Gene Wilder was so incredibly talented. I am thoroughly convinced he was the only person able to perform Willy Wonka. He was able to catch that sliver of dark humor that would attract a G rated audience.
August 30, 2016
By Peter Travers
Gene Wilder made it impossible not to laugh. (click here) Sometimes it's as simple as that — a gift that keeps on giving. So even as we mourn Wilder's death at 83 from complications of Alzheimer's disease, we remember that talent he had for reducing us to helpless giggles.
How did he do it, this bullied Jewish kid, Jerome Silberman, from Milwaukee, the son of a Russian immigrant father and a mother who thought military school was a good idea for her sensitive son? In the army, he served as an aide in a psychiatric unit, putting him in close contact with the madness he would later turn into comic gold....
