Gene Wilder
Movie Actor — born 1933
Gene Wilder is a former American actor, comedian, director, screenwriter, author and activist.
Gene Wilder was an American actor, comedian, and screenwriter whose four-decade career produced multiple defining 1970s American film roles — particularly his lead role as Willy Wonka in Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), and his three Mel Brooks collaborations (The Producers 1968, Blazing Saddles 1974, and Young Frankenstein 1974). He was born Jerome Silberman on June 11, 1933, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, into an American Russian-Polish-Jewish family. His Russian-immigrant father William J. Silberman was a Milwaukee-area novelty-manufacturer salesman, and his Polish-immigrant mother Jeanne Baer was a homemaker.
His education at the University of Iowa (B.A. in Communication and Theatre Arts, 1955) and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, England (1955–1956; without earning a degree) launched his early-career path. His 1957–1959 U.S. Army service across the late-1950s American military medical-corps preceded his 1959 New York City arrival.
His 1961 first New York Broadway debut in The Complaisant Lover at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre launched his early-career American theater public profile. His 1968 first feature-film lead role as Leo Bloom in Mel Brooks's The Producers (alongside Zero Mostel) — earning him the 1969 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination — launched his American comedy-film public profile.
His 1971 lead role as Willy Wonka in Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (the Roald Dahl-novel adaptation) — released June 30, 1971 by Paramount Pictures — produced his 1970s American family-film public profile. His 1974 second-and-third Mel Brooks collaborations Blazing Saddles (in which he played the Waco Kid) and Young Frankenstein (which he co-wrote and starred in as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein) produced his mid-1970s American comedy-film commercial peak.
His four Richard Pryor collaborations (Silver Streak 1976, Stir Crazy 1980, See No Evil, Hear No Evil 1989, and Another You 1991) produced his late-1970s and 1980s American comedy-film public profile. He married Mary Mercier in 1960 (divorced 1965), Mary Joan Schutz in 1967 (divorced 1974), Gilda Radner in 1984 (until her May 20, 1989 death from ovarian cancer), and Karen Webb-Boyer in 1991. He died on August 29, 2016, at age 83, in Stamford, Connecticut, of complications from Alzheimer's disease.
His name Gene is the English short form of Eugene (from the Greek Eugenios meaning "well-born"). Gene was a popular American boys' name across the early-to-mid 20th century.
About the name Gene
Gender: Male · Origin: English
Abbreviation Of Eugene Wellborn.