Arts & Life

Dreamer of dreams sleeps forever.

It was just Sunday night that I was quoting “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” reminiscing about the imaginative movie, but I would have never imagined it would be the last time I thought of Gene Wilder while he was still alive.

To find out less than 24 hours later that Wilder, one of my favorite classic comedy actors, had passed away was hard — nay, it was soul-crushing.

He died early Monday morning at the age of 83 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, according to his nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman. It’s devastating to think of the man who so perfectly portrayed mentally unstable characters was struggling with a slipping mind toward the end.

It also pains me to know that there will be readers who are unfamiliar with the name Gene Wilder, and that others will only know him as Willy Wonka.

I am the youngest member of my family, and one benefit I found in having older parents was being exposed early to the classic humor in movies from the ‘70s.

My fascination with Wilder began when I was exposed to his Mel Brooks films, “Young Frankenstein” and “Blazing Saddles,” as well as experiencing him in his most coveted role, Willy Wonka.

For other fans of this famous candy man, I think it’s worth noting that there would be no Willy Wonka if it weren’t for Wilder. No one could’ve produced the same character.

He agreed to do the role under one condition – that he could pretend to have a limp when he is first introduced. Yes, the famous somersault scene was Wilder’s doing. He said he had to do it so that from the very beginning you wouldn’t know if he was lying or telling the truth.

Also, in the, “Is it raining? Is it snowing? Is a hurricane a-blowing?” scene when Wonka and his crew of golden ticket winners row through the tunnel, Wilder’s monologue was so believable that several cast members were concerned that he had actually gone crazy from being in the tunnel.

Wilder had a diverse career – we have lost more than just a crazed candy inventor, we also lost the mad Dr. Frankenstein, the drunkest gun in the west and a board book editor on a wild train ride in “Silver Streak.”

He got his start on Broadway, where a cast member introduced him her boyfriend Mel Brooks, a director now known for his popular parody-style films.

Wilder got his first big film break in the screen adaptation of “The Producers,” directed by Brooks.

Brooks continued using Wilder in his films, casting him as the Waco kid in “Blazing Saddles,” a gunslinger with the fastest hands in the world that “crawled into a whiskey bottle” and never left.

They retold the classic tale of Frankenstein with a hilarious Mel Brooks twist in a movie just as quotable as Wonka.

“Young Frankenstein,” (pronounced Fron-ken-steen) was a childhood favorite of mine. Wilder’s Frankenstein, along with the crazy-eyed Marty Feldman as his assistant “eye-gor,” was always a go-to for a good laugh.

One day, my parents sat me down in disapproval of my millennial sense of humor saying, “If you want to watch something funny, you watch this,” and threw me a copy of Silver Streak.

The film is the first of many in which Wilder partners up with comedy juggernaut Richard Pryor. In the movie, Wilder is repeatedly thrown from his train but keeps making it back on to save his new love Jill Clayburgh, recruiting the help of Pryor, “the thief,” along the way.

Wilder and Pryor went on to make three more films together including the hit movie “Stir Crazy,” in which the two men are framed in a bank robbery and thrown into prison together.

Somehow, I’ve never seen “Stir Crazy,” but it will be the first of my long marathon tonight in honor of our fallen hollywood treasure.

We may have lost the man, but his legacy will live on through these classic films forever.

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