As the world mourns the loss of Gene Wilder, known for making people laugh in amusing films like Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, a local school is looking back on the time the legendary actor spent time with their students. “He was sick, and I knew it”, Brooks said.
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Comedy legend Mel Brooks paid tribute to the late Gene Wilder Tuesday on The Tonight Show. “You are Leo Bloom, ‘” Brooks said, recalling a conversation he had with Wilder.
“My late wife Anne Bancroft was doing Mother Courage, and Gene was in it”, Brooks said.
When Gene Wilder passed away at 83 on Monday, many of us wondered how his director/friend, Mel Brooks, was handling the loss of someone so special to him. “I hugged him. It was a wonderful moment”.
While much of his life was well-documented, here are five things you might not have known about Wilder.
“We became very good friends”, Brooks said.
Subsumed in NY theater, he cast off his birth name-Jerome Silberman in “Macbeth” didn’t quite have the right ring to him-and honored two of his favorite writers with a new one: Thomas Wolfe, through his character Eugene Gant, and Thornton Wilder. “‘Why are they always laughing?’ I said, ‘Look in the mirror, blame it on God'”.
Also: Brooks discusses pissing out of his childhood apartment window in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and letting his brother take the fall for it.
Watch Brooks’ tribute to Wilder below.
You can see both Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein for £15/£13 concessions when you book both together in person at the box office or over the phone on 0191 227 5500.
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Wilder worked mostly in television in recent years, including appearances on “Will & Grace” – one of which earned him an Emmy Award for outstanding guest actor – and a starring role in the short-lived sitcom “Something Wilder”.
