How the women in Gene Wilder’s life (a sick mum and four wives) shaped his career
Gene Wilder was born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee, on June 11, 1933. His father was a Russian immigrant who made beer bottles and chocolates.
Today in History
Don't miss out on the headlines from Today in History. Followed categories will be added to My News.
THE late great comic actor Gene Wilder, who has died, made us laugh, but he also often won pathos for the sometimes slightly sad look in his pale blue eyes. It was a sadness that gave his characters emotional depth no matter how wacky, neurotic or bizarre they were.
Some of the sadness came from his personal life. When he was young, his mother’s illness left him feeling guilty about being happy. Marital breakdowns and the death of his wife Gilda Radner in 1989 also seemed to imbue him with a subtle despair. But while there was sadness, women were also a driving force in his life and career.
Wilder was born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on June 11, 1933. His father William was a Russian immigrant who opened a business making small beer bottles and chocolates.
His mother Jeanne had a heart attack when Wilder was only eight. Her doctor told him that if he argued with his mother she might die, so he should “try to make her laugh”.
He put on funny accents and sang Danny Kaye songs, doing what the doctor ordered. Making other people laugh at school performances improved his popularity. He decided he wanted to be an actor and at 15 had his first roles with community theatre company the Milwaukee Players.
At 16, his sister Corinne, also an aspiring actor, got Wilder a spot in a theatre company run by Australian actor Reginald Goode that gave actors a chance to perform in front of a paying audience for a $90 fee for room and board. Because they desperately needed an extra actor, Goode waived Wilder’s fee.
Wilder graduated from high school in 1951, studied at the University of Iowa and then at the Old Vic theatre school in Bristol, in the UK, before returning to the US in 1955 to study acting at the HB Studio in New York. Study was interrupted when he was drafted in 1956, but after two years in the army he returned to HB.
While there, he got his first professional acting jobs, taking the stage name Gene Wilder. In 1960 he met and married English acting student Mary Mercier. Both were often on the road with acting jobs and their marriage soon broke down. They divorced in 1965. By then he had met another woman who would change his life.
When performing in the play Mother Courage and Her Children in 1963 he met Anne Bancroft, who introduced him to her then boyfriend Mel Brooks, who thought Wilder would be perfect for a role in a movie he was writing. Wilder didn’t hear anything for three years but in 1967 Brooks cast him in The Producers, playing neurotic accountant Leo Bloom. Released in 1968, it earned him an Oscar nomination.
His career was taking off when he met Mary Joan Schultz, a friend of his sister, who had a daughter, Katherine, from a previous marriage. He married Mary in 1967 and adopted Katherine. He separated from Joan seven years later when she thought he was having an affair with his Young Frankenstein co-star Madeline Kahn. He was actually seeing Teri Garr (from the same film) and they began dating after his divorce in 1974.
In 1981 he met Gilda Radner while they were working on the film Hanky Panky and they became inseparable friends. At the time Radner was married to guitarist G.E. Smith (from Hall & Oates) but the marriage was foundering. When she divorced Smith in 1982, she renewed her friendship with Wilder.
They married in 1984 and tried to have children but Radner miscarried. Then in 1985 while making the film Haunted Honeymoon, Radner began experiencing fatigue and pains in her upper legs. The problem was not properly diagnosed until 1986 when a biopsy revealed she had ovarian cancer.
The cancer went into remission but it later returned and she died in 1989. Wilder took time off making films to care for her but she encouraged him to do the film See No Evil Hear No Evil in which he played a deaf man. While making the film he met hearing specialist Karen Boyer and they became good friends. After Radner’s death he married Boyer in 1991. They were happily married until his death.
He never had any of his own children, and lost touch with his adopted daughter, but his nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman was like a son to him and as Willy Wonka he brought joy to millions of children.
Originally published as How the women in Gene Wilder’s life (a sick mum and four wives) shaped his career
Gallipoli to D-Day: Aussie’s epic war story
George Dixon went ashore with the original Anzacs at Gallipoli, aged just 15 – and was shot. Three decades later he was fighting again, at history’s other most famous wartime landing.
Love story behind escape tragedy
An Australian murdered in the infamous wartime Great Escape died after swapping places with another man. And his story is still unfolding, 80 years on.