Gene Wilder

Gene Wilder (born Jerome Silberman; June 11, 1933 – August 29, 2016) was an American actor, comedian, writer and filmmaker. He was mainly known for his comedic roles, including his collaborations with Mel Brooks on the films The Producers (1967), Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (both 1974), and with Richard Pryor in the films Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991), as well as his portrayal of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971).

He began his career on stage, and made his screen debut in an episode of the television series The Play of the Week in 1961. His first film role was that of a hostage in the 1967 motion picture Bonnie and Clyde. His first major film role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1967 film The Producers, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. It was the first in a series of collaborations with writer/director Mel Brooks, including Young Frankenstein, which Wilder co-wrote, garnering the pair an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. He also starred in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972).

Wilder directed and wrote several of his own films, including The Woman in Red (1984). With his third wife, Gilda Radner, he starred in three films, the last two of which he also directed. Her 1989 death from ovarian cancer led to his active involvement in promoting cancer awareness and treatment, helping found the Gilda Radner Ovarian Cancer Detection Center in Los Angeles and co-founding Gilda's Club. After his last acting performance in 2003—a guest role on Will & Grace, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series—Wilder turned his attention to writing. He produced a memoir, Kiss Me Like a Stranger (2005) and five other books.

Early life and education

Wilder was born Jerome Silberman on June 11, 1933, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to a Russian Jewish family. He was the son of Jeanne (née Baer) and William J. Silberman, a manufacturer and salesman of novelty items. Wilder first became interested in acting at age eight, when his mother was diagnosed with rheumatic fever and the doctor told him to "try and make her laugh."

At the age of 11, he saw his sister, who was studying acting, performing onstage, and the experience enthralled him. He asked her teacher if he could become his student, and the teacher said that if he was still interested at age 13, he would take Wilder on as a student. The day after Wilder turned 13, he called the teacher, who accepted him; Wilder studied with him for two years.

When Jeanne Silberman felt that her son's potential was not being fully realized in Wisconsin, she sent him to Black-Foxe, a military institute in Hollywood, where he was bullied and sexually assaulted, primarily because he was the only Jewish boy in the school, according to his own account. After an unsuccessful short stay at Black-Foxe, Wilder returned home and became increasingly involved with the local theater community. He performed for the first time in front of a paying audience at age 15, as Balthasar (Romeo's servant) in a production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Gene Wilder graduated from Washington High School in Milwaukee in 1951.

Wilder was raised Jewish, but he held only the Golden Rule as his philosophy. In a book published in 2005, he stated, "I have no other religion. I feel very Jewish and I feel very grateful to be Jewish. But I don't believe in God or anything to do with the Jewish religion."

Wilder studied Communication and Theatre Arts at the University of Iowa, where he was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. Following his 1955 graduation from Iowa, he was accepted at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, England. After six months of studying fencing, Wilder became the first freshman to win the All-School Fencing Championship. Desiring to study Stanislavski's system, he returned to the US, living with his sister and her family in Queens, New York City. He enrolled at the HB Studio.

Military service

Wilder was drafted into the Army on September 10, 1956. At the end of recruit training, he was assigned to the medical corps and sent to Fort Sam Houston for training. He was then given the opportunity to choose any open post; wanting to stay near New York City to attend acting classes at the HB Studio, he chose to serve as paramedic in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Valley Forge Army Hospital, in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. In November 1957, his mother died from ovarian cancer. He was discharged from the army a year later and returned to New York. A scholarship to the HB Studio allowed him to become a full-time student. At first living on unemployment insurance and some savings, he later supported himself with odd jobs such as a limousine driver and fencing instructor.

Acting career

1959–1964: Early work and Broadway debut

Wilder's first professional acting job was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he played the Second Officer in Herbert Berghof's production of Twelfth Night in 1959. He also served as a fencing choreographer. After three years of study with Berghof and Uta Hagen at the HB Studio, Charles Grodin told Wilder about Lee Strasberg's method acting. Grodin persuaded him to leave the studio and begin studying with Strasberg in his private class. Several months later, Wilder was accepted into the Actors Studio. Feeling that "Jerry Silberman in Macbeth" did not have the right ring to it, he adopted a stage name. He chose "Wilder" because it reminded him of Our Town author Thornton Wilder, while "Gene" came from the character Eugene Gant in Thomas Wolfe's first novel, Look Homeward, Angel. He also liked "Gene" because as a boy, he was impressed by a distant relative, a World War II bomber navigator who was "handsome and looked great in his leather flight jacket". He later said that he could not see Gene Wilder playing Macbeth, either.

After joining the Actors Studio, he slowly began to be noticed in the off-Broadway scene, thanks to performances in Sir Arnold Wesker's Roots and in Graham Greene's The Complaisant Lover, for which Wilder received the Clarence Derwent Award for "Best Performance by an Actor in a Nonfeatured Role". One of Wilder's early stage credits was playing the socially awkward mental patient Billy Bibbit in the original 1963–64 Broadway adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest opposite star Kirk Douglas. Wilder also had commercial work; in 1967, he voiced a man's stomach in an animated Alka-Seltzer advertisement made by cartoonist R.O. Blechman.

1967–1974: Collaborations with Mel Brooks

In 1963, Wilder was cast in a leading role in Mother Courage and Her Children, a production starring Anne Bancroft, who introduced Wilder to her boyfriend (and later husband) Mel Brooks. A few months later, Brooks mentioned that he was working on a screenplay called Springtime for Hitler, for which he thought Wilder would be perfect in the role of Leo Bloom. Brooks elicited a promise from Wilder that he would check with him before making any long-term commitments. Months went by, and Wilder toured the country with different theater productions, participated in a televised CBS presentation of Death of a Salesman, and was cast for his first role in a film—a minor role in Arthur Penn's 1967 Bonnie and Clyde. After three years of not hearing from Brooks, Wilder was called for a reading with Zero Mostel, who was to be the star of Springtime for Hitler and had approval of his co-star. Mostel approved, and Wilder was cast for his first leading role in a feature film, 1967's The Producers.

The Producers eventually became a cult comedy classic, with Mel Brooks winning an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Wilder being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Nevertheless, Brooks' first directorial effort did not do well at the box office and was not well received by all critics; New York Times critic Renata Adler reviewed the film and described it as "black college humor".

In 1969, Wilder relocated to Paris, accepting a leading role in Bud Yorkin's Start the Revolution Without Me, a comedy that took place during the French Revolution. After shooting ended, Wilder returned to New York, where he read the script for Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx and immediately called Sidney Glazier, who produced The Producers. Both men began searching for the perfect director for the film. Jean Renoir was the first candidate, but he would not be able to do the film for at least a year, so British-Indian director Waris Hussein was hired. With Margot Kidder co-starring with Wilder, it was filmed on location in Dublin, and at the nearby Ardmore Studios, in August and September 1969.