aka Gene Wilder.
Sad news about the death at 83 of Gene Wilder who stared in some of the greatest comedy films of all time.
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen it, I know the lines pretty much back to front but it doesn’t matter whenever “Young Frankenstein” is on I’ll watch it or record it.
When ever I hear the word sedative I always think “sedagive” and if someone is called Abby I always figure their second name is Normal…
…and then when things aren’t going so well I figure “it could be worse”…
Great scenes in a truly great movie. Wilder moving between calm and considered to that wild eye mania.
What’s probably forgotten as it’s always seen as a “Mel Brooks film” is that Wilder came up with the idea and wrote the screenplay with Brooks.
This after they’d just done another comedy great. For what “Young Frankenstein” did for horror comedy “Blazing Saddles” did for shit kicker comedy. Funny though Wilder always kind of comes lower down the pecking order in “Saddles”. Below Cleavon Little’s sheriff, below Mongo, Slim Pickens, “it’s Hedley” Lamarr and Lyle’s escapades with beans.
Before both of these though he was in a couple of box office flops, “The Producers” and “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory”. Amazing to think that it took a while for them to reach an audience. The latter was pretty much used first up in all the news tributes to Wilder I’ve seen yesterday and today. The former a classic piece of Brooks, wildly outrageous. Though not as much as “Saddles” which you are amazed is ever on TV these days.
Then there was the two hits with Richard Pryor, “Silver Streak” and “Stir Crazy”. They only appeared in four films together but somehow you think of them as a classic double act. The last two of the four weren’t that crash hot, strangely the last being the last film Wilder did and the last one Pryor started in.
Yes there was a few misses in there, Kelly LeBrock doesn’t make up for “The Woman in Red” but those hits were golden, pure 24 carat classics.