Sunday, April 24
Gene Wilder’s deep understanding of the craft of motion pictures can be summed up in a suggestion he made for his iconic portrayal of Willy Wonka in the first adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (1971). It was he who told director Mel Stuart that Wonka should feign a limp with a cane when first introduced to the Golden Ticket winners, only to reveal he has no physical ailment at all when he drops the cane and pops up after performing a summersault. Wilder told Stuart that this would clue the viewer in to the fact that they cannot trust anything Wonka says or does.
It's a subtle addition, one that is played off for laughs, but it is also one that elevates the character and the film. It’s no wonder that after finding success in the acting world, Wilder would take his talents behind the camera as both a screenwriter and a director.
Wilder was born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on June 11, 1933. Raised by Jewish parents, including his father who was a Russian immigrant, Wilder was told by a doctor at age eight to never, ever fight with or upset his mother after a rheumatic fever led to her suffering two heart attacks. The doctor said that if she got upset, she could die, and Wilder needed to “try to make her laugh.” From there, he caught the acting bug.
After graduating with a degree in Communication and Theatre Arts from the University of Iowa, Wilder studied at the prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in England, where he not only excelled in performance, but won the school’s fencing tournament. In 1956, he was drafted into the Army and served in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Pennsylvania’s Valley Forge Army Hospital. From there, he moved to New York to pursue his acting dreams.
After a series of odd jobs and three years of study with the HB Studio, Wilder joined the Actors Studio, studying with Lee Strasberg. He adopted his stage name, taking “Gene” from a character in a Thomas Wolfe novel and “Wilder” from the playwright Thornton Wilder. He eventually landed on Broadway, appearing alongside Anne Bancroft in “Mother Courage and Her Children” in 1963. It was here that he met Mel Brooks, who was dating and would soon marry Bancroft. Brooks told Wilder about a screenplay he was working on called “Springtime for Hitler,” in which he wanted Wilder to co-star. It would take several years for Brooks to make good on his promise, but in 1967 he cast Wilder in what was then called “The Producers” (1967), landing the actor an Oscar nomination for Supporting Actor in what was only his second film role (Wilder’s screen debut had come earlier in the year with a small, but memorable, bit part in “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967)).
“The Producers” (1967) birthed one of the great screen partnerships of the era. In 1974, Wilder and Brooks reteamed for “Blazing Saddles” (1974), where Wilder stepped in as a last-minute replacement when Gig Young fell ill (reportedly from alcoholic withdraws) and was unable to complete the film. Wilder was cast as Jim, the Waco Kid. He would appropriately ride to the film and watch it on horseback for its February 7, 1974, premiere at the Pickwick Drive-In Theatre in Burbank, California, along with the rest of the 250 guests. In 2003, the American Film Institute placed “Blazing Saddles” at number six on its ranking of the top 100 comedy movies ever made.
During production, Wilder was tinkering with his own screenplay, adding humor and a happy ending to the timeless Mary Shelley horror novel, “Frankenstein.” Brooks liked the idea, and together the pair worked on the script, ultimately finishing “Young Frankenstein” (1974) in time for release the same year as “Blazing Saddles” (1974). Both movies were monster successes and put Wilder and Brooks in a new pantheon of fame. They scored an Oscar nomination for their “Young Frankenstein” screenplay. While the pair never worked together again, they remained lifelong friends.
Wilder next reunited his “Young Frankenstein”-castmates Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman for his directorial debut “Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” (1975), which was another box office hit. He then chose to star in “Silver Streak” (1976), but only under the condition that Richard Pryor be his co-star. He told his agent that he felt Pryor was the only one who could keep the movie from coming off racist. Pryor had co-written the screenplay for “Blazing Saddles”, and almost starred in that film before losing out the lead to Cleavon Little.
Wilder and Pryor turned out to be a winning screen combination, and the film was another blockbuster. For the AFI’s greatest 100 comedies list, “Silver Streak” landed at number 95. Wilder would go on to work with Pryor in three more movies, including “Stir Crazy” (1980), “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” (1989) and “Another You” (1991), though the later collaborations proved difficult for Pryor, who by that point was showing obvious signs of multiple sclerosis. The pair are considered the first successful interracial comedy duo in the movies.
Wilder continued to write and direct in the 1980s, including “The Woman in Red” (1984) and “Haunted Honeymoon” (1986), both of which he appeared in alongside his then-wife, Gilda Radner. Wilder had met Radner on the set of their first project together, Sidney Poitier’s “Hanky Panky” (1982). After Radner’s death from ovarian cancer in 1989, Wilder co-founded Gilda’s Club to help raise cancer awareness.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Wilder turned to television, and he won an Emmy for Guest Actor in 2003 for an arc on “Will & Grace.” After this success, he retired from the screen, concentrating his creative energies on writing books and painting. He published a memoir in 2005, “Kiss Me Like a Stranger: A Search for Art and Love,” and later penned novels like “My French Whore,” which was released in 2007.
Gene Wilder passed away on August 29, 2016, at the age of 83 from complications of Alzheimer’s Disease. He died with his nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, and his fourth wife, Karen Boyer, at his side, as Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of “Over the Rainbow” played in the background. Wilder had chosen not to make his Alzheimer’s diagnosis public out of respect for children who continue to find and fall in love with his character in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”. Pearlman said Wilder did not want their enjoyment of the film to be interrupted by being “exposed to an adult referencing illness or trouble and causing delight to travel to worry, disappointment or confusion.”
For Turner Classic Movies’ 2016 ‘’TCM Remembers,” Wilder held the esteemed last spot in the “in memoriam” montage. The clip of Gene Wilder chose? That classic summersault reveal from “Willy Wonka.” What better way to highlight his genius?
