{"id":181213,"date":"2016-08-29T18:31:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T23:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/08\/29\/thats-fronkensteen\/"},"modified":"2016-08-29T18:31:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T23:31:00","slug":"thats-fronkensteen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/08\/29\/thats-fronkensteen\/","title":{"rendered":"That&#8217;s Fronkensteen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gene Wilder <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/08\/30\/movies\/gene-wilder-dead.html\">has died at the age of 83<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Gene Wilder, who established himself as one of America\u2019s foremost comic actors with his delightfully neurotic performances in three films directed by Mel Brooks; his eccentric star turn in the family classic \u201cWilly Wonka and the Chocolate Factory\u201d; and his winning chemistry with Richard Pryor in the box-office smash \u201cStir Crazy,\u201d died on Sunday night at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 83.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Eric Weissmann, who was Mr. Wilder\u2019s lawyer for many years, confirmed the death. A nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, said that the cause was complications of Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">He made his movie debut in 1967 in Arthur Penn\u2019s celebrated crime drama, \u201cBonnie and Clyde,\u201d in which he was memorably hysterical as an undertaker kidnapped by the notorious Depression-era bank robbers played by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. He was even more hysterical, and even more memorable, a year later in \u201cThe Producers,\u201d Mr. Brooks\u2019s first film and the basis of his later Broadway hit.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance as the wizardly title character in \u201cWilly Wonka and the Chocolate Factory\u201d (1971). The film was a box-office disappointment, partly because of parental concern that the moral of Roald Dahl\u2019s story \u2014 that greedy, gluttonous children should not go unpunished \u2014 was too dark in the telling. But it went on to gain a devoted following, and Willy Wonka remains one of the roles with which Mr. Wilder is most closely identified.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">His next role was more adult but equally strange: an otherwise normal doctor who falls in love with a sheep named Daisy in a segment of Woody Allen\u2019s \u201cEverything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask,\u201d in 1972. Two years later, he reunited with Mr. Brooks for perhaps the two best-known entries in either man\u2019s filmography.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In \u201cBlazing Saddles,\u201d a raunchy, no-holds-barred spoof of Hollywood westerns, Mr. Wilder had the relatively quiet role of the Waco Kid, a boozy ex-gunfighter who helps an improbable black sheriff (Cleavon Little) save a town from railroad barons and venal politicians. The film\u2019s once-daring humor may have lost some of its edge over the years, but Mr. Wilder\u2019s next Brooks film, \u201cYoung Frankenstein,\u201d has never grown old.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Mel Brooks movies were a part of my adolescence, and Mr. Wilder had a real skill in being both low key and hysterically funny at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gene Wilder has died at the age of 83: Gene Wilder, who established himself as one of America\u2019s foremost comic actors with his delightfully neurotic performances in three films directed by Mel Brooks; his eccentric star turn in the family classic \u201cWilly Wonka and the Chocolate Factory\u201d; and his winning chemistry with Richard Pryor in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[993,994,995],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cinema","category-obituaries","category-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}