Gene Wilder couldn\u2019t have chosen a better stage name. \u201cGene\u201d is so ordinary, so sane. It promises gentleness: genial, congeniality. But Wilder? That\u2019s the sort of actor who could play Leo Bloom, Willy Wonka, Dr. Frankenstein\u2019s grandson, or The Waco Kid.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sure enough, from his breakout role as Bloom, the accountant who gets pulled into a criminal scheme opposite Zero Mostel\u2019s Max Bialystock in \u201cThe Producers,\u201d through his Emmy-winning supporting performance as Mr. Stein on TV\u2019s \u201cWill & Grace\u201d in 2003 (after which he retired), his performances blended gentleness, volatility, and a romantic spirit. He was mesmerizing whether starring in classics like \u201cThe Producers,\u201d \u201cWilly Wonka\u00a0and the Chocolate Factory,\u201d \u201cYoung Frankenstein\u201d and \u201cBlazing Saddles\u201d or misfires like \u201cSee No Evil, Hear No Evil\u201d or his self-directed \u201cThe Woman in Red.\u201d He was calm and chaos, reason and madness. He made you believe in whatever he was doing on screen, no matter how preposterous. He had that gift.<\/p>\n
His personal life was marked by tragedy. Born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and dropped into cinema via theater in the late 1960s, he lost his mother to ovarian cancer at 23 when he was serving in the Army, and his wife Gilda Radner to the same disease decades later. He remarried (to Karen Webb a clinical supervisor for the New York League for the Hard of Hearing who advised Wilder on his performance as a deaf man in \u201cSee No Evil, Hear No Evil\u201d), battled non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma into remission with chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, but died of complications from Alzheimer\u2019s disease in 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRemembering Gene Wilder\u201d covers this and more, though not too much more. It\u2019s patchy and digressive, and the overreliance on syrupy music becomes off-putting towards the end. But fans of the actor will probably enjoy it, because it\u2019s a chance to appreciate the life and art of a remarkable talent whose period of superstardom was actually much briefer than we might have realized.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wilder\u2019s glory years were roughly 1968-1980, a stretch bracketed by \u201cThe Producers\u201d and his biggest box-office success \u201cStir Crazy\u201d (opposite Richard Pryor, with whom he made five features). After the one-two box office punch of \u201cBlazing Saddles\u201d and \u201cYoung Frankenstein\u201d in the same year (Wilder co-wrote the script to the latter and was Oscar-nominated) he decided to go the route of his pal Brooks by writing and directing his own star vehicles, starting with \u201cThe Adventure of Sherlock Holmes\u2019 Smarter Brother\u201d and \u201cThe World\u2019s Greatest Lover.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the productions were a mixed bag, and the movies he made for other directors tended to be worse and less intriguingly personal. By the \u201890s it became clear that he was the sort of acquired taste that audiences wouldn\u2019t automatically come out to see. After losing Radner and then his friend and comedy teammate Pryor (to multiple sclerosis) Wilder started to lose interest in acting and filmmaking, and by the end of his life concentrated mostly on writing novels and nonfiction, painting watercolors and tap-dancing with Webb, and raising money for cancer awareness and treatment in honor of Radner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gene Wilder couldn\u2019t have chosen a better stage name. \u201cGene\u201d is so ordinary, so sane. It promises gentleness: genial, congeniality. But Wilder? That\u2019s the sort of actor who could play Leo Bloom, Willy Wonka, Dr. Frankenstein\u2019s grandson, or The Waco Kid.\u00a0 Sure enough, from his breakout role as Bloom, the accountant who gets pulled into …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[43],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-documentary-movies","tag-documentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}