy (1978–1982). Williams received his first leading film role in Popeye (1980). Williams won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting (1997). His other Oscar-nominated roles were for Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989) and The Fisher King (1991).

Williams starred in the critically acclaimed dramas The World According to Garp (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Awakenings (1990), Insomnia (2002), One Hour Photo (2002) and World's Greatest Dad (2009). He also starred in Toys (1992), The Birdcage (1996) and Patch Adams (1998), as well as family films, such as Hook (1991), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Jumanji (1995), Jack (1996), Flubber (1997), RV (2006) and the Night at the Museum trilogy (2006–2014). Williams lent his voice to the animated films Aladdin (1992), Robots (2005), Happy Feet (2006) and its 2011 sequel.

During his career, Williams suffered substance abuse issues and instances of severe depression. He was found dead at his home in Paradise Cay, California, in August 2014, at age 63. His death was ruled a suicide. According to his widow, Williams had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and had been experiencing depression, anxiety and increasing paranoia. His autopsy found "diffuse Lewy body disease", and Lewy body dementia professionals said that his symptoms were consistent with dementia with Lewy bodies.

Early life and education
Robin McLaurin Williams was born at St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, on July 21, 1951. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (1906–1987), was a senior executive in Ford's Lincoln-Mercury Division. His mother, Laurie McLaurin (1922–2001), was a former model from Jackson, Mississippi, whose great-grandfather was Mississippi senator and governor Anselm J. McLaurin. Williams had two older half-brothers: a paternal half-brother, Robert (also known as Todd), and a maternal half-brother, McLaurin. While his mother was a practitioner of Christian Science, Williams was raised in his father's Episcopal faith. During a television interview on Inside the Actors Studio in 2001, Williams credited his mother as an important early influence on his humor, and he tried to make her laugh to gain attention.

Williams attended public elementary school in Lake Forest at Gorton Elementary School and middle school at Deer Path Junior High School. He described himself as a quiet child who did not overcome his shyness until Williams became involved with his high school drama department. His friends recall him as very funny. In late 1963, when Williams was 12, his father was transferred to Detroit. The family lived in a 40-room farmhouse on 20 acre in suburban Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where Williams was a student at the private Detroit Country Day School. He excelled in school, where he was on the school's wrestling team and was elected class president.

As both his parents worked, Williams was partially raised by the family's maid, who was his main companion. When Williams was 16, his father took early retirement and the family moved to Tiburon, California. Following their move, Williams attended Redwood High School in nearby Larkspur. At the time of his graduation in 1969, he was voted "Most Likely Not to Succeed" and "Funniest" by his classmates. After high school graduation, Williams enrolled at Claremont Men's College in Claremont, California, to study political science; he dropped out to pursue acting. Williams studied theater for three years at the College of Marin, a community college in Kentfield, California. According to the College of Marin's drama professor, James Dunn, the depth of the young actor's talent became evident when Williams was cast in the musical Oliver! as Fagin. He often improvised during his time in the drama program, leaving cast members in hysterics. Dunn called his wife after one late rehearsal to tell her Williams "was going to be something special."

In 1973, Williams attained a full scholarship to the Juilliard School (Group 6, 1973–1976) in New York City. He was one of 20 students accepted into the freshman class, and Williams and Christopher Reeve were the only two accepted by John Houseman into the Advanced Program at the school that year. William Hurt and Mandy Patinkin were also classmates. According to biographer Jean Dorsinville, both Franklyn Seales and Williams were roommates at Juilliard. Reeve remembered his first impression of Williams when they were new students at Juilliard: "He wore tie-dyed shirts with tracksuit bottoms and talked a mile a minute. I'd never seen so much energy contained in one person. He was like an untied balloon that had been inflated and immediately released. I watched in awe as he virtually caromed off the walls of the classrooms and hallways. To say that he was 'on' would be a major understatement."

Williams and Reeve had a class in dialects taught by Edith Skinner, whom Reeve said was one of the world's leading voice and speech teachers. According to Reeve, Skinner was bewildered by Williams and his ability to instantly perform in many different accents.

Their primary acting teacher was Michael Kahn, who was "equally baffled by this human dynamo". Williams already had a reputation for being funny, but Kahn criticized his antics as simple stand-up comedy. In a later production, Williams silenced his critics with his well-received performance as an old man in Tennessee Williams's Night of the Iguana. Reeve wrote, "He simply was the old man. I was astonished by his work and very grateful that fate had thrown us together." The two remained close friends until Reeve's death in 2004. Their friendship was like "brothers from another mother", according to Williams's son Zak.

During the summers of 1974, 1975, and 1976, Williams worked as a busboy at The Trident in Sausalito, California. He left Juilliard during his junior year in 1976 at the suggestion of Houseman, who said there was nothing more that Juilliard could teach Williams. Gerald Freedman, another of his teachers at Juilliard, said Williams was a "genius" and that the school's conservative and classical style of training did not suit him; no one was surprised that Williams left.

1976–1983: Stand-up comedy and Mork and Mindy
Williams began performing stand-up comedy in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1976. He gave his first performance at the Holy City Zoo, a comedy club in San Francisco, where Williams worked his way up from tending bar. In the 1960s, San Francisco was a center for a rock music renaissance, hippies, drugs, and a sexual revolution, and in the late 1970s, Williams helped lead its "comedy renaissance", wrote critic Gerald Nachman. Williams said that he found out about "drugs and happiness" during that period, adding that he saw "the best brains of my time turned to mud." Williams moved to Los Angeles and continued performing stand-up at clubs, including The Comedy Store. There, in 1977, he was seen by TV producer George Schlatter, who asked him to appear on a revival of his show Laugh-In. The show aired in late 1977 and was his debut TV appearance. That year, Williams also performed a show at the L.A. Improv for Home Box Office. Although the Laugh-In revival failed, it led Williams to his television career; Williams continued performing stand-up at comedy clubs such as the Roxy to help keep his improvisational skills sharp. In England, Williams performed at The Fighting Cocks.

David Letterman, who knew Williams for nearly 40 years, recalls seeing him first perform as a new comedian at The Comedy Store in Hollywood, where Letterman and other comedians had already been doing stand-up. "He came in like a hurricane", said Letterman, who said he thought to himself, "Holy crap, there goes my chance in show business". The first film role credited to Williams was a small part in the 1977 low-budget comedy Can I Do It... 'Til I Need Glasses?. However, his first starring performance was as the title character in Popeye (1980), in which Williams showcased the acting skills previously demonstrated in his television work. Accordingly, the film's commercial disappointment was not blamed on his performance.

Mork and Mindy

After the Laugh-In revival, and appearing in the cast of The Richard Pryor Show on NBC, Williams was cast by Garry Marshall as the alien Mork in a 1978 episode of the TV series Happy Days titled "My Favorite Orkan". Sought after as a last-minute cast replacement for a departing actor, Williams impressed the producer with his quirky sense of humor when he sat on his head when asked to take a seat for the audition. As Mork, Williams improvised much of his dialogue and physical comedy, speaking in a high, nasal voice, and he made the most of the script. The cast and crew, as well as TV network executives, were deeply impressed with Williams's performance. As such, the executives moved quickly to get the performer on contract just four days later before competitors could make their own offers.

Mork's appearance proved so popular with viewers that it led to the spin-off television sitcom Mork & Mindy, which co-starred Pam Dawber, and ran from 1978 to 1982; the show was written to accommodate his extreme improvisations in dialogue and behavior. Although he portrayed the same character as in Happy Days, the series was set in the present in Boulder, Colorado, instead of the late 1950s in Milwaukee. Mork & Mindy at its peak had a weekly audience of sixty million and was credited with turning Williams into a "superstar". Among young people, the show was very popular because Williams became "a man and a child, buoyant, rubber-faced, an endless gusher of ideas", according to critic James Poniewozik. Mork became popular, featured on posters, coloring books, lunch-boxes, and other merchandise. Mork & Mindy was such a success in its first season that Williams appeared on the March 12, 1979, cover of Time magazine. The cover photo, taken by Michael Dressler in 1979, is said to have "[captured] his different sides: the funnyman mugging for the camera, and a sweet, more thoughtful pose that appears on a small TV he holds in his hands", according to Mary Forgione of the Los Angeles Times. This photo was installed in the National Portrait Gallery in the Smithsonian Institution shortly after Williams died to allow visitors to pay their respects. He also appeared on the cover of the August 23, 1979, issue of Rolling Stone, photographed by Richard Avedon.

With his success on Mork & Mindy, Williams began to reach a wider audience with his stand-up comedy, starting in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, including three HBO comedy specials: Off The Wall (1978), An Evening with Robin Williams (1983), and A Night at the Met (1986). Williams won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for the recording of his 1979 live show at the Copacabana in New York City, Reality... What a Concept.

1982–1999: Film stardom and acclaim
Williams starred as the lead character in The World According to Garp (1982), which he noted "may have lacked a certain madness onscreen, but it had a great core". Critic Roger Ebert wrote of his performance, "Although Robin Williams plays Garp as a relatively plausible, sometimes ordinary person, the movie never seems bothered by the jarring contrast between his cheerful pluckiness and the anarchy around him." Williams continued with other smaller roles in less successful films, such as The Survivors (1983) and Club Paradise (1986), although he said these roles did not help advance his film career.

In 1986, Williams co-hosted the 58th Academy Awards. The following year, he appeared in a sketch comedy special Carol, Carl, Whoopi and Robin (1987), acting alongside Carol Burnett, Carl Reiner and Whoopi Goldberg. Williams was also a regular guest on various talk shows, including The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman, on which he appeared 50 times. Williams's first major break came from his starring role in director Barry Levinson's Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), which earned Williams a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film is set in 1965 during the Vietnam War, with Williams playing the role of Adrian Cronauer, a radio shock jock who keeps troops entertained with comedy and sarcasm. Williams was allowed to play the role without a script, improvising most of his lines. Over the microphone, Williams created voice impressions of various people, including Walter Cronkite, Gomer Pyle, Elvis Presley, Mr. Ed and Richard Nixon. "We just let the cameras roll," said producer Mark Johnson, and Williams "managed to create something new for every single take".

Williams appeared opposite Steve Martin at Lincoln Center in an off-Broadway production of Waiting for Godot in 1988. Many of his subsequent roles were in comedies tinged with pathos, such as Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and Patch Adams (1998). Looking over most of Williams's filmography, one writer was "struck by the breadth" and radical diversity of most of the roles Williams portrayed. In 1989, he played a private-school English teacher in Dead Poets Society, which included a final, emotional scene that some critics said "inspired a generation" and became a part of pop culture. Similarly, Williams's performance as a therapist in Good Will Hunting (1997) deeply affected even some real therapists. In Awakenings (1990), he plays a doctor modeled after Oliver Sacks, who wrote the book on which the film is based. Sacks later said the way the actor's mind worked was a "form of genius". In 1991, Williams played an adult Peter Pan in the film Hook, although he had said that he would have to lose 25 pounds for the role. Terry Gilliam, who directed Williams in two of his films, The Fisher King (1991) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), said in 1992 that Williams had the ability to "go from manic to mad to tender and vulnerable... [Williams had] the most unique mind on the planet. There's nobody like him out there."

While Williams voiced characters in several animated films, his voice role as the Genie in the animated musical Aladdin (1992) was written for Williams. The film's directors said that they had taken a risk by writing the role. At first, Williams refused the role because it was a Disney movie and he did not want the studio profiting by selling merchandise based on the movie. Williams accepted the role with certain conditions: "I'm doing it basically because I want to be part of this animation tradition. I want something for my children. One deal is, I just don't want to sell anything—as in Burger King, as in toys, as in stuff." Williams improvised much of his dialogue, recording approximately 30 hours of tape, and impersonated dozens of celebrities, including Ed Sullivan, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Groucho Marx, Rodney Dangerfield, William F. Buckley Jr., Peter Lorre, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Arsenio Hall. Williams's role in Aladdin became one of his most recognized and best-loved, and the film was the highest-grossing of 1992; it won numerous awards, including a Special Golden Globe Award for Vocal Work in a Motion Picture for Williams. His performance paved the way for other animated films to incorporate actors with more star power. Williams was named a Disney Legend in 2009.

Due to Disney breaking an agreement with Williams regarding the use of the Genie in the advertising for Aladdin, he refused to sign for the direct-to-video sequel, The Return of Jafar (1994); the Genie was instead voiced by Dan Castellaneta. When Jeffrey Katzenberg was replaced by Joe Roth as Walt Disney Studios chairman, Roth organized a public apology to Williams. He would, in turn, reprise the role in the second sequel, Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996). During this time, Williams lent his voice to FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992). Other dramatic performances by Williams include Moscow on the Hudson (1984), What Dreams May Come (1998) and Bicentennial Man (1999). During the early 2000s, Williams demonstrated a new rank of his versatility by playing darker roles than he had in the previous decades. Williams appeared with fellow comedian, Billy Crystal, in an unscripted cameo at the beginning of a 1997 episode of the third season of Friends.

Williams's performances garnered various accolades, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Good Will Hunting; as well as two previous Academy Award nominations, for Dead Poets Society, and as a troubled homeless man in The Fisher King, respectively. Among the actors who helped Williams during his acting career, he credited Robert De Niro, from whom Williams learned the power of silence and economy of dialogue when acting. From Dustin Hoffman, with whom Williams co-starred in Hook, he learned to take on totally different character types, and to transform his characters by extreme preparation. Mike Medavoy, producer of Hook, told its director, Steven Spielberg, that he intentionally teamed up Hoffman and Williams for the film because he knew they wanted to work together, and that Williams welcomed the opportunity of working with Spielberg. Having Woody Allen, who directed him and Billy Crystal in Deconstructing Harry (1997), helped Williams. Allen knew that Crystal and Williams had often worked together on stage.

2000–2014: Children's films and return to television
Williams was the host of a talk show for Audible that aired in April 2000 and was only available on Audible's website. In Insomnia (2002), Williams portrayed a murderer on the run from a sleep-deprived Los Angeles police detective (played by Al Pacino) in rural Alaska. That same year, in the psychological thriller One Hour Photo, Williams portrayed an emotionally disturbed photo development technician who becomes obsessed with a family for whom he has developed pictures for a long time. In the 2004 science fiction psychological thriller The Final Cut, Williams played a professional who specializes in editing the memories of unsavory people into uncritical memorials that are played at funerals. His many television appearances included an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and Williams starred in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He headlined his own one-man show, Robin Williams: Live on Broadway, which played at the Broadway Theatre in July 2002.

Williams's stand-up work was a consistent thread throughout his career, as seen by the success of his one-man show (and subsequent DVD), Robin Williams: Live on Broadway (2002). In 2004, Williams was voted 13th on Comedy Central's list of "100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time." Two years later, he was the Surprise Guest at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, and appeared on an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that aired January 30. After a six-year hiatus, in August 2008, Williams announced a new 26-city tour, Weapons of Self-Destruction. The tour began at the end of September 2009, and concluded in New York on December 3, and was the subject of an HBO Special on December 8, 2009.

Years after the films, Janet Hirshenson revealed in an interview that Williams had expressed interest in portraying Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter film series, but was rejected by director Chris Columbus due to the "British-only edict". In 2006, Williams starred in five movies, including Man of the Year, a political satire, and The Night Listener, a thriller about a radio show host who realizes that a child with whom he has developed a friendship may not exist. Williams continued to provide voices in other animated films, including Robots (2005), the Happy Feet film franchise (2006–2011), and an uncredited vocal performance in Everyone's Hero (2006). He also voiced the holographic character Dr. Know in the live-action film A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). Williams was the voice of The Timekeeper, a former attraction at the Walt Disney World Resort about a time-traveling robot who encounters Jules Verne and brings him to the future.

In 2010, Williams appeared in a sketch with Robert De Niro on Saturday Night Live, and in 2012, he guest-starred as himself in two FX series, Louie and Wilfred. Williams made his Broadway acting debut in Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, which opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre March 31, 2011. For his performance, Williams was nominated for the Drama League Award for Outstanding Distinguished Performer. In May 2013, CBS started a new series, The Crazy Ones, starring Williams, which was canceled after one season. The Angriest Man in Brooklyn was his last movie to be released during his lifetime. In the movie, Williams played Henry Altmann, an angry, bitter man who tries to change his life after being told he has a terminal illness. Four films starring Williams were released after his death in 2014: Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, A Merry Friggin' Christmas, Boulevard, and Absolutely Anything.

Marriages and children

Williams married his first wife, Valerie Velardi, in June 1978, following a live-in relationship with comedian Elayne Boosler. Velardi and Williams met in 1976 while he was working as a bartender at a tavern in San Francisco. Their son, Zachary Pym "Zak" Williams, was born in 1983. Velardi and Williams were divorced in 1988.

While it was reported that Williams began an affair with Zachary's nanny, Marsha Garces, in 1986, Velardi stated in the 2018 documentary, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, that the relationship with Garces began after the two had separated. On April 30, 1989, Williams married Garces, who was six months pregnant with their first child. They had two children, Zelda Rae Williams (b. 1989) and Cody Alan Williams (b. 1991). In March 2008, Garces filed for divorce from Williams, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce was finalized in 2010.

Williams married his third wife, graphic designer Susan Schneider, on October 22, 2011, in St. Helena, California. The two lived at their house in Sea Cliff, San Francisco, California. Williams said, "My children give me a great sense of wonder. Just to see them develop into these extraordinary human beings."

Interests

In New York City, Williams was part of the West Side YMCA runners club and showed promising results with 34:21 minutes at a 10K run in Central Park in 1975. His favorite books were the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov, and his favorite book as a child was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which he later shared with his children.

Williams was an enthusiast of both pen-and-paper role-playing games and video games. His daughter Zelda was named after the title character from The Legend of Zelda, a family favorite video game series, and Williams sometimes performed at consumer entertainment trade shows.

Williams was a big fan of anime and collecting figures. His daughter described him as a "figurine hoarder"; one of his figures was the character Deunan Knute from the anime film Appleseed, which Williams was a fan of. He also liked the film Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

Williams also became a devoted cycling enthusiast, having taken up the sport partly as a substitute for drugs. Eventually, he accumulated a large bicycle collection and became a fan of professional road cycling, often traveling to racing events such as the Tour de France. In 2016, Williams' children donated 87 of his bicycles in support of the Challenged Athletes Foundation and Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.

Religion
Williams was raised and sometimes identified himself as an Episcopalian. In a comedy routine, Williams described his denomination as: "I have that idea of Chicago Protestant, Episcopal—Catholic light: half the religion, half the guilt." He also described himself as an "honorary Jew", and on Israel's 60th Independence Day in 2008, Williams appeared in Times Square, along with several other celebrities, to wish Israel a happy birthday.

Philanthropy
In 1986, Williams teamed up with Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal to found Comic Relief USA. This annual HBO television benefit devoted to the homeless raised $80million as of 2014. Bob Zmuda, creator of Comic Relief, explains that Williams felt blessed because he came from a wealthy home, but wanted to do something to help those less fortunate. Williams made benefit appearances to support literacy and women's rights, along with appearing at benefits for veterans. He was a regular on the USO circuit, where Williams traveled to 13 countries and performed to approximately 90,000 troops. After his death, the USO thanked Williams "for all he did for the men and women of our armed forces".

Williams and his second wife Marsha founded a philanthropic organization called the Windfall Foundation to raise money for many charities. In December 1999, he sang in French on the BBC-inspired music video of international celebrities doing a cover of The Rolling Stones single "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)" for the charity Children's Promise.

In response to the 2010 Canterbury earthquake, Williams donated all proceeds of his Weapons of Self Destruction Christchurch performance to help rebuild the New Zealand city. Half the proceeds were donated to the Red Cross and half to the mayoral building fund. Williams performed with the USO for U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For several years, Williams supported St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Substance abuse issues
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Williams had an addiction to cocaine. He was a casual friend of John Belushi, and the Saturday Night Live comic's death in 1982 from a drug overdose, which happened the morning after the two had partied together, along with the birth of his son Zak, prompted him to quit drugs and alcohol: "Was it a wake-up call? Oh yeah, on a huge level. The grand jury helped, too." Williams turned to exercise and cycling to help alleviate his depression shortly after Belushi's death; according to bicycle shop owner Tony Tom, Williams said, "cycling saved my life".

In 2003, Williams started drinking again while working on the film The Big White (2005) in Alaska. In 2006, he checked in to a substance-abuse rehabilitation center in Newberg, Oregon, saying that he was an alcoholic. Years afterward, Williams acknowledged his failure to maintain sobriety, but said that he never returned to using cocaine, declaring in a 2010 interview:

"No. Cocaine—paranoid and impotent, what fun. There was no bit of me thinking, ooh, let's go back to that. Useless conversations until midnight, waking up at dawn feeling like a vampire on a day pass. No."

In mid-2014, Williams was admitted to the Hazelden Foundation Addiction Treatment Center in Center City, Minnesota, for treatment for alcoholism.

Health issues
In March 2009, Williams was hospitalized due to heart problems. He postponed his one-man tour for surgery to replace his aortic valve, repair his mitral valve and correct his irregular heartbeat. The surgery was completed March 13, 2009, at the Cleveland Clinic.

His publicist, Mara Buxbaum, commented that Williams had severe depression before his death. His wife, Susan Schneider, said that in the period before his death, Williams had been sober but was diagnosed with early-stage Parkinson's disease, which was information that he was "not yet ready to share publicly". An autopsy revealed that Williams had diffuse Lewy bodies (which had been misdiagnosed as Parkinson's), and this may have contributed to his depression.

In an essay published in the journal Neurology two years after his death, Schneider revealed that the pathology of Lewy body disease in Williams was described by several doctors as among the worst pathologies they had seen. She described the early symptoms of his disease as beginning in October 2013. Williams's initial condition included a sudden and prolonged spike in fear, anxiety, stress and insomnia, which worsened in severity and included memory loss, paranoia and delusions. According to Schneider, "Robin was losing his mind and he was aware of it... He kept saying, 'I just want to reboot my brain.'"

Death
Williams was found dead at age 63 in his home in Paradise Cay, California, on August 11, 2014. The final autopsy report, released that November, concluded that Williams's death was a suicide resulting from "asphyxia due to hanging". Neither alcohol nor illegal drugs were involved, and prescription drugs present in his body were at therapeutic levels. The report also noted that Williams had depression and anxiety. An examination of his brain tissue suggested that Williams had "diffuse Lewy body dementia". Describing the disease as "the terrorist inside my husband's brain", his widow Susan Schneider Williams said that "however you look at it—the presence of Lewy bodies took his life", referring to his previous diagnosis of Parkinson's. She noted "how we as a culture don't have the vocabulary to discuss brain disease in the way we do about depression. Depression is a symptom of LBD and it's not about psychology – it's rooted in neurology. His brain was falling apart." Medical experts struggled to determine a cause, and eventually diagnosed him with Parkinson's disease.

The Lewy Body Dementia Association (LBDA) clarified the distinction between the term used in the autopsy report, "diffuse Lewy body dementia", which is more commonly called "diffuse Lewy body disease", and refers to the underlying disease process—and the umbrella term, "Lewy body dementia"—which encompasses both Parkinson's disease dementia (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). According to LBDA spokesperson Dennis Dickson, "The report confirms he experienced depression, anxiety, and paranoia, which may occur in either Parkinson's disease or dementia with Lewy bodies.... In early PD, Lewy bodies are generally limited in distribution, but in DLB, the Lewy bodies are spread widely throughout the brain, as was the case with Robin Williams." Ian G. McKeith, professor and researcher of Lewy body dementias, commented that Williams's symptoms and autopsy findings were explained by DLB. Williams's body was cremated at Monte's Chapel of the Hills in San Anselmo, and his ashes were scattered over San Francisco Bay on August 21, 2014.

Aftermath and tributes

Williams's death instantly became global news. The entertainment world, friends, and fans responded to his death through social and other media outlets. Schneider said, "I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings. I am utterly heartbroken." His daughter, Zelda Williams, responded to his death by saying that the "world is forever a little darker, less colorful and less full of laughter in his absence".

President Barack Obama released a statement on Williams's death: "Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between ... He arrived in our lives as an alien—but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit. He made us laugh. He made us cry. He gave his immeasurable talent freely and generously to those who needed it most—from our troops stationed abroad to the marginalized on our own streets."

Williams was scheduled to be the "Blackmail" special guest for the final night of Monty Python's ten-date stage shows in London one month before his death—with his friend, Monty Python's Eric Idle—but he canceled, stating that he was "suffering from severe depression". When the show was released on video, it was dedicated to Williams.

At the United Nations headquarters on August 12, 2014, Williams was celebrated during the opening of the International Youth Day. In the presence of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Assistant Secretary General Thomas Gass paid tribute to Williams by standing on the pulpit of the ECOSOC Chamber and quoting one of Keating's lines from Dead Poets Society: "Dare to look at things in a different way!". Several fans similarly paid tribute to Williams on social media with photo and video reenactments of Dead Poets Society's "O Captain! My Captain!" scene.

Shortly after Williams died, Disney Channel, Disney XD and Disney Junior aired Aladdin commercial-free over the course of a week, with a dedicated drawing of the Genie at the end of each airing before the credits. In honor of his theater work, the lights of Broadway were darkened for the evening of August 14, 2014. That night, the cast of the Aladdin musical honored Williams by having the audience join them in a sing-along of "Friend Like Me", an Oscar-nominated song originally sung by Williams in the film Aladdin.

Fans of Williams created makeshift memorials at his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and at locations from his television and film career, such as the bench in Boston's Public Garden featured in Good Will Hunting; the Pacific Heights, San Francisco home used in Mrs. Doubtfire; the sign for Parrish Shoes in Keene, New Hampshire, where parts of Jumanji were filmed; and the Boulder, Colorado, home used for Mork & Mindy.

During the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards on August 25, 2014, close friend and fellow comedian, Billy Crystal, presented a tribute to Williams, referring to him as "the brightest star in our comedy galaxy". Afterward, some of Williams's best comedy moments were shown, including his first The Tonight Show appearance, indicating his great life in making people laugh. Talk show hosts, including David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, paid tribute to Williams on their respective shows.

On September 9, 2014, PBS aired a one-hour special devoted to Williams's career, and on September 27, dozens of leading stars and celebrities held a tribute in San Francisco to celebrate his life and career. British heavy metal band Iron Maiden dedicated a song to Williams, titled "Tears of a Clown", on their 2015 album The Book of Souls. The song looks into his depression and suicide, and how he attempted to hide his condition from the public.

A tunnel painted with a rainbow on Highway 101, north of the Golden Gate Bridge, was officially named the "Robin Williams Tunnel" on February 29, 2016. In 2017, Sharon Meadow in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the home of the annual Comedy Day, was renamed "Robin Williams Meadow".

In 2018, HBO produced a documentary about his life and career. Directed by Marina Zenovich, the film Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind was also screened at the Sundance Film Festival. That same year, a mural of Robin Williams was created on Market Street in San Francisco. Work on a biography was begun by The New York Times writer David Itzkoff in 2014, and was published in 2018, titled Robin.

In August 2020, Vertical Entertainment released a trailer for a new documentary, Robin's Wish, exploring Williams's battle with Lewy body dementia. The film, directed by Tylor Norwood, was released digitally on September 1, 2020. In a Netflix special released in May 2022, The Hall: Honoring the Greats of Stand-Up, Williams was inducted into the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York.

Recognition and legacy
Although Williams was first recognized as a stand-up comedian and television star, he became known for acting in film roles of substance and serious drama. Williams was considered a "national treasure" by many in the entertainment industry and by the public.

Williams's onstage energy and improvisational skill became a model for a new generation of stand-up comedians. Many comedians valued the way he worked highly personal issues into his comedy routines, especially his honesty about drug and alcohol addiction, along with depression. According to media scholar Derek A. Burrill, because of the openness with which Williams spoke about his own life, "probably the most important contribution he made to pop culture, across so many different media, was as Robin Williams the person".

Williams created a signature free-form comedy persona so widely and uniquely identified that new comedians like Jim Carrey impersonated him, paving the way for the growing comedy scene that developed in San Francisco. Young comedians felt more liberated on stage by seeing his spontaneously diverse range: "One moment acting as a bright, mischievous child, then as a wise philosopher or alien from outer space". According to Judd Apatow, the eclectic performer's rapid-fire improvisational style was an inspiration as well as an influence for other comedians, but his talent was so extremely unusual no one else could possibly attempt to copy it.

Williams's film performances often influenced other actors, both in and out of the film industry. Director Chris Columbus, who directed him in Mrs. Doubtfire, says watching him work "was a magical and special privilege. His performances were unlike anything any of us had ever seen, they came from some spiritual and otherworldly place." Looking over most of Williams's filmography, Alyssa Rosenberg at The Washington Post was "struck by the breadth" and radical diversity of most of his roles, writing that "Williams helped us grow up".

Comedic style
Williams said that, partly due to the stress of performing stand-up, he started using drugs and alcohol early in his career. He further said that he neither drank nor took drugs while on stage, but occasionally performed when hung over from the previous day. During the period when he was using cocaine, Williams said it made him paranoid when performing on stage.

Williams once described the life of stand-up comedians as follows: "It's a brutal field, man. They burn out. It takes its toll. Plus, the lifestyle—partying, drinking, drugs. If you're on the road, it's even more brutal. You gotta come back down to mellow your ass out, and then performing takes you back up. They flame out because it comes and goes. Suddenly they're hot, and then somebody else is hot. Sometimes they get very bitter. Sometimes they just give up. Sometimes they have a revival thing and they come back again. Sometimes they snap. The pressure kicks in. You become obsessed and then you lose that focus that you need."

Some, such as the critic Vincent Canby, were concerned that Williams's monologues were so intense that it seemed as though, at any minute, his "creative process could reverse into a complete meltdown". His biographer, Emily Herbert, described Williams's "intense, utterly manic style of stand-up [which sometimes] defies analysis... [going] beyond energetic, beyond frenetic... [and sometimes] dangerous... because of what it said about the creator's own mental state." Regarding the quick-fire delivery of his performance, Williams said, "Usually, you start off performing in bars, where you can't really take your time, because people go: [mimics a drunk person] 'Oy, what are you doing now?' So I developed a style that was very much synaptic: quick-firing, moving, so that they never really had a chance to lock on as a target."

Williams felt secure that he would not run out of ideas, as the constant change in world events would keep him supplied. He also explained that he often used free association of ideas while improvising to keep the audience interested. The competitive nature of the show made things difficult. For example, some comedians said that Williams had stolen their jokes, which he strongly denied. David Brenner claimed that he confronted Williams's agent and threatened bodily harm if he heard him utter another one of his jokes. Whoopi Goldberg defended Williams, asserting that it is difficult for comedians not to reuse another comedian's material, and that it is done "all the time". Subsequently, he avoided going to performances of other comedians to deter similar accusations.

During a Playboy interview in 1992, Williams was asked whether he ever feared losing his balance between his work and his life. He replied, "There's that fear—if I felt like I was becoming not just dull but a rock, that I still couldn't speak, fire off or talk about things, if I'd start to worry or got too afraid to say something.... If I stop trying, I get afraid." While he attributed the recent suicide of novelist Jerzy Kosiński to his fear of losing his creativity and sharpness, Williams felt that he could overcome those risks. For that, he credited his father for strengthening his self-confidence, telling him to never be afraid of talking about subjects which were important to him.

Influences
Williams credited comedians, including Jonathan Winters, Peter Sellers, Nichols and May and Lenny Bruce as influences, admiring their ability to attract a more intellectual audience with a higher level of wit. He also liked Jay Leno for his quickness in ad-libbing comedy routines, and Sid Caesar, whose acts he felt were "precious".

Jonathan Winters was his "idol" early in life; Williams, aged eight, first saw him on television and paid him homage in interviews throughout his career. Williams was inspired by Winters's ingenuity, saying "that anything is possible, that anything is funny... He gave me the idea that it can be free-form, that you can go in and out of things pretty easily."

During an interview in London in 2002, Williams told Michael Parkinson that Peter Sellers was an important influence, especially his multi-character roles in Dr. Strangelove, stating, "It doesn't get better than that." British comedy actors, Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, were also among his influences, Williams told Parkinson.

Williams was also influenced by Richard Pryor's fearless ability to talk about his personal life onstage, with subjects that included his use of drugs and alcohol, and Williams added those kinds of topics during his own performances. By bringing up such personal matters as a form of comedy, Williams told Parkinson that it was "cheaper than therapy", and gave him a way to release his pent-up energy and emotions.

Acting credits and accolades
Throughout his career, Williams won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Good Will Hunting (1997). He also won six Golden Globe Awards, including Best Actor—Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his roles in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), The Fisher King (1991) and Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), along with the Special Golden Globe Award for Vocal Work in a Motion Picture for his role Genie in Aladdin (1992), and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2005. Williams also received two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammy Awards.

Discography

 * Reality ... What a Concept (Casablanca, 1979)
 * Throbbing Python of Love (Casablanca, 1983)
 * A Night at the Met (Columbia, 1986)
 * Live 2002 (Columbia, 2002)
 * Weapons of Self Destruction (Sony Music, 2009)

title: Robin Williams


text:
The Complete Plain Words

The Complete Plain Words, titled simply Plain Words in its 2014 revision, is a style guide written by Sir Ernest Gowers, published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of HM Treasury, Plain Words (1948) and ABC of Plain Words (1951). The aim of the book is to help officials in their use of English as a tool of their trade. To keep the work relevant for readers in subsequent decades it has been revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986, and by the original author's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers in 2014.

All the editions until that of 2014 were published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO). The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books.

Background
The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer, a prominent civil servant as well as a poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing Plain Words in 1948, The Manchester Guardian quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794:

"The nonsensical jargon of the old Ministries must be replaced by a simple style, clear and yet concise, free from expressions of servility, from obsequious formulae, stand-offishness, pedantry, or any suggestion that there is an authority superior to that of reason, or of the order established by law. There must be no conventional phrases, no waste of words."

The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In Little Dorrit in the mid-1850s, Charles Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even the most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence." By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents".

Sir Ernest Gowers, a senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said... that we revel in jargon and obscurity". During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for a new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand. His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary to the Treasury. After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout the civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue, whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours."

Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing; a small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to Plain Words and its two successors.

Plain Words, 1948
The result of Gowers's work was Plain Words, a 94-page booklet. It was judged successful by the civil service, and the Treasury considered that it should be made publicly available. Had Gowers written it as part of his duties while still a civil servant it would have automatically been Crown Copyright, but as he had not begun it until after his retirement he owned the rights. The Treasury offered a flat fee of £500, but he successfully held out for a royalty on every copy sold. The government publisher, His Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO), issued the booklet for sale in April 1948. It was priced at two shillings (10 pence in British decimal currency); between April and Christmas 1948 it sold more than 150,000 copies and had to be reprinted seven times.

Reviewers responded favourably. The Times Literary Supplement praised the book and engaged in a little mock-officialese of its own: "It deserves to be a 'best seller' (or perhaps we should say that in all the circumstances it may reasonably be anticipated that it will be found to evoke a relatively considerable demand on the part of the general public)." The Times devoted a leader to the work, and concluded, "for all its cool urbanity Plain Words is written with missionary zeal". The Manchester Guardian considered that by commissioning Plain Words from Gowers "the Treasury has put us all in its debt." The Economist commented, "The Stationery Office must have enjoyed publishing this book. It is great fun to read".

Occasionally Gowers's humour misled literal-minded reviewers. The Daily Mail, Harold Nicolson and the grammarian G H Vallins objected to the conspicuously un-plain words of Gowers's opening sentences: "The purpose of this book is to help officials in their use of written English. To some of them this may seem a work of supererogation, calculated only to place an unnecessary burden on a body of people already overburdened."

When revising the text in preparation for The Complete Plain Words, Gowers abandoned the joke, and rewrote the second sentence as, "I suspect that this project may be received by many of them without any marked enthusiasm or gratitude." A substantive objection by Vallins to "the cult of 'plain English'" was his view that verbose phrases lose important nuances when reduced to plain words. He gave as an example "evacuated to alternative accommodation", which in his opinion has overtones that Gowers's "taken to other houses" lacks.

ABC of Plain Words, 1951
The Treasury invited Gowers to build on the success of Plain Words by producing a second volume of advice on good, clear writing. As with its predecessor, he "had many helpers to thank", including Griffith and other civil service colleagues. He also drew on the works of well-known writers on English usage, including H W Fowler, A P Herbert and Eric Partridge. The ABC of Plain Words had 160 pages, and was priced at three shillings (15p).

Gowers explained the purpose of the new book in his preface, "We must have something that can be kept on the desk and consulted on points of difficulty as they arise. Plain Words is of little use for that: it has not even an index". The new work consisted of articles, mostly brief, on points of vocabulary, grammar, construction, punctuation and style, set out in alphabetical order, beginning with "Abstract words" and ending with "Write". The former was one of the longer entries, explaining the dangers of overuse of abstract words, and recommending concrete terms where possible. Thus, "Was this the realisation of an anticipated liability?" would be better as, "Did you expect to have to do this?" The entry on "Write" was an example of one of the short articles on particular words; it pointed out that "I wrote to you about it" needs the "to" but "I wrote you a letter" does not.

Gowers and his successors revised their advice as usage changed over the years. Two consecutive entries in The ABC illustrate how some comments have become dated and others have not: Gowers warned in 1951 that the word "backlog" meaning "arrears" would be unintelligible to British readers, and in the next entry he advised that the construction "on a ... basis" should be avoided. The latter remains a frequent feature of loose writing and all the editions of the Plain Words books retain and expand Gowers's advice, whereas within three years of writing The ABC, Gowers noted in The Complete Plain Words that "backlog" was rapidly and usefully establishing itself in British usage.

Neither the Treasury nor HMSO expected the second book to rival the popularity of its predecessor, but it sold nearly 80,000 copies in its first year. Gowers was nevertheless not wholly happy with it. He thought the A–Z layout had two disadvantages. The first was that it gave the wrong impression that all the topics were of equal importance; the second was that the people most in need of advice would not think to look up the relevant entry: "There is no reason why anyone addicted to abstract nouns, unconscious of any offence, should ever be prompted to read that article; nor can I think of any other title for it that would be more likely to throw it in his way."

The Complete Plain Words, 1954
By 1954 both books were still selling well. Almost 300,000 copies of Plain Words and more than 130,000 of The ABC had been sold. The Treasury, HMSO and Gowers agreed that the obvious and best course would be to combine the two booklets into a single volume. This Gowers did, with help from his colleagues, as before; he made many revisions as a result of "the many correspondents from all parts of the English-speaking world who have been good enough … to send me suggestions, criticisms and specimens". An example of his revisions is in the entry on "bottleneck", of which in 1951 he had written four brief sentences warning against overuse: in 1954 he felt it necessary to write 270 words, so ubiquitous had the term become. (By the time of the 1973 revision the fad for the word had declined, and Fraser's entry is very much shorter.)

The Complete Plain Words contained 226 pages, including seven pages of index. It was a hardback, in green cloth binding with dust-jacket, in HMSO's preferred size, used for the two earlier Plain Words books, 8.4in x 5.25in (21.3 cm x 13.3 cm). It was published in September 1954 at what The Manchester Guardian called the remarkably cheap price of five shillings (25p). The Times Literary Supplement greeted the publication: "It may be hoped that in this more durable form the book's good influence will continue to spread: Civil Servants have not been alone in profiting from it in the past, nor should they be in the future." The book has remained in print, in its original and revised editions, ever since.

Between Gowers's prologue and epilogue there is a Digression on Legal English followed by chapters on The Elements, Correctness, Avoiding the Superfluous Word, Choosing the Familiar Word, Choosing the Precise Word, The Handling of Words, and Punctuation.

1973 revision by Bruce Fraser
The 1954 text was reprinted seven times during Gowers's lifetime, and he made a number of amendments in the various impressions. Changing times in the 1960s meant that a substantial revision was needed if the book was to continue to fulfil its purpose. Gowers, fully occupied for a decade in making the first revision of Fowler's Modern English Usage, was unable to carry out the task; he died in 1966, a few months after the publication of the revised Fowler. Another retired senior civil servant, Bruce Fraser, was asked to revise The Complete Plain Words. The new edition, 250 pages long, was published by HMSO at £1, in hardback with black cloth binding and dust-jacket, in the same format as the first edition.

Fraser preserved Gowers's structure, and added three new chapters, the most important of which was titled "Some recent trends"; it covered the increasing prevalence of informality, and the influences of America, science, technology, economics, business, and personnel management. The final sections of the chapter were on "vogue words" and "modish writing". Fraser noted that though Gowers had said approvingly in 1954 that the use of the subjunctive was dying out, it was now, under the influence of American writing, making an unwelcome reappearance in English usage.

Reviewing the new edition in The Times Literary Supplement, David Hunt commented of Fraser, "his wit, perhaps a little drier and more Scottish, is equally acute, diverting and instructive". In The Times, Dennis Potter said that the book remained "the happiest thing to come out of the Treasury". He praised Fraser for replacing Gowers's dated examples of officialese with modern specimens and updating the text to reflect current trends, but concluded: "The core of the book remains Gowers, but I do not think Fraser, for all his desire to be faithful, has been able to keep the urbane, untroubled, effortless grace which made the original so instantly attractive. And, to be fair, the times have made this all but impossible.... The Complete Plain Words in any new version cannot possibly have the same impact as Gowers first had when he reminded administrators that they could best express themselves in a clean and economical prose. But this version, which battles with later jargon and more subtle temptations, a version less sure of the nature of its readership or the mood of the nation, is an honourable and certainly a useful guide."

The Fraser edition was reprinted in hardback three times between 1973 and 1983. Penguin published a paperback version in the UK in 1973, and in the US in 1975.

1986 revision by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut
The third edition was commissioned not by the Treasury but by Her Majesty's Stationery Office, to mark its bicentenary. The revision was made not by an experienced public servant but by an academic and a lexicographer, Sidney Greenbaum, Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College, London and Janet Whitcut, formerly senior research editor of the Longman Dictionary. They chose to revise Fraser's 1973 version rather than starting from Gowers's original. Having two authors made it necessary to abandon Gowers's frequent use of the first person; Fraser had retained it, stating "...the reader may take it that 'I' means either 'Gowers agreed with by Fraser' or 'Fraser, confident that Gowers would agree with him'". With joint authors for the new edition, this could not be sustained, and the change from first person to impersonal removed some of the book's previous character. An example is in the section on punctuation, where Gowers wrote, "The author of the style-book of the Oxford University Press... says 'If you take hyphens seriously you will surely go mad'. I have no intention of taking hyphens seriously." In the new edition the second sentence read, "You should not take hyphens seriously". Rebecca Gowers objects that this approach "systematically depersonalise[s] the writing".

The new edition, in the same format as its two predecessors, is in blue cloth, with dust-jacket, and has 298 pages. A paperback version was issued by Penguin Books in 1987, and an American hardback edition was published in 1988 by Godine Publishing, Boston.

2014 revision by Rebecca Gowers
The last direct link between Plain Words and the public service was broken in 1996, when HMSO was dismembered under governmental privatisation policy. The 2014 edition of the book was published by Particular Books, an imprint of Penguin Books. It was printed on lower-weight paper and in a smaller format than its predecessors. The reviser was Rebecca Gowers, Ernest's great-granddaughter, a novelist and author of a non-fiction book about a Victorian murder. She begins the new edition with a twenty-page preface that includes a biographical sketch of Ernest Gowers and a history of the revisions after his death.

Unlike the three earlier revisers, Rebecca Gowers generally avoids merging her own comments with the original text. Her practice is to retain Ernest Gowers's remarks and append updated observations in a separate note. An example is the entry on the use of the noun "issue". The original words were: "This word has a very wide range of proper meanings as a noun, and should not be made to do any more work – the work, for instance of subject, topic, consideration and dispute."

To which the reviser has added: "Note: The workload of issue has grown enormously since Gowers wrote this, not least because it now also doubles up on the job done by problem. Thus a government department these days might release a disastrous consultation paper in terms of issues to do with interoperability issues, even as a Minister has personal issues that threaten to become an issue in the press, causing the Prime Minister to have a major issue with the Minister. In short, Gowers's warning went unheeded, and issue is being made to labour harder than ever."

Although Fraser, Greenbaum and Whitcut remained broadly faithful to Gowers's original structure and chapter headings, with some minor changes, Rebecca Gowers reverts to the original almost exclusively. The modernisations she introduces, such as the consideration of gender-neutral language, are incorporated into the chapters of the 1954 book.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Complete Plain Words


text:
947

Year 947 (CMXLVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Europe

 * Summer – A Hungarian army led by Grand Prince Taksony campaigns in Italy, heading southwards on the eastern shore of the peninsula. It besieges Larino and reaches Otranto, plundering Apulia for three months. Berengar of Ivrea negotiates a truce and offers them a massive tribute (for which he imposes a special tax).
 * Winter – King Otto I cedes the Duchy of Bavaria to his brother Henry I. To secure his rule, Henry is married to Judith, a daughter of Arnulf I ("the Bad"), and appoints a series of counts palatine.

England

 * Horsham, a market town on the upper reaches of the Aran River in West Sussex, is first mentioned in 'King Eadred's land charter' (see History of Horsham).

Arabian Empire

 * August 19 – Abu Yazid, a Kharijite Berber leader who has led a rebellion against the Fatimid Caliphate in Ifriqiya, is defeated in the Hodna Mountains (modern-day Algeria). Caliph al-Mansur bi-Nasr Allah sets about restoring the Fatimid dominion over North Africa.

China

 * January 11 – Emperor Tai Zong of the Khitan-led Liao Dynasty invades the Later Jin (Five Dynasties), resulting in the destruction of the Later Jin. Khitan forces head southwards to the Yellow River, but must return to their base in present-day Beijing in May after Tai Zong dies of an illness.
 * March 10 – The Later Han is founded by Liu Zhiyuan, the military governor (jiedushi) of Bingzhou. He declares himself emperor (formally called Gaozu) and establishes the capital in Bian, present-day Kaifeng.

Literature

 * Al-Masudi, an Arab historian and geographer, completes his large-scale work The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems, a historical book about the beginning of the world, starting with Adam and Eve.

Births

 * Al-Qadir, Abbasid caliph of Baghdad (d. 1031)
 * Fujiwara no Koshi, Japanese empress (d. 979)
 * Raja Raja Chola I, king of Chola Kingdom (d. 1014)

Deaths

 * January 12 – Sang Weihan, Chinese chief of staff (b. 898)
 * January 27 – Zhang Yanze, Chinese general and governor
 * January 28 – Jing Yanguang, Chinese general (b. 892)
 * May 18 – Tai Zong, emperor of the Liao Dynasty (b. 902)
 * May 30 – Ma Xifan, king of Chu (Ten Kingdoms) (b. 899)
 * June 21 – Zhang Li, official of the Liao Dynasty
 * June 22 – Qian Hongzuo, king of Wuyue (b. 928)
 * June 23
 * Li Congyi, prince of Later Tang (b. 931)
 * Wang, imperial consort of Later Tang
 * August 19 – Abu Yazid, Kharijite Berber leader (b. 873)
 * November 23 – Berthold, duke of Bavaria
 * Ce Acatl Topiltzin, Toltec ruler (approximate date)
 * Hugh of Arles, king of Italy and Lower Burgundy
 * Jordi, bishop of Vic (Spain) (approximate date)
 * Li Renda, Chinese warlord and governor
 * Liu Xu, chancellor of Later Tang and Later Jin (b. 888)
 * Thomais of Lesbos, Byzantine saint (b. ca. 909)
 * Wulfgar, bishop of Lichfield (approximate date)

title: 947


text:
2028

Predicted and scheduled events

 * May 8 – The 2028 Philippine presidential election will be held.
 * July 14–30 – The 2028 Summer Olympics will be held in Los Angeles, California, US.
 * August 15–27 – The 2028 Summer Paralympics will be held in Los Angeles, California, US.
 * November 7 – The 2028 United States presidential election will be held.

Date unknown

 * The Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (ARIEL), led by the UK, will study the atmospheres of exoplanets.
 * The lease on the Moldauhafen port lot in Hamburg, Germany to the Czech Republic is set to expire.
 * The Euro 2028 tournament will be hosted in England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

title: 2028


text:
2029

Predicted and scheduled events

 * January 20 – The winner of the 2028 United States presidential election is scheduled to be inaugurated.
 * April 13 – Asteroid 99942 Apophis, at 335 metres (1,100 feet) wide, will pass Earth less than 32,000 kilometres (20,000 miles) from Earth's surface: closer than geosynchronous satellites. When discovered, it was considered a serious threat to Earth, but since then refined predictions have ruled out any impact risk for the next 100 years. This will be the closest approach of an asteroid this size scientist have predicted.
 * August 15 – If not triggered earlier, the next United Kingdom general election will occur no later than this date.

Unknown

 * Planned launch of the Comet Interceptor.
 * The Fehmarn Belt fixed link between Denmark and Germany is expected to be completed.
 * The Giant Magellan Telescope, which is currently under construction, is scheduled for completion.
 * The Three Seas Initiative (3SI) estimates to end the Rail-2-Sea project by this year.
 * Romania expects to have entered the eurozone by this year.
 * The digital time capsule "A Message from Earth" will reach its destination on the planet Gliese 581c.
 * NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is expected to leave the Solar System.
 * Ray Kurzweil predicts artificial general intelligence during this year. AGI is artificial intelligence that can do most things a human can do and has achieved human level intelligence. Kurzweil also predicts that AI will pass the Turing test.

title: 2029


text:
Liberty BASIC

Liberty BASIC (LB) is a commercial computer programming language and integrated development environment (IDE). It has an interpreter, developed in Smalltalk, which recognizes its own dialect of the BASIC programming language. It runs on 16- and 32-bit Windows and OS/2.

Background
Liberty BASIC was written by Carl "Gunner" Gundel and published in its first release by his company, Shoptalk Systems, in 1991. It has progressed steadily since then. to the software, version 4.5.1, was in June 2018.

Though Liberty BASIC has its share of limitations in its design for advanced programming, it provides an introductory integrated development environment, IDE, for moderate to advanced users of Windows and OS/2. Dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) are available. In its current version, it runs only on Microsoft Windows, and under Wine on Linux. Alpha testing of Liberty BASIC v5.0 is underway with versions that run on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and on the Raspberry Pi as well.

Liberty BASIC does not compile to native code. Instead it compiles the code written in the IDE to an encrypted file with the extension TKN. This file is then executed by an EXE file that carries the same file name, although this may change with the release of version 5.

Features

 * A visual development tool called FreeForm, written in Liberty BASIC and greatly extended by the Liberty BASIC community over the years
 * Source level debugger
 * calling of DLLs and application programming interfaces (APIs)
 * Color graphics capability
 * Can create games with sprite animation, sound, music, and joystick control
 * An add-on package called Assist with many new features, such as a code formatter, source code versioning, a performance profiler, an easy-to-use code difference browser, and an improved package and deployment system

Distinguishing features
Liberty BASIC allows for procedural programming in a style similar to DOS BASICs that run in console mode, using a default "main window" that displays formatted text and accepts user input. It also supports event-driven programming based on a graphical user interface (GUI), using several types of windows that may contain the standard controls such as buttons, menus, textboxes, etc.

A central idea in creating Liberty BASIC was to model the handling of windows after the syntax for file handling. For example, (from the Liberty BASIC Help File):

"The OPEN command opens communication with a device, which can be a disk file, a window, a dynamic-link library or a serial communications port."

Once a “device” is open, data and also commands to control that device can be “printed” to it. For each type of device there is a set of commands which can be sent to it in this way. In the more recent versions of LB the word "print" may be dropped from the "print" statement, making the syntax even simpler.

Simplicity has been at the heart of Liberty BASIC from the beginning. This makes it easier to learn but at some cost, perhaps, in limiting functionality. Only two data types are supported in LB v4.03 — numeric and string. No type declarations are required; any variable with a $ sign at the end of its name is a string variable, otherwise it is numeric. (The plan for LB v5 is to support other types and user defined types as well as these.) For the purpose of making calls to an API or third-party DLLs there is a STRUCT and the additional types necessary for the DLL. The only other data structure supported is the ARRAY. Arrays of one or two dimensions are supported. LB v5 may support arrays of user-defined types.

Notable programs written in Liberty BASIC

 * FreeForm, a GUI editor for creating GUI formats, was written in LB.

Example code
Here are some examples of the language:

'''"Hello, World!" program:'''

'''Program to display a pop-up message box with the words "Hello, World!" on it:'''

Program to display an input box:

Running another application:

Printing multiplication table of 5 on form:

Alternative implementations
The GNU/Liberty Basic Compiler Collection (GLBCC), by Anthony Liguori, is a set of tools to compile Liberty Basic programs, runs on Windows and Linux systems, but the project has not been updated since 2001.

In 2012 an alternative Windows implementation of Liberty BASIC, LB Booster (LBB), became available. Although substantially compatible with the Liberty BASIC 4 language syntax, LBB was developed entirely independently by Richard Russell and is written in BBC BASIC.

LBB offers (typically) increased execution speed, smaller self-contained executables and some additional capabilities. However LBB is not 100% compatible with LB4 and while many programs will run without modification, some may need to be adapted, or may even be unsuitable for running under LBB.

Liberty Basic does not provide for data declarations. Instead any new data name is treated as a new declaration. Some regard this as a benefit, others see it as a debugging issue for imperfect typers. In 2019 Peter J. D. Matthews devised a method for adding declarations and checking for undeclared data - without changing the code seen by the LB interpreter. In 2023 this system was ported to GitHub in public repository "LBPrePass" for anyone to use. This repository also contains program documentation. The program is written in Liberty Basic 4.5.1 and is intended to analyse 4.5.1 code.

title: Liberty BASIC


text:
Balducci levitation

The Balducci levitation is a levitation illusion first described by Ed Balducci. Its inventor is unknown. It is an impromptu magic trick, which has been popularized by many magicians, such as David Roth, Paul Harris, and David Blaine.

Effect
The performer stands at an angle facing away from the spectators. The performer appears to levitate a few inches above the ground. The effect generally does not last for more than five seconds. The performer's feet return to the ground, and the effect is complete.

Advantages and disadvantages
Other methods of levitation allow for greater heights, longer durations, and better viewing angles (see definition of angles from List of conjuring terms) for performance; however, most of these methods can only be performed on a stage because they require special equipment or setups (such as wires). The Balducci levitation requires no preparation of any kind, and so it can be performed impromptu – anytime, anywhere. Although variations have been made to improve the illusion of genuine levitation, they are generally harder to perform, and some require gimmicks or setups that make them less practical than the Balducci levitation.

Misdirection
Like many magic effects, this illusion relies mostly on subtle misdirection and acting on the part of the performer.

These psychological subtleties increase the probability that spectators will believe the illusion:
 * The spectators are informed ahead of time the performer intends to levitate.
 * The performer pretends to put a good deal of care in choosing a place to perform the levitation.
 * The performer acts as if performing the levitation is difficult and physically straining.
 * The performer emphasizes the fact that there are no gimmicks (wires, etc.) used, and encourages that the area and the performer's clothing be examined.
 * The performer provides a reason for the audience's position: a warning he may fall and require them to catch him.

These physical subtleties make the levitation seem more amazing:
 * The spectators are misdirected from the performer's method because they are concentrating on the movement of the feet and the space that appears between the feet and the ground.
 * When "landing", the performer will make a point of hitting the ground hard with the feet, and bending the knees to convince the spectators that the performer's feet were higher in the air than they actually were.

The effects of these subtleties can be seen in David Blaine's television performances of this illusion. For example, one spectator is asked how high Blaine levitated. She gestures a height that is obviously a few inches higher than the illusion is capable of producing, demonstrating that subtleties can often cause a spectator's interpretation of an effect to be better than the effect itself.

Method
The magician positions themself at an angle to their audience, a little distance away, in such a way that the audience can only see the rearward portion of one foot and most of the other foot – concealing the toe end of the "far" (upstage) foot. The audience group must be small enough that they can be grouped close together. The magician, with the rearward portion of their feet held together, lifts the "near" foot off the ground, standing on only the front part of their "far" foot (the one which is partially concealed) while lifting the rearward part of the "far" foot and all of the "near" foot and keeping their ankles together. The audience sees only one foot and the heel of the other (the "far" foot), which appear to rise off the floor. The hidden part of the "far" (upstage) foot supports the weight of the magician as they appear to levitate one or two inches.

Simply put: the magician stands on the front of one foot, while raising the one foot and the visible part of the other foot, blocking the view of the front of the supporting foot with the other foot and rear part of the supporting foot.

The reverse Balducci illusion is similar to the Balducci illusion, but the magician faces towards the audience at a 90-degree angle rather than facing away. The magician slowly stands on the heel of their "far" foot as they lift the "near" foot and the front of the "far" foot. To improve the appearance of the effect, the magician will try to maintain the near foot parallel to the ground.

Another variation that is sometimes shown on TV shows is done by performing a normal "Balducci", filming the audience reaction, then later returning and performing the illusion with the aid of wires to get more height or to get a shot from the front or underneath. These shots will be edited into the footage of the original performance, thus allowing the levitation effect to be exaggerated, while still using genuine onlookers in the shot.

There is a principle in theatrical magic that "the audience will often remember or describe an exaggerated effect" – so the audience members may not notice the increased height caused by the "faked second shot" (if the additional height is not more than a few extra centimeters) when watching the combined footage later, believing that they are seeing a genuine recreation of the performance. This is even more likely if, during the original performance, cameras are positioned in the same place as those from which the "faked" footage was later shot.

History
Ed Balducci published the first known description of the illusion in July 1974 in The Pallbearer's Review (Volume 9, Number 9, pp 755) under the name "Impromptu Levitation". Balducci ended his description by saying, "Originator unknown. It was shown to me many years ago by one of the Harmonicats, a cousin of mine, Erwin Levine, known as the Baron."

Despite Balducci's disclaimer, the illusion has since been known as the "Balducci levitation".

Known variations

 * Antigravity boots by Peter Marvey
 * King levitation by Corey King
 * Criss Angel's Levitation by Criss Angel
 * Sooperman by Paul Harris
 * Zero Gravity by Mike Bent

Appearances in popular media

 * The "Reverse Balducci" is performed by Wade's crew members in the film You Got Served.
 * The "Reverse Balducci" is performed and mentioned by name in issue 25 of the comic book series Y: The Last Man.
 * Hotel Babylon S3E7 features a character (Dan Black) loosely based on David Blaine, who performs the illusion in the lift; later one of the main characters (Anna) shows the other hotel staff (but not the viewer) how the illusion is performed.
 * In the movie John Dies at the End, when Dave goes to a party and hears a girl gasp that a man just levitated off the ground, he asks how high and scoffs, "Let me guess, about six inches above the grass right? Balducci levitation?"
 * In House S8E18, Dr. Gregory House performs the illusion for his team after they tell him they witnessed a patient levitating over his hospital bed.

title: Balducci levitation