I rarely have the opportunity to call any actor sweet, but I think that term certainly applies to the beloved Gene Wilder, who passed away in 2016. It’s remarkable how a gentle man like Wilder survived and prospered in the cut-throat world of film acting but survive he did in an esteemed film career that lasted nearly four decades.
Wilder was one of those rare actors nominated at the Academy Awards for both acting (Best Supporting Actor for 1967’s “The Producers”) and writing (for co-scripting 1974’s “Young Frankenstein,” in which he also starred). Wilder was also nominated for two Best Actor Golden Globe Awards (for 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and 1976’s “Silver Streak”) and won an Emmy in his final on-screen work in 2003 for his guest performance on “Will and Grace.”
So let’s raise a glass of something wild to toast and remember the great Wilder. Tour our photo gallery featuring his 12 greatest film performances, ranked worst to best. Our list includes the movies mentioned in this article, plus his ongoing work with Mel Brooks such as “Blazing Saddles,” plus “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Stir Crazy” and more.
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12. THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES’ SMARTER BROTHER (1975)
Image Credit: John Jay/Jouer Prods/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Writer/Director: Gene Wilder. Starring Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise.
No, we’re not talking about Mycroft Holmes here. “The “Smarter Brother” is actually Sherlock’s other unknown sibling Sigerson (Wilder), who has been working in the shadow of the famous Sherlock for years. When he finally gets a case, it’s a big one — investigating the theft of an important letter from Queen Victoria — but things don’t go exactly the way his brother Sherlock would handle them. “Smarter Brother” was Wilder’s first gig in the director’s chair, and it’s clear that he’s learned a lot from his mentor, Mel Brooks. To further his comfort zone, he’s cast several Brooks alumni here, including Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman from “Young Frankenstein” and Dom DeLuise from “Blazing Saddles.” It’s not a Brooks-level film quality-wise, but “Smarter Brother” marks a creditable directing debut for Wilder.
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11. THE WOMAN IN RED (1984)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Orion Pictures Writer/Director: Gene Wilder. Starring Gene Wilder, Charles Grodin, Gilda Radner, Kelly LeBrock, Joseph Bologna, Judith Ivey.
Female-crazy ad man Teddy Pierce (Wilder) becomes obsessed with a beautiful woman (Kelly LeBrock) in a red dress whose garment blows upward while standing atop a grate, echoing the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe. He finally tracks down the mysterious woman’s phone number but misdials, reaching instead Ms. Milner (Gilda Radner) who is taken with the sound of Teddy’s voice. While he is flattered by Ms. Milner’s interest, Teddy still pursues the woman in red but regrets his quest when her airline pilot husband comes home, quickly dousing his fiery desire for her. The film’s memorable song, “I Just Called To Say I Love You,” won an Oscar for Stevie Wonder.
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10. THE FRISCO KID (1979)
Image Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock Director: Robert Aldrich. Writers: Michael Elias, Frank Shaw. Starring Gene Wilder, Harrison Ford, Ramon Bieri, Val Bisoglio, George DiCenzo.
Five years after his triumph in “Blazing Saddles,” Wilder returned to the Old West as Avram Belinski, a Polish rabbi who finished at the bottom of his yeshiva class and comes to America to deliver a Torah to a synagogue in San Francisco. It seems that Avram is a novice traveler and is beset with obstacles until he is befriended by bank robber Tommy Lillard (Harrison Ford). Some obstacles are of his own making — refusing to ride on the Shabbat since he is an Orthodox Jew, for example — all the while with a posse nipping at his heels. OK, “The Frisco Kid” ain’t “Blazing Saddles,” but for what it’s worth, it’s an amiable entertainment highlighted by a surprisingly complex performance by Wilder.
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9. START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME (1970)
Image Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock Director: Bud Yorkin. Writers: Lawrence J. Cohen, Fred Freeman. Starring Gene Wilder, Donald Sutherland, Hugh Griffith, Billie Whitlaw.
Wilder and Donald Sutherland shine in Bud Yorkin’s period comedy as two sets of identical twins during the era of the French Revolution who are switched at birth — the twins born to a noble family are given to a peasant couple and vice versa. The newly-noble twins grow up in luxury, enjoying all of the fruits of the switcheroo, that is until the revolution is about to happen and the pair suddenly have to face the guillotine. A large part of why the film works as a comedy is Yorkin’s approach in treating his farce as a deadly serious period piece, which place Wilder and Sutherland’s juvenile antics in starker contrast. And despite their disparate acting styles, Wilder and Sutherland make a great team together.
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8. EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX * BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK (1972)
Image Credit: United Artists/Rollins-Joffe/Kobal/Shutterstock Writer/Director: Woody Allen. Starring Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Gene Wilder, John Carradine, Lou Jacobi, Titos Vandis.
In probably what’s the most notorious episode of Woody Allen’s film adaptation of Dr. David Ruben’s non-fiction best-seller that answers the questions that many Americans have about sex, Wilder stars as physician Dr. Ross who meets new Armenian patient Stavros Milos (Titos Vandis) who confesses that he has fallen in love with his sheep Daisy. It takes Dr. Ross a full 25 seconds to react and say “Oh, I see.” But then Dr. Ross meets Daisy and, from there, all bets are off. Yes, there are seven short segments to the film which may not be enough for some actors to make an impression, but one look at Wilder looking amorously at a sheep, and you’ll never forget it.
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7. STIR CRAZY (1980)
Image Credit: Columbia/Kobal/Shutterstock Director: Sidney Poitier. Writer: Bruce Jay Friedman. Starring Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, JoBeth Williams, Georg Stanford Brown, Joel Brooks.
Sidney Poitier became the first black director to helm a film that grossed over $100 million with this hit prison comedy about a film writer (Wilder) and an actor (Richard Pryor) who, traveling together to Hollywood after they are both fired, stop in Arizona to make some cash dressed as woodpeckers in a promotion for a local bank. At the same time, the bank is robbed and the pair are fingered for the theft and sent to prison. Things don’t go well for them there. Although Pryor and Wilder had previously connected on “Blazing Saddles” (which Pryor co-wrote and won the WGA Award for the year’s best screenplay), I don’t recall that any film pundit thought that these two would click together, but once “Silver Steak” came along, it was clear that they were box office magic. “Stir Crazy” only solidified that view.
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6. BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Director: Arthur Penn. Writers: David Newman, Robert Benton. Starring Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Gene Wilder, Evans Evans.
Wilder made his screen debut in Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” and what a debut! As undertaker Eugene Grizzard, he and his girlfriend Velma Davis (Evans Evans) are abducted by Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde (Warren Beatty). The gangster pair and their gang get on with their abductees like gangbusters in the car, but when Bonnie learns that Eugene is an undertaker, the suspicious mobster orders them out of the vehicle. Wilder’s magic moment occurs when Velma is asked her age, and when she replies with a number of years that are much higher than she ever revealed to Eugene, he reacts with a stare to the camera that seems to last forever and is just devastating.
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5. SILVER STREAK (1976)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock Director: Arthur Hiller. Writer: Colin Higgins. Starring Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Jill Clayburgh, Ned Beatty, Clifton James, Patrick McGoohan.
The first pairing of Wilder and Richard Pryor unexpectedly hit pay dirt in this sly combination of comedy laid onto a disaster film. Book editor George Caldwell (Wilder) decides to take a train, the Silver Streak, from Los Angeles to Chicago to attend his sister’s wedding. On board he meets Hilly Burns (Jill Clayburgh) but finds himself quickly tied into the murder of Hilly’s boss. Falsely accused, he tries to escape but winds up in the back of a patrol car with thief Grover T. Muldoon (Pryor) and together they team up to try to establish George’s innocence. The pairing of Wilder and Pryor was met with a collective “Wha?” from the film community at the time, but the teaming led to the even more successful “Stir Crazy” and 1989’s “See No Evil, Hear No Evil.”
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4. WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971)
Image Credit: Wolper/Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock Director: Mel Stuart. Writer: Roald Dahl, based on his novel. Starring Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum.
Mel Stuart’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” based on the Roald Dahl novel, was originally positioned as a children’s film, but over the years, it has attracted a huge following among adults as well. Wilder’s performance in the title role has become one of his most beloved among audiences around the world. The film was not a huge hit in its initial release (grossing only $4 million on a $3 million budget), but with the emergence of home video, “Willy Wonka” has become a family classic. The eventual success of the Wilder film led to a 2005 Tim Burton remake with Johnny Depp, as well as a 2017 Broadway musical. For his performance as Willy, Wilder earned his first Best Actor nomination for a Golden Globe Award.
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3. BLAZING SADDLES (1974)
Image Credit: Bros/Crossbow Prods/Kobal/Shutterstock irector: Mel Brooks. Writers: Andrew Bergman, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Andrew Steinberg, Al Uger. Starring Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens.
The granddaddy of Old West comedies, Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles” is a film that never could have been made today. To say that it is politically incorrect is one of film’s great understatements — the film’s attitude toward women, its liberal use of the “n-word” and its tweaking of gay stereotypes in the “French Mistake” finale would likely cause contemporary studio chiefs’ heads to explode. Nonetheless, “Blazing Saddles” is a comedy classic in no small part to the performances of Cleavon Little (who replaced Pryor whom the studio believed was uninsurable) as Sheriff Bart and Wilder as the laid-back Waco Kid. Their partnership gave heart to the torrent of Brooks gags and offered audiences a bit of emotional satisfaction by the film’s conclusion.
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2. THE PRODUCERS (1967)
Image Credit: Embassy/Kobal/Shutterstock Writer/Director: Mel Brooks. Starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Dick Shawn, Estelle Winwood, Christopher Hewitt.
The backdrop behind this art-house hit is almost legendary in the business, with the film centering on two indelible characters — shady Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and his timid accountant Leo Bloom (Wilder) who concoct a scheme to raise money for a musical (“Springtime for Hitler”) that is so abhorrent that it’s guaranteed to close on opening night, allowing them to make off with the investment money. The only problem is that the show is so rotten that it becomes a huge camp hit, and the pair are ruined. Brooks scored a surprise Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for the film, but its chances to win seemed slim against such legendary films as John Cassavetes’ “Faces,” Gillo Pontecorvo’s “The Battle of Algiers” and Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” To the astonishment of presenter Frank Sinatra and the audience, Brooks actually won for his brilliant script, and as a result of the Oscar, his career zoomed and provided him enough clout to make “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein.” And on top of that, Wilder earned his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
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1. YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974)
Image Credit: Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock Director: Mel Brooks. Writers: Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks. Starring Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Teri Garr, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman.
In this acclaimed black-and-white spoof of 1930’s horror films (which was released the same year as as “Blazing Saddles”), Wilder scored his second Oscar nomination, this time for co-writing the film’s
celebrated script. Wilder stars as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (pronounced “Frankensteen” as he is quick to tell you), a lecturing physician in an American medical school, who travels to Transylvania because he learns that he has inherited his family’s castle. Once there, Victor falls into the same pattern as did his ancestors, trying to reanimate a monster (Peter Boyle), much to the consternation of the torches-and-pitchfork wielding townspeople. In many critical quarters, “Young Frankenstein” is considered Brooks’ most accomplished filmmaking achievement, and Wilder’s performance and script were key parts of that acclaim.
