Never Forget What San Francisco Meant to Robin Williams

(Joseph Barrientos, Yousef Malallah)

BY DAVID COPPIN LANEGAN

David Coppin Lanegan (@willybillybilliam, @wavesons.band) is a writer and musician. Find his SubStack Jawbone here, and his band Wavesons’ music here. 

The story of Robin Williams, beloved comedian and genius actor who needs no introduction, is inextricably linked with San Francisco. 

As Williams’ former residence in the city’s Seacliff neighborhood goes up for sale for $25 million, now is a good time to remember that Williams is credited with leading a “stand-up comedy renaissance” in SF. While Williams spent time in the sunshine state as a child, attending High School in Larkspur and enrolling in Claremont Men’s College, his relationship with San Francisco proper began in 1976. Williams was a kind of knight-errant then- he had just dropped out of Julliard acting school, having felt creatively restricted. While working as a busboy in Sausalito, he regularly performed stand up in the city. His first ever show was at the Holy City Zoo, in the Richmond. 

(Underway In Ireland)

This was a time of cultural revolution in SF. Rock music, hippies, and drugs abounded. Williams echoed the opening line of Howl by old school Bay boy Allen Ginsberg when he spoke about this time, saying “I saw the best brains of my time turned to mud.”

After living in San Francisco for a year, Williams moved to Los Angeles where he continued to perform stand up. From here, he took off like a rocket: standup show Laugh In, sitcom Mork and Mindy, three HBO specials, and so on. The sky wasn’t even close to the limit, he was a star.

He returned to San Francisco, if briefly, in 1993 to film Mrs. Doubtfire in Pacific Heights. He was a very different man than the boy who played the Holy Zoo. He had divorced his first wife, whom he met at a tavern in SF in ‘76, and was now married to producer Marsha Garces. He had quit the drugs he picked up in the city so long ago, and was a father to three children, whom he credited with saving him from addiction, along with a “grand jury.” 

Robin Williams’s house is for sale in Seacliff, asking $25 million. (Google Maps)

Something about the city must’ve stuck with Williams. In 2011 he married his third and final wife, Susan Schneider, in St. Helena, in the North Bay. They lived together in that Sea Cliff home. Williams had his third act while living in San Francisco, starring in Night At The Museum, managing his Comic Relief charity (started with Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal), and making his broadway theater debut. 

Williams, around 2013, grew extremely depressed, paranoid, and delusional. He was diagnosed with Parkinsons. Really, he had Lewy Body Dementia. Schneider described the disease as a “terrorist” inside Williams’ mind. 

In 2014, Williams died by suicide in Paradise Bay, and love and grief ran in the streets of San Francisco. Flowers piled high on the doorstep of the Mrs. Doubtfire set in Pacific Heights. He was cremated in San Anselmo, 20 miles north of the city, and his ashes were spread across the bay ten days later.

Robin Williams got his start in SF as an errant, and returned in 2011 as it’s son. It won’t forget him.