Some people should get a special dispensation from on high to live forever on earth – well, almost forever – and actor-comedian Gene Wilder should have been one of them.
Sometimes someone dies and you say to yourself, “Impossible. That can’t be. That just can’t be.” I felt that way when Robin Williams died. Still do. And that’s how I felt when I heard the news Gene Wilder died last week.
The first time I saw Wilder was in his debut role in the 1967 masterpiece, Bonnie and Clyde.
That film is a perfect movie, among the top 25 greatest American movies, in my opinion. It was incredibly well written, expertly edited by Dede Allen, brilliantly acted, flawlessly directed by Arthur Penn and stunningly filmed in that muted, dusty, nostalgic color palette. Bonnie and Clyde was a miracle of seamless ensemble acting, and Gene Wilder was a perfect gem among the actors, like part of the setting in a diamond ring.
Wilder played a nerd of an undertaker named Eugene Grizzard who, with his girlfriend, Velma, gets kidnapped by Bonnie, Clyde, his brother Buck and wife Blanche while they are stealing Eugene’s car. Squeezed rudely into the back seat, Eugene and Velma, nervous as caged chickens, start to warm up to this batch of charming and funny bank robbers.
“I’m originally from Wisconsin, where the cheese comes from,” Eugene tells the robbers. That line from any other actor would be so-so; coming from Wilder’s voice, quavering with an adenoidal pitch, it’s hilarious.
At one point, someone asks Velma how old she is. She blurts out “33,” and we the viewers can read Wilder’s thoughts in a lingering expressive silent close-up. We see him thinking; we can read his mind: “She’s that old? I thought she was in her 20s. Oh, my, oh, my!” It’s wordless wonderful acting.
And there is the scene in which Velma is told to drive the car, and Eugene, who is getting nervous about the robbers, says with wheezy hysteria while clenching his fists, “Step on it, Velma. Step on it!”
Later, the desperadoes ask Eugene what he does for a living. When he says, “I’m an undertaker,” the death-dodging robbers flinch and wilt in grim silence. And then Bonnie, sensing this undertaker is an omen of disaster, angrily orders him and Velma out of the car.
The Wilder sequence of scenes in Bonnie and Clyde is a comic tour de force. Unforgettable.
The duo of Wilder and director-writer-actor Mel Brooks was the oddball marriage made in comedy heaven. Together, they created three of the funniest movies in history: The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.
I vividly remember seeing Blazing Saddles in 1974 at Cinema Arts Theater in St. Cloud. It was a zany, over-the-top, often silly movie. A masterpiece it wasn’t. But who cares? It was funny. I laughed so hard my ribs were sore the next day. Wilder as the Waco Kid was right there, front and center, in some of its funniest scenes. John Wayne had been offered the role and turned it down. Then, Gig Young (born and raised in St. Cloud) got the part, but in his first scene, he collapsed, apparently the result of severe alcohol withdrawal. Finally, happy outcome, Wilder got the role.
Some of the most hilarious scenes are verbal exchanges in the jailhouse between the Waco Kid and Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little).
“What’s your name?” the sheriff asks.
The Kid answers in a dreamy slow drawl: “Well (pause) . . . my name is Tim (long pause) . . . but most people call me (long pause, then voice filled with a lifetime of disappointment) . . . Jim.”
It was one of those lines of dialogue just made for Wilder’s voice and for his flawless comedic timing.
Wilder should have won a Best Actor Oscar for his role in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which rivals The Wizard of Oz as a classic fantasy comedy chock full of fun for all ages. There are shades of darkness in that film that Wilder brilliantly evokes, along with the comedy.
Peter Ostrum, the actor who played Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka, had this to say after Wilders’s passing:
“It’s kind of like losing a parent. You know it’s going to happen, but it’s still a shock . . . Gene is gone and there will never be anyone like him again.”
Thanks, Gene Wilder, for half a century of laughter.
