Happy that he and Gila are together again. Two very special people who made me laugh…and cry.
Cloris Leachman (Frau Blucher) is still alive I think.
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Good catch. So that’s three people in the main cast still around from Young Frankenstein (Terry Garr, Gene Hackaman and Cloris Leachman).
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The same idiot didn’t know the title of Thomas Wolfe’s great novel, Look Homeward, Angel.
The story has it as Look Back, Homeward Angel.
This story is as poorly written and sourced as the AP smear of the Clinton Foundation.
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My husband and I will be doing likewise. It’s been awhile since we watched Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles. I think our ten-year-old grandson would love to see them, too. He’s just the right age for the Frau Blucher and the campfire-beans scenes. Very sad to hear of Wilder’s passing.
This is a documentary about Mel Brooks – but of course, Gene Wilder is significantly featured. It has that great scene from The Producers in which Wilder has an episode of hysteria.
Oh, this makes me so sad! I had no idea he was 83 – he was one of those people who seemed perpetually young.
Didn’t know he was suffering from Alzheimer’s, either. Damn.
Thanks for all the laughs, Gene – you were one of the great ones.
Not just a good actor, but a good human being. He sure deserves a better photo than the one paired with this article.
No! That’s Franken-STEIN!
There is an Alzheimer’s epidemic coming very soon. Unless one has money, the standard of care is very poor. It would be nice if Congress stopped wasting money on endless, futile wars and committed those billions to finding a cure for this devastating disease.
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Yes, Young Frankenstein is one of his finest roles, and which he conceived, wrote himself, and partly cast. It really shows the breadth of his talent. It is also one of Mel Brooks best movies, for which he can thank Wilder - the only one that can perhaps be described as “carefully restrained”.
The Producers is of course legendary, and I will say nothing more here.
Willy Wonka is a brilliant performance, with Wilder as a wonderfully menacing hero. Children’s movies need more menacing heroes.
He is great in Blazing Saddles but, coming out the same year as Young Frankenstein, I think it shows up as much the inferior movie in comparison. The comedy is typically Brooksian broad, kitchen-sink silliness, but its cleverness seems much less clever 40 years later, but Young Frankenstein has not lost a single bit of its brilliance.
And let us not forget his appealing, sensitive performance in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), where he makes a convincing romantic entanglement - with a sheep. How many actors could pull that off?
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I had a terrific crush on Teri Garr in my younger days…
Yes. ALL of them.
One of my favorites is the relatively little known “The Frisco Kid” a western from 1979. Gene plays a Polish rabbi traveling across America to serve in San Francisco with robber Harrison Ford as his companion. There’s a lot of humor (I enjoyed reading the quotes page at IMDB today), but much warmth and kindness as well.
Bon voyage, Gene! Love your stuff!
I’m right there with you, but for us to put a serious push behind Alzheimers research would require us to admit that mental health care is an actual thing that we should be thinking about and funding. And our country simply isn’t in that place right now.
I personally donate to only two charities. The World Food Program to help with global hunger. The other is the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund. Cancer and heart disease suck, no doubt. But losing one’s mind, to paraphrase the great Dan Quayle, is truly a waste.
My favorite memory of Gene Wilder was on Inside the Actors Studio and Jamey Lipton asked “If you should happen to go to heaven, what would you like God to say to you?”
without missing a beat he said in a squeaky Gilda Radner voice “would you like some tea?”
I will think of him having a cup with Gilda, well done Gene, well done.
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I must admit I did feel a bit verklempt last night. Partly the passing of Gene Wilder. Partly the realization that, at the time of his death, he was 83 - when did THAT happen? Partly Gilda. A great love story there, now not known by many younger than myself. In Hollywood, it is unusual to find persons who can stay in a good relationship. RIP Gene! RIP Gilda! RIP that age of actors and comedians!
Well, of course. Partly because the surprise factor of the great comic moments is now 40 years old. The campfire beans scene? Never saw anything like that before the movie. Ever successful comic movie is so due to the surprise factor, and the greatness of the movie is diminished considerably the second time around. Comedy IS surprise.
I remember the joke that, as a 14 year old, I almost died from laughing at:
Q: Why do ducks have flat feet?
A: From stomping out forest fires!
Q: Why do elephants have flat feet?
A: From stomping out burning ducks!
The comic power of that joke is somehow diminished. Possibly because I, as an adult, know that ducks only fight city fires.
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Your observation is valid, regarding Blazing Saddles (I recently had the same experience with Airplane, much less funny now that the gags have been recycled 100 times). But only some comedy relies on surprise. Young Frankenstein is as funny now, on the 20th viewing, as in the first.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is another example of a comedy that never grows old. Ditto Dr. Strangelove.
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