Hooray, Hurrah! It’s Winchell-Mahoney Time!
Writing by treason on Monday, 27 of June , 2005 at 6:53 pm
John Fiedler, the voice of Piglet in the Winnie-the-Pooh films, has died. And Tigger, too, now is gone. My sister was a huge fan of Paul Winchell when we were growing up so we watched Winchell-Mahoney Time - a lot. A guy named Bill Jackson must have been watching, too, because he started his own kids’ show in Chicago, and that became my favorite, rivaling Frazier Thomas and Garfield Goose. Jackson had to be influenced by Winchell but he was no copy cat. The man was an extraordinary talent.
And as much as my sister appreciated that, I think her true affections were with Winch. He was a pioneer. Trivia questions about his inventions - like his invention and patent for the artificial heart - have been circulating for years. How could this wacky guy with the dummies named Jerry and Knucklehead be smart enough to come up with these ideas?
Imagination. And a horrid childhood. I could list all his accomplishments here, but I won’t. He had a lot to be proud of and he accomplished more in his lifetime than most of us could ever imagine. His talents were broad. He was an entertainer, a comic, a dramatic actor, a ventriloquist, a big brain, an inventor, a hypnotist, an acupuncture practitioner, a writer, a business man, a humanitarian, a victim of polio, Fleagle, a husband - at least three times - and a father.
Many of his inventions remain, including the disposable razor - an idea he abandoned when peers said it wouldn’t catch on, but someone else ran with it and the rest is history. What doesn’t remain is the show. Metromedia erased all of the videotapes of Winchell-Mahoney Time, and in 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court awarded Winchell $17.8 million in a lawsuit. A part of Boomer history wiped out.
He was a talented man, a driven man. An overachiever, and complex. I remember Candice Bergen bristling at the thought of her father and that dummy of his. At first I was unsympathetic, but over the years I’ve come to realize that it has to be weird living with a man who is beloved by all. When I was pruning my thousands of e-mail messages from my three year collection at work, I stumbled across one from my coworker’s partner - it was a link to Paul Winchell’s daughter’s website. I clicked on it. I guess April and Candice have a lot in common.
People who loved her father, but didn’t actually know him, attacked her for criticizing him. According to April, her father…wasn’t. The world perceived that this man was the perfect parent, but April was in the trenches and she saw a whole different side of him.
I admire her, because I think she genuinely loved her father but she doesn’t sugarcoat his role at home. She’s fair: she recognizes and appreciates his talent, and as much as she doesn’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, she lived the truth and is candid about growing up with him. Is this a Daddy Dearest situation? I don’t know. But I’ll give April the benefit of the doubt. Knowing that Paul Winchell’s mother was unsupportive of his talents and embarrassed by his polio (she beat him regularly), I can only imagine that his psyche was damaged at an early age. I suspect he spent his entire life trying to earn his mother’s love. And maybe he felt that because he worked so hard and accomplished so much for his mother, his daughter should be doing the same for him. Who knows? I wasn’t there.
But April was, and she writes about her father’s drug abuse, infidelities, paranoia, psychotic episodes, physical abuse, and institutionalizations. Sounds like April could deal with that. A lot of kids have to. But what she cannot forgive is Winchell’s treatment of her mother. Happily, she loves her mother and has one strong parent. According to April, her mother stood by Winchell during the worst of times for the sake of her child, but when her own mental health was at risk, she left him. The result was ugly, but her mother always encouraged April to love her father and maintain a relationship with him. It was difficult for her because she felt he was horrible, accusing her mother of being a slut - and worse. He wrote one of those “cleansing” books that painted an unflattering, and as April says, completely untrue picture of her mother.
She tells his fans on her site that she eventually realized that Winchell “could brighten the lives of children all over the world, but he could not be a father.” She feels she has forgiven him, and she acknowledges his talents and accomplishments, but her sadness runs deep.
It’s unfortunate that someone who has so much to offer was so damaged as a child. If he’d had his mother’s love, would he have accomplished even more? Or was his mother’s abuse the reason why he achieved what he did? What’s awful is that abuse didn’t stop with Paul. It trickled down into his own family and he repeated the patterns he learned as a child. How terribly sad.
Well, as Tigger would say, ta-ta for now.
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