Gene Wilder: 1933-2016
Gene Wilder, who established himself as one of America’s foremost comic actors with his delightfully neurotic performances in three films directed by Mel Brooks, his eccentric star turn in the family classic “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and his winning chemistry with Richard Pryor in the box-office smash “Stir Crazy,” died early Monday morning at his home in Connecticut. He was 83.
A nephew, the filmmaker Jordan Walker-Pearlman, confirmed Wilder’s death in a statement, saying the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
Wilder’s rule for comedy was simple: Don’t try to make it funny, try to make it real. “I’m an actor, not a clown,” he said more than once.
He made his movie debut in 1967 in Arthur Penn’s celebrated crime drama “Bonnie and Clyde,” in which he was memorably hysterical as an undertaker kidnapped by the notorious Depression-era bank robbers played by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. He was even more hysterical, and even more memorable, a year later in “The Producers,” Brooks’ first film and the basis of his later Broadway hit.
The part earned Wilder an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. Within a few years the anxious, frizzy haired, popeyed Wilder had become an unlikely movie star.
He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance as the wizardly title character in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (1971).
Three years later, he reunited with Brooks for perhaps the two bestknown entries in either man’s filmography.
In “Blazing Saddles,” Wilder had the relatively quiet role of the Waco Kid, a boozy ex-gunfighter who helps an improbable black sheriff (Cleavon Little) save a town from railroad barons and venal politicians. The film’s oncedaring humor may have lost some of its edge over the years, but Wilder’s next Brooks film, “Young Frankenstein,” has never grown old.
Gene Wilder was born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee on June 11, 1933. His father, William, a manufacturer and salesman of novelty items, was an immigrant from Russia. His mother, the former Jeanne Baer, suffered from rheumatic heart disease.
Wilder’s first two marriages, to Mary Mercier and Mary Joan Schutz, ended in divorce. In 1984, he married the “Saturday Night Live” comedian Gilda Radner; she died in 1989.
In 1991, Wilder married Karen Boyer, a hearing specialist. She survives him, as does a daughter from an earlier marriage.