Kiss Me Like a Stranger My Search for Love and Art Love Quotes

  Praise for Kiss Me Like a Stranger

"The title came from Gilda Radner, his tertiary married woman, and one of the many friends, lovers, and colleagues near whom he writes with striking candor. . . ."

—The New York Times

"Wilder tells plenty of entertaining stories almost his work with everyone, including Jerome Robbins, Mike Nichols, Mel Brooks, and Cypher Mostel . . . [it's] a reflective and well-written meditation on the life of someone who has more on his listen than the next big office or belly laugh."

—Los Angeles Times

"I ever knew Gene Wilder was a remarkable person, but I didn't realize how remarkable until I read this brave, riveting book."

—Charles Grodin

"It's non an autobiography in the usual sense of the word. . . . It'southward an honest, affecting look at his life."

—Kirkus Reviews

"Gene Wilder is non just a uniquely talented and lovable performer, he's a gifted memoirist with a story to tell and a writerly commitment to emotional truth. The real delight lies in the prose—tight, funny, and fast as the breeze—and the insights about blow and fate that gild in your mind long later on the smile has left your lips."

—Letty Cottin Pogrebin, author of Three Daughters

"A wonderful addition to the amusement memoir Genetic pool."

—Library Journal

"A book to cherish. Here is the real Gene . . . irrepressibly funny, wise, warmhearted, and honest. In sharing with us the about intimate details of his extraordinary life on-screen and off, Factor shows all of u.s.a. how to embrace the unexpected, pursue our passion, and seize joy every twenty-four hour period. Requite this volume to someone you desire to kiss."

—Pat Collins, film critic

KISS ME Like A STRANGER: MY SEARCH FOR Love AND Fine art. Copyright © 2005 by Gene Wilder. All rights reserved. Printed in the Usa. No part of this book may exist reproduced in whatever style whatsoever without written permission except in the example of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Artery, New York, Due north.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Book design by Jonathan Bennett

Photographs on pages 73, 79, 119, 157, and 171 courtesy of Photofest. All other photographs and memorabilia are from the collection of Gene Wilder. Photograph on page 163 © Steve Schapiro.

"After a While," pages 218 and 219, courtesy of Veronica A. Shoffstall.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Information

Wilder, Gene, 1935–

Kiss me like a stranger : my search for honey and fine art / Gene Wilder.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-312-33706-X (hc)

ISBN 0-312-33707-8 (pbk)

EAN 978-0-312-33707-0

1. Wilder, Factor, 1935– 2. Motion picture show actors and actresses—United States—Biography. I. Title.

PN2287.W45888A3 2005

791.4302'8'092—dc22

[B]

2004058475

First St. Martin's Griffin Edition: March 2006

1 0 9 8 7 6 5 iv 3 2 ane

contents

PROLOGUE

i. FIRST MOVEMENT

2. CAN A FEW WORDS CHANGE YOUR LIFE?

three. "Accept ME."

iv. THE "DEMON" ARRIVES.

5. MY HEART IS NOT IN THE HIGHLANDS.

vi. A YANK AT THE OLD VIC

7. SHADES OF Gray

viii. DON JUAN IN NEW YORK

9. THE WORST OF TIMES, THE BEST OF TIMES

10. Female parent COURAGE

11. A Taste OF FREEDOM

12. THE King IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KING!

13. "Gratuitous AT LAST, FREE AT Terminal. Give thanks MARGIE WALLIS, I'K FREE AT LAST."

14. "SORRY I CAUGHT Yous WITH THE OLD LADY."

xv. Second Move: SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER

16. Black IS MY FAVORITE Color.

17. "I HAVE A REASON—I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT It IS."

18. NEW YORK, NEW YORK

19. THE Nativity OF A MONSTER

20. LE PETIT PRINCE

21. SHERLOCK HOLMES HAS A JEWISH BROTHER.

22. CRISIS IN Black AND WHITE

23. LEO BLOOM HAS HIS Picture TAKEN.

24. SIDNEY POITIER AND I GO STIR–CRAZY.

25. HANKY–PANKY WITH ROSEANNE ROSEANNADANNA

26. I DON'T BELIEVE IN FATE.

27. THIRD Movement

28. COMEDIENNE—BALLERINA 1946–1989

29. IT'S ALWAYS SOMETHING.

xxx. STOLEN KISSES

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Index

To Karen,

without whom I would exist

floating like a cork in the bounding main

kiss me like a stranger

PROLOGUE

Suppose you're walking out of the Plaza Hotel in New York Urban center on a warm leap day. You exhale in the lovely fresh air as you step outside and walk downwardly the crimson-carpeted stairs, saying a quick, "How-do-you-do, once more!" to the uniformed doorman.

Y'all want to go directly across the street to Bergdorf's Men's Shop on 5th Avenue, but the Plaza fountain is straight in your path, with people from all walks of life sitting on the ledge of the fountain, eating sandwiches in what's left of their lunch hour, talking to their friends from the office, peradventure flirting with some new acquaintance and whispering arrangements for a dearest tryst that nighttime. Mayhap some are taking a short sunbath on this first beautiful day of the year or even sneaking in a quick snooze as they lean their backs against the famous fountain where Zelda Fitzgerald in one case jumped in fully clothed.

You tin can get to the shop on 5th Avenue past walking around the fountain on the path to your left, or by taking the path to your correct. I believe that whichever choice y'all make could alter your life. I'm sure everyone has had these mysterious brushes with irony, mayhap referring to them years later as "almost fate." Here are a few of mine.

chapter 1

Starting time MOVEMENT

1962—New York

I walked into Marjorie Wallis'south small office on Westward Seventy-ninth Street. I was very nervous.

"What do I call you?" I asked.

"What do you lot desire to call me?"

"I heard Dr. Steiner call you lot Margie on the phone . . . is that all right?"

"Margie it is! Sit down."

She indicated the patently couch in front of me. At that place were no pictures on the walls. Margie sat in a comfortable-looking armchair, with an ottoman—which she wasn't using—resting in front of her. Her face wasn't warm, but it wasn't stern, either.

"What seems to be the trouble?" she asked.

I couldn't bring myself to look at her.

"I want to give all my money away."

"How much practise you have?"

". . . I owe iii hundred dollars."

She looked at me silently for 4 or five seconds.

"I see. Well, permit's get to work, and perhaps past the time you have some money you'll exist wise enough to know what to do with it. In the meantime tell me about . . ."

And then she asked me a lot of questions. "Your mother was how erstwhile? . . . How did you feel when the doctor said that? . . . Have y'all ever tried to blah, blah, blah?" I took so many long pauses earlier I answered each question that I thought she might throw me out, but she simply sat there, with her feet upwardly on the ottoman now, and waited. When I did start talking again, she made piddling notes on a pocket-sized pad that rested on her lap.

What I couldn't empathize was this: why on earth was I thinking well-nigh a fifteen-yr-former girl named Seema Clark during all my long pauses in between Margie'

s questions? Seema kept popping into my caput while I was talking almost my mother and doctors and heart attacks and my Russian father and masturbation.

I thought Seema was Eurasian when I met her the commencement fourth dimension—she certainly didn't look Jewish—but when we both came out of the synagogue together I realized that she must be Jewish. She was the most cute girl I had ever seen. I was only 15, just I had seen a lot of movies and I idea she looked similar a very thin, teenage Rita Hayworth. I was her date when Seema had her fifteenth altogether party. At that place were eight or ten other kids at her house that nighttime, all laughing their heads off at some wisenheimer who was "hypnotizing" one of the girls. I thought he was pretty stupid, but I enjoyed watching the cocky little faker who thought he knew how to hypnotize people considering he'd read his uncle's volume on hypnosis.

Seema held my hand while we watched the "hypnotist" go through his false talk. I knew she actually liked me. She looked and so pretty that night, with a pink barrette in her pilus and wearing a brand-new xanthous angora sweater. Her mother served all of us birthday cake and some succulent coffee. When all the other kids had gone home, Mrs. Clark showed me the coffee can, because I had said how proficient the coffee tasted—it was A&P's 8 O'clock Coffee—and then her mother said good nighttime and left Seema and me alone.

We sat on the couch in an almost-dark living room and started kissing. I was shy, but I didn't desire Seema to know how shy I really was, so I put on an act as if I were used to all this kissing in the nighttime with no one around. I thought that she was probably more than experienced than I was and I decided that information technology was virtually time for me to feel a girl's chest. Well, I can't say, "I decided"—I was only going on what I'd heard from all the other boys my historic period, especially my cousin Buddy, who was nine months older than me.

It took me most eight minutes to go my hand near the get-go of Seema's breast—the hairs of her new angora sweater kept coming off in my fingers, which certainly didn't aid any. After some other three or four minutes, I finally put my hand on about one-third of her breast. As soon as I did, she jerked away. My oral cavity went dry. She looked at me with such disappointment in her eyes and said, "You're just like all the other boys, aren't y'all?" I flushed and then hot I idea I'd burst. I couldn't empathize why she didn't say annihilation during all the kissing and creeping up the fake angora. Why didn't she just say, "No," or, "I don't want you lot to do that," or annihilation but what she did say? I wanted to tell her that I wasn't at all similar all the other boys, that I thought she would like what I was doing, that I thought she was waiting for me to do it. But I was as well embarrassed to say any of those things. I just said, "I'm distressing, Seema," so wished her happy birthday and got out of there equally fast equally I could.

Of form, this all happened in little pictures that popped into my head during the long pauses with Margie. The whole memory probably lasted only a few seconds. Margie'southward vocalisation suddenly burst in:

"Where are you?"

". . . What practice yous hateful?"

"Prevarication downwardly on the couch. Y'all're not as innocent as you pretend and Dr. Steiner assures me that you lot're no dummy. I want you to commencement talking and tell me everything that crosses your mind—everything—even so embarrassing or insignificant yous retrieve it is. I don't know whether or not I can help y'all and I don't know how many times you and I will exist seeing each other in the future, but whether information technology's 1 more time or several years . . . don't ever prevarication to me."

chapter ii

CAN A FEW WORDS CHANGE YOUR LIFE?

Milwaukee

I used to be Jerry Silberman. When I was viii years old, my mother had her first heart attack. After my begetter brought her dwelling house from the hospital, her fat heart specialist came to see how she was doing. He visited with her for about ten minutes, and so, on his way out of the house, he grabbed my right arm, leaned his sweaty confront confronting my cheek, and whispered in my ear,

"Don't ever debate with your mother—yous might impale her."

I didn't know what to make of that, except that I could kill my mother if I got angry with her. The other thing he said was:

"Try to make her laugh."

So I tried. It was the first time I ever consciously tried to brand someone laugh. I did Jewish accents and German accents and Danny Kaye songs that I learned from his first album, and I did make my mother laugh. Every once in awhile, if I was a piffling too successful, she'd run to the bath, squealing, "Oh, Jerry, now await what you've fabricated me practice!"

* * *

Some people—when they step into the ring—pb with their left; some lead with their right. I e'er led with my sister.

It was a Sat dark. I was eleven. My sister, Corinne, was 16 and she was giving an interim recital at the Wisconsin College of Music, where her instructor, Herman Gottlieb, had his studio. It was a small auditorium stuffed with about two hundred people. While everyone sat and waited for the prove to beginning, at that place was so much loud talking that I wondered how Corinne would stand it. When the lights started to fade, everyone talked louder for a few seconds. Then they all whispered. And so . . . darkness!

A spotlight striking the center of the stage, and in that location was Corinne, wearing a total-length aqua gown. For the next 20 minutes she performed "The Necklace," a short story by Guy de Maupassant that she had memorized. All eyes were on Corinne. The audition was listening to every discussion. You could hear a pin drop. Anybody applauded her at the end. I remember thinking that this must be as close to actually being God equally you could get.

I went upwardly to Mr. Gottlieb and asked if I could study acting with him.

"How old are you?" he asked. "11."

"Wait till yous're thirteen. If you even so want to study acting, I'll take you on."

When my female parent was in pain, the fat heart specialist came to our house. I say "fatty" only because Dr. Rosenthal died of a eye attack a few years later, and even though I was very young, I instinctively associated his decease with how many Cokes he drank whenever he came to our house. One solar day he came considering my mother felt a terrible pressure in her chest. Dr. Rosenthal told me to go around the corner, where they were putting upwardly a new firm, steal a heavy brick, and and then wrap the brick in a washcloth and place it on pinnacle of my female parent's chest, over her middle. Information technology sounded crazy. I waited until all the workers had left the new house, at the end of the day, and then I picked up a good-sized brick, tucked it nether my sweater, and walked home equally fast equally I could. I wrapped the brick in a washcloth and placed it on top of my mother's chest.

"Oh, dear, that feels so expert."

In the months that followed I would substitute my head for the brick. I'd push my head down with both hands as hard equally I could, and she liked that fifty-fifty more than the brick.

One Sun afternoon my dad dropped me off at the Uptown movie theater, so I could see a Sunday matinée. I didn't tell him that I'd taken his flashlight out of the utility cupboard and subconscious it in my jacket.

After I paid the cashier and bought my popcorn and Milk Duds, I went into the theater, which was almost full. The film had already started, merely in those days virtually people were used to coming in after a movie started—they would stay until they saw a familiar scene in the next showing and then leave. This Sunday the movie was Double Indemnity, with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. It was in black and white.

I watched for about 20 minutes, simply when information technology started getting mushy (kissing), I took the flashlight out of my jacket and began shining it onto the screen. When people looked around to run across which punk was doing this, I close the flashlight off, fast. When the audition settled down again, I switched the flashlight dorsum on. I started making circles on the screen—my beam of light competing with the beam from the projector. I got such a feeling of joy from doing this, until the managing director came down the aisle with a horrible wait on his face and told me to come with him. I followed him into his function.

"What'due south your name?"

"Jerry Silberman. Delight don't tell my begetter."

"Give me t

he flashlight."

He took my father's flashlight and kicked me out of the theater.

It was drizzling outside. I felt ashamed, continuing under the overhang in front of the theater, wondering whether or not to tell my dad about his flashlight and nigh the manager kicking me out. I decided it would be safer if I waited till my dad noticed the missing flashlight himself . . . and that might non happen for months. He was born in Russia only came to Milwaukee with his family when he was eleven. He wasn't impaired, but he was very innocent, and I knew what I could get by with if I wanted to evade a situation.

After I waited in the rain for an hr and x minutes, my father drove up. I jumped into the car.

"So—how was the motion-picture show?" he asked.

"It was nifty, Daddy. It was really expert."

I started taking acting lessons with Herman Gottlieb the day later on my thirteenth birthday.

* * *

I was eleven when I learned about sex activity—from my cousin Buddy, naturally. We were both in a co-ed summer camp. I couldn't believe what he was saying.

"Oh, Buddy, what're you lot talking almost?"

"It'southward the truth! You put your poopy into her affair—honest to God."

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