Blogdayafternoon: Where the Wilder Things Are

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"i make my wife laugh ...once or twice,

nothing special.

But when people see me in a movie

they stop and say things to me in the street, but,

I don´t thinkl i´m THAT funny"

-GENE WILDER

Very few actors and performers have both , the TIMELESS quality AND the AGELESS quality . That their face can surpass a time ,an ERA any frame. As Russell Crowe or Charlton Heston , Brad Pitt or Lawrence Olivier, Gene Wilder was that kind of an actor. He could portay all, a mad scientist, a comedy genius, a chocolate factory manager.

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Jerome Silberman, on June 11, 1933, the son of William J. and Jeanne (Baer) Silberman. His father was a Russian Jewish immigrant, as were his maternal grandparents. He adopted "Gene Wilder" for his professional name at the age of 26, later explaining, "I had always liked Gene because of Thomas Wolfe's character Eugene Gant in Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River. And I was always a great admirer of Thornton Wilder."Wilder first became interested in acting at age 8, when his mother was diagnosed with rheumatic fever and the doctor told him to "try and make her laugh."

"When i was 6 years old my mom had a heart attack, the doctor told us to make her laugh, not to get her excited, YOU MIGHT KILL HER..... he was not very Psychologically orientated."

-GENE WILDER

i dont know what insanity happens in the mind of comedic actors but whatever it was, i try to make her laugh "
-GENE WILDER

"Iwas sitting in my apartment and on television i was seeing one of the Frankenstein pictures ...and started writing, two pages about...what i wanted to see and i wanted to make
a happy ending"

-Gene Wilder

In 1971, Wilder auditioned to play Willy Wonka in Mel Stuart's film adaptation of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. After reciting some lines, Wilder prepared to leave the auditioning station, but Mel Stuart (who was a Gene Wilder fan) ran after him, offering the role to Wilder immediately. Wilder was initially hesitant when he learned more on the role, but finally accepted the role under one condition:

When I make my first entrance, I'd like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I'm walking on and stands straight up, by itself... but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause.

When Stuart asked why, Wilder replied, "Because from that time on, no one will know if I'm lying or telling the truth." The scene appeared in the movie much as Wilder described it.

Harrison Ford and Gene Wilder

on the set of The Frisco Kid.

"I always thought that everything i was doing on acting came from my mother, but what i´m like on screen, the kind of characters i play was 90% my father.

He was the most naiive man, a real victim in life, the most innocent person that i ´ve ever met i think that is what the audience has responded to when they see me in a crazy situation ."

-Gene Wilder

"We make jokes about that, with MEL, it was not just funny... it had to be MAKE PEE in your PANTS FUNNY "
-GENE WILDER

For some reason when you pair him [Pryor] with Gene Wilder, they make a particular kind of magic together. And, together, they are probably the funniest pair that's ever been on screen.

- Sidney Poiter

"I was in analysis and my analyst said ...

why do you take the name GENE?

then she asked me

what was your mothers name?

...i said..."JEANNE"

she only said ...That´s interesting."

-Gene Wilder

As his fame grew so did his loneliness a simple mind in a reckless enviroment as hollywood. Wilder´s only desire was making good films. Until he retired from all of that "glamour" and "fakeness". In his own words he was dissapointed from the quality of the content. He was receiving scripts he started to read and eventually awful scripts.