Legendary comic Jonathan Winters was a welcome regular at the annual Santa Barbara Writers Conference and in spite of his massive success as an actor and a comic, Jonathan was a serious writer. He sat in on the humor workshop formerly run by Ian Bernard of Laugh In fame, now run by Ernie Witham and he attended Poetry Workshops with the utmost seriousness.

He also published a well-written short story collection titled Winters' Tales.

Jonathan was a joy to be around socially. When you talked to him in a "normal" conversation he would go through a series of characters, voices, and facial expressions acting it all out. There was no difference between what you saw on stage and in person.

Jonathan and Barnaby Conrad were among other things, both talented painters and best friends. Mary Conrad tells the story of getting a series of phone calls every morning, first from someone with an Asian accent, then the next morning with an Irish, accent, then a Southern one, and so on. The different characters called for a number of mornings before the Conrad's figured out that it was Jonathan pranking them.

We hope you enjoy Jonathan Winters from the 1982 Santa Barbara Writers Conference.