Gene Wilder

Comic madness is wonderful: to watch a character on television or in the movies blow his stack or flip his lid is a kind of safety valve for the stresses of everyday living. But it’s the people who seem accidentally funny who always get us the most, and that was Gene Wilder’s gift.

Wilder, who died on Aug. 29 at age 83, hadn’t had a major film or television role in more than 20 years. But the work he did in the 1970s has not only endured with the people who saw it the first time around, but also resonates with younger audiences who are seeing it for the first time. Even in his nuttiest roles, Wilder always came off, first and foremost, as serene and sweet-natured, practically glowing with congeniality. But you could sense a subterranean stream of anxiety rushing quietly beneath. His greatness lay in the fact that he acted as if he had no clue it was there. And so when Wilder as Dr. Frankenstein–in Mel Brooks’ 1974 movie Young Frankenstein–begs the gods to give his creation life, his loopy exhortations are like a hymn to craziness. Even at his most comically unhinged, he was beatific.

You could see that quality in role after role, particularly in the films Wilder made with Brooks: as the accidentally successful showbiz accountant Leo Bloom in The Producers (1968), Wilder treated his character’s neuroses as a precious thing, a hothouse flower to be carefully tended and nurtured. As the liquor-guzzling Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles (1974), he radiated an aura of dreamy regret, even if he seemed ready to blow.

But Wilder, as funny as he could be, was never too obvious. In his starring role in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), he was the perfect steward of author Roald Dahl’s tricky mood and tone. His Willy Wonka was gentle and generous but also vaguely malevolent, though only if you were a child bent on misbehaving. And in his marvelous sequence in Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972), Wilder plays a doctor who attempts to treat a shepherd who has fallen tragically in love with his sheep, Daisy. Wilder’s Dr. Ross thinks the shepherd is nuts. Then he meets the sheep. And as he gazes at her woolly face, the sudden tender lovesickness that clouds his eyes is both hilarious and weirdly touching. Even playing a guy in love with a barnyard animal, Wilder could open a small window into the idea of human fragility, reminding us that we can all have feelings that surprise us. The moment is silly, wonderful, unsettling. That’s what a great comic actor can do.

–STEPHANIE ZACHAREK