The day I got a Golden Ticket to meet the real Willy Wonka....

In 1996 I was sent off to Guidford to meet up with a real Hollywood legend, Willy Wonka himself, the wonderful Gene Wilder.

Here's the edited piece.....

 

 

 Running Wilder.....!

 Gene Wilder, Hollywood star, famous for his many extrovert comedy parts is here in the UK, touring in his first theatre play for thirty years, playing an extrovert comedy star.

  

NIA’s own John Sinclair calls backstage and gets the drop on the 'Waco Kid’....

Joumalists are blasé.

On this particular day however, we were all nervous. There was much over-enthusiastic chattering, much to-ing and fro-ing from the respective toilets, much anxious plastering down of sticking-up hairdos. And it was hot. Durn hot.

Just as nerves were close to frazzle point, he entered.

Gene Wilder. Hollywood comedy superstar, star of 'Blazing Saddles'. 'Young Fronkenstein' 'Stir Crazy’ and others too numerous to mention. And he was here. In the flesh.

Over for a limited season of the latest Neil Simon play, 'Laughter on the 23rd Floor', Gene is playing the central role of Max Prince, all-round entertainer/host of a top-rated l95O's American comedy show.

The play is set in Max’s 23rd floor offices where he and his team of supremely gifted writers struggle to create 90 minutes of quality material every week while also attempting to deal with the increasingly intrusive interference from the network executives. The show is another of Simon's semi-autobiographical pieces as it's based squarely on his own experiences as a writer working on the now-fabled Sid Caesar show.

Wi|der's much bigger than you’d expect.

Over six foot in a hunched shoulders and lived-in sort of way. Along with his trade-mark frizzy blonde hair his most outstanding feature is definitely his eyes. Paul Newman blue. Movie star blue.

 

In repose his face is rather lugubrious, like a blue-eyed bloodhound, endearing and warm, the sort of face you would trust with your car keys while you went for a dip.

Quietly spoken, obviously shy, it’s difficult to reconcile this soft-spoken gentleman with the outspoken 'Professor Fronkenstein' or the blanket-loving 'Bloom' from 'The Producers', and then he smiles, an oddly loopy smile, and you know it's him.

Even though it's thirty years since he last 'tread the boards’, he was tempted back by a combination of Neil Simon's script and Mel Brook's encouragement.

Sitting back in the top floor of Guildford's Yvonne Arnaud theatre he explained why.

'Max Prince is based on Sid Caesar, a hero of mine almost since childhood, and l had wanted to be in a Simon play forever – even though I had once acted in a little vignette of his on television - but I saw nothing in his work for me. Then I was sent this part in this play and l thought, why me?

‘I’m physically nothing like big energetic Sid Caesar, and thought, what could l bring to it, and then Mel Brooks (who had been one of the real show’s writers back then) said to me, 'Gene, you're like the real Sid Caesar, He was shy underneath as well. You could bring heart to it.'

Warmth is something that Wilder seems to project almost naturally, so did he have any problems with the sad, serious side of the play, the man's decline into alcohol and drug addiction?

He shakes his head. 'When l read it, I started laughing - there were tears running down my face, and it was all one liners until page 27, and I thought, that's not me, I don't do gags, then Max enters and it's all emotion. Funny, but funny behaviour, funny thinking, but as Neil Simon says, he doesn't do jokes, he's funny, but he doesn't know why. That, I can play.’

There seems to be an almost Chaplinesque quality to Wilder’s work at times, and he agrees whole-heartedly with this.

'Oh, you're talking about one of the Gods here. Often, when I run up against a problem, I think to myself, 'Hmmm, what would Chaplin do here?’ and that gets me through it.’

Where would he put himself in the comedy pantheon?

'I wouldn’t. I can tell you what I aspire to, but all I can say is, when you’re in trouble, tell the story physically. My old teacher, Lee Strasbourg from the Actor’s Studio in New York always said, ‘okay, the sound is off, no-one can hear you – could they get the gist of the scene or is it all in the words?’

Speaking of which, are there any movies in the Wilder pipeline? He thinks for a minute in that slow and intense way of his before answering.

‘Possibly,’ he mused. ‘I keep getting offered scripts, and when I see one I like and with a director I want to work with, then yes.’

His eyes light up when I produce a paperback version of his ‘Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother’.

As he autographed it I asked if he was considering writing any more screenplays? He had been Oscar-nominated for co-writing Young Frankenstein.

Again he pondered the question, his pale eyebrows arching as he reflected. ‘A screenplay perhaps. If I get an idea, and I’ve the time and the inclination... maybe,’ he smiled.

For an actor so closely associated with Hollywood and the US, it’s a touch surprising that he actually trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Did he intend to go back to his old haunts while touring?

‘I don’t think so. I went back to my old high school and it was so, so small. Everything is darker and smaller than you remember it. I’d rather have my memories. I do love England though; I fell in love with it when I made ‘Sherlock Holmes’ here nearly twenty years ago.’

Are there any differences between playing on the British stage and at home?

‘Here I feel... maybe it’s my fantasy but I feel loved here. Welcomed surely; the audiences are really happy to come and see you.’

It was time, the hovering producer reminded us, to wander outside for some photographs.

It’s interesting to wander through busy streets with a genuine Hollywood star. Most people were oblivious, but every now and then, someone would recognise him and stop and stare.

‘That’s what I like about England,’ he said to me as we passed a group of wide-eyed schoolchildren, ‘you are all so polite. No one will just push a piece of paper in my face, but will wait until I look as if I’m free and then ask me. And they’re always so sorry for bothering me.’

Photographs done, farewells said, I thought that was the end of my encounter with Gene Wilder.

But I was wrong.

Picking up my local friend’s children from school later, we were standing at traffic lights, when Nicholas, the younger boy suddenly shouted, ‘there’s Willy Wonka!’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ his older brother Thomas said, ‘there’s no such real person.’

Sure enough, across the lights, there he was, Gene Wilder.

‘Hello again,’ I said, expecting that he had already forgotten me. But no, he looked up, smiled, said, ‘Oh, hello again. Got to go, theatre,’ shook my hand, waved at the boys, and hurried off.

Leaving two spellbound little boys.

‘You know Willy Wonka?’

Gene Wilder has that effect on people. He makes people feel good. The audiences at Guildford, Bath and soon at the Queens Theatre, London, will certainly feel good afterwards.

And two little boys are positively glowing...