Jim Ignatowski

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Jim Ignatowski, played by Christopher Lloyd, was a fictional character in the 1970s television series Taxi.

Background

Ignatowski was born James Caldwell and was apparently from a very well-to-do family. He had attended Harvard and was an excellent student and more than a bit uptight. Then a girl he was going out with introduced him to "funny brownies"--ostensibly marijuana brownies.

The transformation in Jim was instantaneous, and he went from making good grades to "turning in term papers in fingerpaint" according to his father. Jim would become part of the counterculture, and was ordained as a reverend with the Church of the Peaceful ("investigated and cleared of all charges.") He was thrown out of the Democratic Convention in Chicago for stealing decorations, and attended Woodstock ("500,000 people...lucky for them I went or it would have only been 499,999.") He said he kept finding God everywhere--"he kept ditching me". Jim changed his name to Ignatowski believing it was "Starchild" spelled backwards. He also spent a year of his life making a macrame couch.

On the show

His first introduction to the crew at the Sunshine Cab Company was when he performed the "paper marriage" between Latka Gravas, the cab company mechanic (played by Andy Kaufman) and a hooker, so Latka could stay in the United States. Jim would become a regular starting in the second season. The driving test he took is now the stuff of comedic legend, especially the "what does a yellow light mean" bit.

Jim was definitely eccentric--he lived in a condemned building; bought a racehorse he renamed Gary and kept him in his living room; spent a considerable period of time trying to become the "perfect" cabbie only to spend all his earnings on a wall of TVs; he dismantled his van to build a castle for Elaine Nardo (played by Marilu Henner); at one point his last known address was a '62 Volkswagen. As such, when his father, Mr. Caldwell, died leaving him a fortune of $3 million, his family stepped in to keep him from receiving his inheritance. Ultimately he was able to secure his money, and wound up buying the cabbie hangout Mario's and renaming it Jim's Mario's.

Jim screamed in his sleep. He thought weekends were nine days now because "we switched to the metric system." His drug intake allowed him to not only identify the coca leaves (from which cocaine is also made) in Latka's cookies, but also the precise region they came from and what year, much like a wine taster would describe a vintage. His heroes were St. Thomas Aquinas, Alan Alda, and Louie De Palma (played by Danny DeVito), who ironically treated him quite poorly on the job and otherwise.

He also admitted to being a fan of the original Star Trek series, believing that the Romulans were portrayed incorrectly.

Jim as a character was not as one-dimensional as one might think. Lloyd was able to add considerable humanity to the part, so that the one-note caricature of the 60s burnout was shown to be a warm caring person with a heart of gold.

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