Robin Williams Funny But Not Nice

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``````Funny but Not Nice to His Family`````````

© Dan Steinberg/Invision/AP Actor Robin Williams poses for a portrait on Nov. 5, 2011, in Beverly Hills, Calif.A new biography of Robin Williams chronicles the comedian's topsy-turvy public and private lives, which involved infidelities, groping and flashing of his Mork & Mindy co-star Pam Dawber, rehab from drug and alcohol abuse, and a rare brain disorder diagnosed only after his 2014 suicide, by hanging, at age 63. 

In Robin (Henry Holt, out May 15), author Dave Itzkoff writes that Williams’ first wife, Valerie Velardi, tolerated the comic’s unfunny liaisons for a time: “Valerie could never quite bring herself to condemn Robin for his infidelities; she seemed to accept them as an occupational hazard of stardom.”

That changed, however, when his two-year affair with a cocktail waitress ended, and the other woman, Michelle Tish Carter, sued him for $6.2 million, alleging (inaccurately, it turned out) that he had given her herpes. The suit became public in 1988 and Velardi divorced Williams that year; they had been married for a decade and their son Zak was 5. The suit would not be settled until 1992 for an undisclosed amount of money.

Other revelations in the book:

In 1989, Williams would marry Marsha Garces, who had risen from being the family nanny to his professional assistant. But by 2006 the comedian’s relapse into drinking and doing drugs, which he tried unsuccessfully to hide from his wife, led to the unraveling of his second marriage. That summer he began a stint at the Hazelden Foundation center, a rehab facility in Oregon.

Previously, Williams had been sober for more than two decades, in large part because of the cautionary example of Saturday Night Live star John Belushi, who died of a drug overdose in 1982 at the age of 33. Williams had been with Belushi the night before he died, although he denied reports that he had been doing cocaine with him. On this occasion, Williams rehabbed himself cold turkey.

The new 400-plus-page biography also documents an insecure star who for all his successes (an Oscar, plus Emmys and Grammys) could be worried by the rise of rival comic Jim Carrey, as well as over his personal finances — this despite pulling down as much as $15 million a film.

© Getty Images Robin Williams performs at MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 25, 2008 in Las Vegas.Itzkoff quotes Williams bestowing a backhanded compliment on Carrey as being “funny in a physical way.” Twice divorced, Williams worked frenetically to the very end of his life despite growing health problems. 

Williams’ behavior, hardly conventional to begin with, became increasingly strange as he progressed into his early 60s, worrying friends and family. He was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and in June 2014 entered a rehab facility even though he was not drinking or doing drugs. It was a move inspired by desperation: nothing else seemed to be helping.

(Williams' behavior was later attributed to “diffuse Lewy body disease”; the diagnosis came from analysis of the actor’s brain tissue after his death.)

Itzkoff writes that Susan Schneider, his third wife whom he married in 2011, became seriously concerned about his health, both physical and mental, in the fall of 2013. He was having stomach problems, difficulty with his vision, trouble urinating and sleeping, among other ailments. He was taking medication for depression. Soon paranoia and delusions joined the list of torments.

The author writes that on the night before he hanged himself Williams “began to fixate on some of the designer wrists watches that he owned and grew fearful that they were in danger of being stolen.” He took several of them and stuffed them in a sock and drove them to a friend’s house nearby for safekeeping.

Williams went to bed that night around 10:30 p.m., and his wife, who slept in a separate bedroom, let him sleep in the next morning, grateful that he seemed to be getting a solid rest for a change. When he didn’t answer her late that morning of Aug. 11, she forced the lock on his bedroom door.  She found him dead, his belt around his neck.

After her husband's death and diagnosis, Schneider told Good Morning America, "It was like this endless parade of symptoms, and not all of them would raise their head at once. It was like playing whack-a-mole. Which symptom is it this month? I thought, is my husband a hypochondriac? We're chasing it and there are no answers, and by now we've tried everything."

David Holahan