Pure Imagination: Gene Wilder, 1933-2016

A creature of the 1970s, like some neurotic human Muppet, Gene Wilder was a beautiful freak who cannot easily be compared to any other performer. He himself said that he was inspired by Danny Kaye and Sid Caesar, and as a boy he wanted to make his mother laugh because she was often ill and he wanted her to be happy. Wilder was born Jerome Silberman, and when he was sent to a military school as a teenager the other kids would beat him up and yell anti-Semitic taunts at him.
He saw Lee J. Cobb in