Maria Puente

USA TODAY

Gene Wilder, the rubbery-faced star of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and comedy classics from Mel Brooks, has died, according to his nephew and his agent. He was 83.

Wilder died Monday at his home in Stamford, Conn.,of complications from Alzheimer's disease, according to a statement from his nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, issued via Wilder's agent, David Shapira, to USA TODAY.

"It is with indescribable sadness and blues, but with spiritual gratitude for the life lived that I announce the passing of husband, parent, and universal artist Gene Wilder, at his home in Stamford, Conn.," Walker-Pearlman said in the statement.

"It is almost unbearable for us to contemplate our life without him. The cause was complications from Alzheimers Disease with which he co-existed for the last three years. The choice to keep this private was his choice, in talking with us and making a decision as a family."

Wilder was unforgettably funny in such classics as The Producers, Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, his frizzy hair enveloping his head like a halo, his voice rising to a shriek when the role called for panic. And his roles usually did.

He was a specialist at playing hyperventilating characters caught up in schemes that only a madman such as Brooks could devise, whether reviving a monster in Young Frankenstein or bilking Broadway in The Producers.

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But he also knew how to keep it cool as the boozy gunslinger in Blazing Saddles and as the charming candy man in the children's favorite Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

"Gene Wilder, one of the truly great talents of our time is gone. He blessed every film we did together with his special magic. And he blessed my life with his friendship. He will be so missed," Brooks said in a tweet.

Wilder was nominated twice for Oscars, for best supporting actor in The Producers in 1969, and for best adapted screenplay with Brooks for Blazing Saddles in 1975. He also won an Emmy in 2003 for outstanding actor in a guest role for Will & Grace.

He was much admired by other comedians, such as Richard Pryor, a close friend and co-star on four films. The unlikely comic duo — he white and uptight, Pryor black and relaxed — were especially memorable when Pryor taught Wilder how to "act black" as they tried to avoid police in Silver Streak.

Gene Wilder's best movie lines

Wilder also was unforgettable in The Producers as drab accountant Leo Bloom, who hilariously discovers his inner greed when he joins with inept Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) to produce a show intended to flop — Springtime For Hitler — while they flee the country with the money raised for the show's production. Only it doesn't work out that way.

Wilder was known tragedy in his life, such as the early death of his third wife, actress and Saturday Night Live comedian Gilda Radner, with whom he starred in three films. After she succumbed to ovarian cancer in 1989, he began promoting cancer awareness and treatment, helping to found the Gilda Radner Ovarian Cancer Detection Center in Los Angeles, and Gilda's Club, a support group to raise cancer awareness.

Wilder was born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee on June 11, 1933. His father was a Russian emigre, his mother was of Polish descent. When he was 6, his mother suffered a heart attack that left her a semi-invalid. He soon began improvising comedy skits to entertain her, the first indication of his future career.

In 1961, Wilder became a member of Lee Strasberg's prestigious Actor's Studio in Manhattan, and made both his off-Broadway and Broadway debuts.

Family: Wilder passed to 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'

He invented his stage name, Gene Wilder, by taking the first name from a character in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel. The last name came from playwright Thornton Wilder.

A key break for Wilder came when he co-starred with Anne Bancroft in Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage, and she introduced him to Brooks, her future husband, in 1963.

Appreciation: Gene Wilder melded heart, humor in a multitude of roles

His nephew's statement said that towards the end of his life, Wilder continued to enjoy art, music, and kissing his "leading lady" of the last 25 years, his fourth wife, Karen Boyer, who survives him.

"He danced down a church aisle at a wedding as parent of the groom and ring bearer, held countless afternoon movie western marathons and delighted in the company of beloved ones," the statement continued. "He passed holding our hands with the same tenderness and love he exhibited as long as I can remember."

One of his favorites, Ella Fitzgerald, was playing on the music speakers as he was dying, the statement said. "She was singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow as he was taken away," the statement concluded.



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Shortly after Radner died, Wilder was interviewed by Gannett News Service and talked about what acting meant to him. He said it was an artistic process but also a form of self-revelation. He said his analyst once said that acting was "better than running naked in Central Park.

"They're both exposing yourself. But for one, you get arrested; for the other, you get paid. I do have this need to expose myself, to reveal some terrible — or wonderful — secret I can't wait to show the world," he said.

"I can remember when I was 11. My sister was 15 and she did a drama recital. I sat in the audience and saw everyone watching her in silence. You could have heard a pin drop. I thought, `That must be the most powerful feeling on earth.' And it was."





Contributing: The Associated Press