The actor who player Charlie Buckett in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory film – Peter Ostrum – has released a statement on the death of Willy Wonka himself, Gene Wilder.
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“He was so quirky”, said Ostrum.
Wilder wrote back: “Dearest James, I don’t do or go where you were hoping, but I’ll be looking for you”.
“He was a gentle man, but he was also a gentleman”, said Ostrum. “He treated people with respect and dignity”.
“Late Late Show” host James Cordon says actor Gene Wilder, who passed away at the age of 83, was “never less than brilliant at all times”.
For the scene in which Wonka makes his long-awaited first appearance, exiting his factory to invite the group of lucky children in for a once-in-a-lifetime tour, Wilder told the director, “I’d like to come out with a cane, and be crippled”.
Although Ostrum never acted again, he credits Wilder and Jack Albertson, who played Charlie’s grandfather, with making him comfortable on set.
Gene Wilder with HIES teacher Kristin Ahler. “To have made one film and to be associated with Jack and Gene, I feel like I really found the golden ticket”, he said. “He simply couldn’t bear the idea of one less smile in the world”. Wilder’s favourite and they all sat around him holding hands when the radio started to belt out Ella Fitzgerald singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow as he took his last breath.
On Tuesday, Coldplay honored the screen legend by performing an acoustic version of “Pure Imagination”, the Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory anthem made famous by Wilder, at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado.
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My personal favorite role of Wilder’s is undoubtedly “Blazing Saddles”, a Western movie he stars in as the once-famous Waco Kid, the fastest shooter east of the MS, down-on-his-luck alcoholic who aides the sheriff in ridding the town of Rock Ridge from a lackluster group of rustlers, cutthroats, murders, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs and thugs.
