Faces of Milwaukee: Gene Wilder

This exuberant portrait of Gene Wilder perfectly captures the energy he brought to many roles across stage and screens, both large and small. Known for intense and sometimes frantic characters, Wilder dazzled both in serious and comedic roles. Wilder was born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee in 1933. He fell in love with acting at the age of 11 after seeing his older sister perform and eventually performed for the first time in a paid performance at 15. Feeling that Wisconsin would not offer him sufficient opportunities, his parents sent him to a military school in Hollywood, but Wilder was bullied for being the only Jewish boy there. He returned home after a short time and continued to perform around Milwaukee.

After studying theater at the University of Iowa and a stint in the Army, he began performing on stage on the East Coast where he received numerous accolades in serious roles. In 1963 he was cast alongside Anne Bancroft who was dating Mel Brooks at the time and who introduced them, beginning a legendary partnership. The pair would go on to create iconic films including Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and The Producers. Wilder is likely best known for his role as Willy Wonka in the 1971 adaptation. Although purists complain it strays substantially from the source material, Wilder's performance as the brilliantly unhinged Wonka carries the film. A few bits of movie trivia: he came up with the famous "limp turned somersault" scene and refused to do the movie if it wasn't included. The other actors' terrified reactions to Wilder's disturbing tunnel of terror rant were genuine as they weren't warned about his performance ahead of time. He was so convincing they thought he might actually be going crazy!

In 1975, Wilder joined with Richard Pryor in a series of films beginning with Silver Streak, the first successful interracial comedy film. They would go on to do several more films including Stir Crazy in 1980, considered to be one of the best movie comedies ever made. He met wife Gilda Radner in 1981 while filming Hanky Panky with Sidney Poitier and they married in 1984. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer which sadly lead to her death in 1989. Wilder has since been a strong champion of cancer awareness and treatment through the Gilda Radner Ovarian Cancer Detection Center, and a support and outreach group called Gilda's Club. After a number of film and television appearances throughout the 90s and early 2000s, he retired from acting to write, producing a memoir and several works of fiction. He died of complications from Alzheimers in 2016, a diagnosis he kept secret from the world for the three preceding years. A performer until the very end, he did this was not out of vanity but to be sure that children seeing him as Willy Wonka didn't have to learn the fate of the man who brought him to life.