Gene Wilder: An appreciation

With a mop of untamed curls resting atop what appeared to be the kindly face of a mild-mannered Long Island dentist, Gene Wilder was one of Hollywood’s stealthiest comedians for three decades. He was the consummate straight man who, beneath the surface, was as crooked — and sharp — as a corkscrew. On screen, Wilder always seemed on the verge of a neurotic meltdown; a put-upon everyman pushed to his breaking point. The joy in watching him was charting the deepening shade of red on his face as it progressed from simmering crimson to boiling-over beet purple. He made hysteria hysterical.

Wilder, who died Sunday night at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, from complications due to Alzheimer’s disease, held a special place in the hearts of fans, in part because so many discovered him young thanks to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Although the film was first released in 1971, it continued to resonate with children born long after the fact. Thanks to Wilder’s charming and volcanic performance as the hermetic, purple-clad confectioner with a sweet-tooth for milk chocolate and mayhem, the Willy Wonka has never gone out of style. It’s a candy-coated classic with a message as enduring as one of his character’s signature creations, The Everlasting Gobstopper.

Wilder, born Jerome Silberman, got his first taste of success on stage in the early ’60s. He appeared in the original 1963 Broadway production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, starring Kirk Douglas. That same year, he landed a role in Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children opposite Anne Bancroft, who was then dating her future husband, Mel Brooks. Brooks, already a comedy legend at that point thanks to his stint as a writer on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows (along with Neil Simon, Mel Tolkin, and Carl Reiner), saw something in Wilder that no one else had bothered to notice yet — something he could tap into and use on the big screen as he segued into writing and directing his own ground-breaking feature films.

After Wilder’s scene-stealing turn as a terrified undertaker being held hostage by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway’s on-the-lam lovers in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, he landed a star-making role in Brooks’ laughing-gas satire, The Producers, opposite Zero Mostel. Together, they were the decade’s most frenzied Mutt & Jeff duo (the two pieces of a laugh-riot exclamation point), fleecing wealthy investors to bankroll a flop that featured the show-stopping (in every sense of the word) musical number, “Springtime for Hitler.” Any actor would have looked subtle standing next to a look-at-me ham like Mostel. But Wilder gave his nebbish accountant character Leo Bloom a hilariously high-strung humanity. After repeatedly yelling, “I’m hysterical!” Mostel’s Max Bialystock douses Wilder with water. To which he replies, only slightly calmer, “I’m wet! I’m hysterical and I’m wet! I’m in pain, and I’m wet, and I’m still hysterical!” He received a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

In 1972, after the release of Wonka, Wilder turned up in Woody Allen’s omnibus 1972 comedy Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask. The film was structured as a drive-by series of high-concept sketches all touching on the darker corners of human sexuality. Some work, some don’t. But for my money, Wilder steals the show as a conservative doctor who sees a middle-aged patient with an inappropriate attachment to a sheep named Daisy. Wilder’s reaction to the man’s kinky confession is beyond deadpan. To look at the case more closely, Wilder checks into a hotel with Daisy and falls madly in love himself, which leads to his personal and professional unraveling. The last shot of the mini-film shows Wilder, down and out, laying in the gutter drinking a bottle of Woolite — brought low by the love of a farm animal. It takes a special kind of actor to sell a premise that out there and somehow make it unexpectedly moving.

Wilder then scored a double-whammy reteaming with Brooks for two 1974 comedy classics: the Western send-up/racial commentary Blazing Saddles and the madcap monster mash Young Frankenstein (which Wilder also co-wrote and scored an Oscar nod for). Both, in their own ways, are conceptually perfect films. What they share is a Brooks’ signature brand of high/low humor and the anchoring (and occasionally apoplectic) presence of Wilder, the swizzle stick that could stir Brooks’ seltzer-soaked punchlines like no other. Both films are deservedly in the AFI’s Top 100 Comedies of All Time.

In 1976, Wilder found a new comedy partner in Richard Pryor, who had been one of the writers on Blazing Saddles. Over the next decade and a half, they would team up in four films of varying quality. The first two — 1976’s Silver Streak and 1980’s Stir Crazy — are the ones worth checking out. Even if some of their broad, black-and-white stereotype gags haven’t aged particularly well, the two fit together like hand-in-glove. It’s as if each wrote the instruction manual on how to wind the other one up.

Since his Emmy-winning turn on Will & Grace in 2002-2003, Wilder had been largely absent from both the big and small screen. And it’s hard to know how much of that was due to his illness or the feeling that he’d provided more than enough laughs for one career — that he’d earned his place in the history of comedy, why push it? Fortunately, we live in an age now when cinema lives forever and can be accessed and streamed into our living rooms at the touch of button. Which, today, in the wake of this sad news, may be the best way to pay tribute. I’ll be starting with Young Frankenstein as soon as I walk in the door tonight.