His nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman released a statement (via Variety) about Wilder’s passing, saying his death was due to complications with Alzheimer’s disease.
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Gene Wilder was one of the masters of old-school comedy, a usual appearance next to Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, and other stars of the generation. File photo dated 02/10/1996 of Gene Wilder as Max Prince during rehearsals for Neil Simon’s “Laughter of the 23rd Floor”, at Queen’s Theatre in London as the actor has died aged 83, his family said. ‘He blessed every film we did with his magic & he blessed me with his friendship’. For the theatrical farce The Producers (1968), Wilder played an ultra-nervous accountant who becomes hysterical when his baby-blue security blanket is taken away. In fact, the film would not have been the same, had it not been the eccentric and amusing presence of Gene Wilder who played Willy Wonka. If there’s a heaven he has a Golden Ticket”, while Ricky Gervais added: “Good Day Sir!
His big break in movies was just four years before he played Willy Wonka, when he was plucked from a stint on Broadway to play a kidnapped mortician in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde.
But he also knew how to keep it cool as the boozing gunslinger in Blazing Saddles or the charming candy man in the children’s favourite Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory. “But not too many came along”, Wilder said. Wilder wasn’t a prolific actor, appearing in only about “15 or 18 films” by his own reckoning-and dropping out of the movie business nearly entirely for the past two decades.
Tweeted Jim Carrey: Gene Wilder was one of the funniest and sweetest energies ever to take a human form.
He went on to write several screenplays and direct five films. They had last heard from Wilder in 2015, when he sent them “lots of love”.
As a boy, Wilder was warned by a doctor that if he directed anger toward his emotionally fragile mother, it might kill her. Now 58, she remembered him being a “father figure” to the cast. Wilder re-teamed with Mel Brooks for the inspired lunacy of Blazing Saddles (1974) and Young Frankenstein (1974), earning his second Oscar nomination for his first-time screen-writing efforts (along with Mel Brooks) on the latter.
Over the past couple of decades, Wilder worked less frequently, with a high point being his guest-starring role on Will and Grace, for which he won an Emmy.
Wilder is survived by his fourth wife Karen, whom he married in 1991, and other relatives including his daughter Katherine from a previous marriage.
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His first two marriages, to Mary Mercier and Mary Joan Schutz, ended in divorce.
