Personal Life
In his interview with the Archive of American Television Winters reported that he suffered a nervous breakdown and spent eight months in a private mental hospital in the late 1950s. Although he was not given a diagnosis while in the hospital, he was later diagnosed with manic depression (known today as bipolar disorder). The comedian referred to this incident obliquely in his stand-up act, most famously on his 1960 comedy album The Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters. During his classic "flying saucer" routine, Winters casually mentions that if he wasn't careful, the authorities might put him back in the "zoo", referring to the institution.
On January 11, 2009, Eileen, Jonathan's wife of 60 years, died at the age of 84 after a 20-year battle with breast cancer.
Read more about this topic: Jonathan Winters
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters womans peculiar sphere, her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (18511931)
“The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (18581915)
“A child is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further backit is already so far.”
—Alice Meynell (18471922)