Share

Comic performer Gene Wilder kept his serious side off camera

Wilder was one of the comedy world’s most beloved icons, able to elevate the silliest jokes to something truly memorable.

Advertisement

Still, Wilder can get one. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a attractive forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause.

“I am him in fantasy”, Wilder once said of playing the lead in Brooks’ films.

Wilder, a Milwaukee native, was born Jerome Silberman on June 11, 1933.

Apart from the roles in the Mel Brooks films and his legendary Willy Wonka performance, Wilder also costarred with Richard Pryor in several films including the hits “Silver Streak” and “Stir Crazy”.

Besides his great frizzy-haired freakouts – his temper tantrum over a blue blanket in Mel Brooks’s The Producers in 1968 was the first in a career of classic overanxious moments – Mr.

“If something comes along that’s really good and I think I would be good for it, I would be happy to do it”.

His other Broadway credits include “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1963), alongside Kirk Douglas, and a production of “Mother Courage and Her Children” a year later, in which he co-starred with Anne Bancroft. As a small and in no way adequate tribute for such a great of the industry, The Weekly Review has put together some of our favourite Gene Wilder moments from across the years. He married “Saturday Night Live” headliner Gilda Radner in 1984 and they costarred in two of his films: “The Woman in Red” and “Haunted Honeymoon”.

“Vinyl” actress Olivia Wilde said “thanks for stopping by Earth for a while”, while director Kevin Smith described him as “the face of childhood joy for many a generation”. He made a number of appearances on Will & Grace – including one which earned him an Emmy Award for outstanding guest actor – and had a starring role in the short-lived sitcom Something Wilder. “I didn’t want to do ones with bombing and loud and swearing”. Wilder was insisting on such a curious opening scene. Naturally, that lead to plenty of comedy as Wilder and Pryor attempted to play it cool in the big house – which they definitely failed at.

“#GeneWilder Au revoir to a gifted actor whose films I suggest you re-visit if you want to be thoroughly entertained”. No matter what he was doing onscreen: raving like a lunatic, reanimating a cobbled together corpse or breaking out of prison, Wilder’s warmth was undeniable and inescapable.

As wildly diverse as these roles were, something about Wilder’s measured, impeccably timed approach to eccentricity began to grow on his audiences, which now seemed ready to accept him as something more than just a versatile character actor.

Advertisement

On social media, many were quick to post clips and pictures of their favorite Wilder performances, showing that a amusing Gene Wilder meme needed no extra text or set-up, just his elastic face. “And when you can do that, people usually love you for it and rush in to help”. “And clearly one of the great clowns – the Chaplin of talkies in some way, I would say”. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet.

Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in See No Evil Hear No Evil