Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

by Gene Wilder

  Zero Mostel had a car and driver assigned to him when filming for Springtime for Hitler began. I was surprised when he announced that he would pick me up each morning and that we could travel to work together.

  Joe Levine—the man who put up half the budget and was going to distribute the film—went to a screening room with Mel and saw the first eleven minutes of the dailies. After he saw them, he said, “I don’t know what the hell that Wilder guy is doing. I got twenty-five thousand dollars for you to get yourself another actor.”

  Mel calmed him down and talked him out of having me fired. (I was only getting ten thousand dollars.) Mel didn’t tell me about this incident until a few days later.

  Toward the end of the next day, we were about to rehearse my big “hysterical” scene for the next day’s filming. I was anxious to see how Zero and I would play it together. Mel said, “Go!”—he never said, “Action,” like every other director—and I gave it my all. When the scene was over, the whole crew laughed and applauded. I was worn out and a little hoarse, but I could see that it was going to work when we filmed it the next morning.

  Mel looked a little dazed. “What do you mean, ‘tomorrow’? We’re filming it today! Right now! We’ve got just enough time.”

  “Oh, Mel—oh, my God! I thought we were just rehearsing. Wait a minute. . . . Wait a minute. . . .”

  An image flashed into my mind. I remembered fencing for the All School Championship at the Bristol Old Vic. I was sweating and felt depleted of all my energy. My fencing master called out, “Jerry, grab a handful of that raw sugar.”

  I said, “Mel—get me some Hershey bars.”

  “Hershey bars??”

  “Yes, Hershey bars!”

  “With or without nuts?”

  “It doesn’t matter! Just get me—no, wait! Without nuts—the nuts might get caught in my throat in the middle of the scene.”

  Somebody ran out and got some Hershey bars. I ate two of them, had a drink of water, and said, “Ready!”

  I had given the scene some prior thought, of course, but only just enough to decide what would get my “motor” going: This giant hulk of a man—not the character called Bialystock, but Zero Mostel, the actual actor standing in front of me, who grabbed hold of me in Sidney Glazer’s office and kissed me, on the lips—is now making all these strange gestures and keeps trying to get me down on the floor and pounce on me. . . .

  The scene went very well.

  There was another scene that might illuminate more of the way I work. The character I played in the film was called Leo Bloom, and he always carried a blue security blanket with him everywhere he went. Zero Mostel grabbed my little piece of blue blanket, and I nearly went crazy until he gave it back. At the time we were filming Springtime for Hitler, I had a little dog named Julie. I had made the saddest mistake when I first got her, a year earlier. I took her to Central Park and kept throwing a ball for her to chase. She loved the game, as most dogs do, but one time I threw the ball too hard and too far, and it rolled into one of those water ponds that are emptied in the winter. Julie ran after the ball and then dove into the cement pond and disappeared. I ran to get her, and when I reached the pond, I saw Julie limping on the cold cement as she tried to walk towards me. Now, a year later, when I took out my blue blanket and rubbed it against my cheek, I did a sense memory: I imagined that it was Julie I was holding—not a blue blanket—and I was rubbing my cheek against her curly fur, feeling it and smelling it. And then Zero Motel grabbed her out of my arms and was going to throw her away . . . and I went crazy.

  We were at the Lincoln Center fountain on the last day of filming, waiting for the sun to go down. I was sad that the film was ending, of course, but also very happy. I wasn’t broke; I was in love—for the first time in my life—and I knew that I had been part of a unique film, working with the two most unusual people I had ever met. The outrageousness—the complete audacity—of Zero and Mel remains with me. Once in a while, when I’m confronted by some pompous authority figure who thinks that his job outranks any artistic concerns, I think of Zero and how he might handle the situation: let out a loud fart and then say, “Oops, I beg your pardon. . . . now what was it you were saying?”

  When the sun finally went down, the cameras started rolling, and I started running around the edge of the Lincoln Center fountain, shouting for all I was worth, “I want everything I’ve ever seen in the movies!” And the fountain was turned on, in the film and in my life.

  “HI, DADDY!”

  July 1967

  MARGIE: You want to get married?

  ME: Yes.

  MARGIE: And you’re sure?

  ME: I know that I love her.

  MARGIE: I didn’t ask you that. I know you love her. I’m asking if you’re sure you want to get married.

  ME: I can’t go on any longer letting that little girl call me “Daddy.” It makes me feel good, but it hurts, too, because I’m not her daddy and she’s never had a daddy. . . .

  Pause.

  MARGIE: Where are you?

  ME: I’m right here—I didn’t go away.

  MARGIE: What are you thinking?

  ME: If Jo and I get married—do you think it will last?

  MARGIE: So long as she adores you.

  “LOVE AND MARRIAGE

  GO TOGETHER LIKE A HORSE AND CARRIAGE.”

  Katie’s biological father showed up one day at Jo’s apartment. Jo asked him what the hell he was doing there, and he answered that he was hoping to see his daughter, just for a few minutes. Jo said something like, “You wait seven years, and now you want to see her?” She kicked him out and told me later how grateful she was that Katie hadn’t answered the door.

  Springtime for Hitler finished filming in June. I flew with Jo to El Paso, Texas, and took the bus to Juarez, passing the same gigantic sign, MEXICATESSEN, as we crossed into Mexico. Jo got her divorce the next morning.

  We were married in October. Katie was seven years old. I found a small, but beautiful, garden apartment on Eightieth Street, between Park Avenue and Madison Avenue, for $480 a month. (Four-hundred-eighty?? Yes!)

  There was a single tree in the middle of our small garden. Katie and I went out there on the day we moved into our new home. I carved a heart shape in the bark with a small paring knife, and in the middle of the heart, I carved:

  G W

  LOVES

  K W

  Katie wrote me a little note that night:

  I love gene. he is thin. he is handsome.

  I wanted to adopt Katie as soon as possible, but there was a New York State law that required a six-month waiting period.

  We were a happy family. I loved it when Katie bounced into bed with Jo and me, just for a little while before going to her own bed, so that we could all watch Creature Features—old black-and-white monster movies that Katie was too frightened to watch alone. But the scary parts made her laugh when we all watched together. After six months we went to a courthouse in lower Manhattan.

  THE JUDGE: Now Katie, do you want to be adopted?

  KATIE: I don’t know.

  (“Oh, my God—now what?”)

  THE JUDGE: Well, Katie—you know that your mommy and Gene are married, and they love you, and they both want you to be very happy. But I need to know if you really want to be adopted.

  KATIE: (with a devilish smile): . . . I don’t know.

  The judge asked Jo and me to leave the room. While we waited in the courtroom, I tried to figure out what could possibly have gone wrong. After only two minutes we were asked to come back into the judge’s office. As we walked in, the judge shook my hand and said, “Congratulations. You’re a father.”

  After Jo and Katie left the office, I waited behind to ask the judge if he would tell me what happened. He said, “I just asked Katie if she wanted you to be her daddy . . . and she said yes.”

  ______

  Joe Levine thought that the title Springtime for Hitler would offend the Jews in the Midwest, so Mel changed the title to The
Producers. One week before the film opened, Joe got a call from Peter Sellers in the middle of the night. He told Joe that he had just seen the funniest comedy in the last twenty years and asked him why on earth he had changed the title. The next day Joe called Mel Brooks.

  “You want to change it back?”

  “Are you crazy?” Mel asked. “I fought for Springtime for Hitler. You said no. We’re opening in Philadelphia next week! All the advertising is done! All the posters are up! And now you want to change it back??”

  The Producers opened in November.

  After I was nominated for an Academy Award for playing Leo Bloom, I was walking through the halls of Joe Levine’s empire—called Embassy Pictures—and on my way to the publicity department I heard Joe holler from his office, “YOU’RE A GREAT ACTOR, GENE WILDER!”

  Thanks, Joe . . . for not insisting that Mel fire me.

  chapter 16

  BLACK IS MY FAVORITE COLOR.

  MARGIE: Tell me.

  ME: This is going to sound crazy—well, I guess I’m in the right place—but all my life I’ve consciously avoided spitting, on the sidewalk or street if there was a black person near me.

  MARGIE: Why?

  ME: Because I didn’t want them to think I was spitting at them.

  MARGIE: Why would they think that?

  ME: I don’t know. I just didn’t want to take the chance of offending a black person.

  MARGIE: Why?

  ME: Probably because my dad once hired a black man named Joe. When I was three years old, my father had started experimenting with resin in the basement of our apartment building, melting it down to liquid and then pouring it into shot glasses and miniature beer glasses. When the resin hardened, it looked like real whiskey and beer, and he’d sell the glasses a dozen at a time—until they threw us out of our apartment building because of the stink. When I was four, my dad rented a tiny store and hired Joe to help him. Joe used to pick me up and carry me around the store on his shoulders. When the war broke out, he was drafted, and if any of the kids in my neighborhood ever started in with the usual, “My dad could beat up your dad,” I’d say, “Well, Joe could beat up your dad and your brothers and your uncles and anyone else you know.”

  MARGIE: Who did you spit on?

  ME: I was walking home from the grocery store today and I felt a bug or a mosquito or something fly into my throat, and I spit it out just as an elderly black woman was about to pass me on the sidewalk. She thought I was spitting at her, so she spat back and said, “I can spit at you, too. How do you like it?”

  MARGIE: And that set off your compulsion?

  ME: No. No compulsion. It just struck me how ironic it was. I let my spitting guard down one time in all these years, and I hurt some old black lady. It made me sad.

  MARGIE: And if it had been some old white lady, what would you have said?

  ME: I would have just said, “Excuse me.”

  James Brooks said that he had written a character just for me after he saw The Producers. He wanted me to act in a movie for television called Thursday’s Game, with Bob Newhart as my partner in a clothing business, Ellen Burstyn as my wife, Cloris Leachman as Bob’s wife, Valerie Harper as my secretary, Norman Fell as my employer, Nancy Walker as my unemployment counselor, and Rob Reiner as my agent. I said yes.

  The biggest problem I had during the seven weeks of filming was trying not to break up laughing when I was acting in a scene with Bob Newhart. It was a constant problem. After the second or third time that Bob and I broke up laughing in the middle of one particular scene, the director—instead of letting the laughter play itself out—made us feel like we were naughty third-grade children, and when he did that, I always felt like saying, “Well, Bob started it!” But of course Bob would probably have said, “Well, Gene started it,” so I kept my mouth shut.

  On the last day of filming Thursday’s Game, we were outside in downtown Los Angeles, which was supposed to be New York. We even had a fake Yellow Cab with fake New York license plates. We finished filming at midnight, and the producer sent Bob and me home in the same fake Yellow Cab, along with a pile of our own clothing that we had loaned to the production. A Teamster driver drove us.

  When we got to Bob’s home in Beverly Hills, we both got out of the cab, carrying a bundle of Bob’s clothes. We started walking toward the front door, and then a police car drove up. One of the cops yelled, “HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!”

  Bob said, “Officer—”

  “SHUT UP AND MOVE BACK TO THE CAB!”

  Bob said, “Well, it’s not really a cab, Officer, it’s—”

  “SHUT UP AND DROP THOSE CLOTHES.”

  We started laughing.

  “THINK IT’S FUNNY? FACE THE CAB, BOTH OF YOU, AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE ROOF.”

  Now we were scared. We dropped the clothes, faced the cab, and put our hands on the roof.

  “Officer, we’re not—we’re not stealing these clothes. These are my clothes. You see—we’re both actors. This is Gene Wilder, here, and I’m Bob Newhart, and Gene was just helping me get my clothes into my house.”

  “WHERE’D YOU STEAL THE CAB FROM?”

  I bit my cheeks so I wouldn’t laugh. Bob said, “Uh, no Officer. That’s not a cab.”

  “SHUT YOUR MOUTH AND SPREAD YOUR LEGS APART!”

  Now we both broke up and couldn’t stop laughing.

  “THINK IT’S FUNNY?”

  Bob tried to sound logical. “No, Officer—no, sir, not at all. It’s just that—this cab is not really a cab. . . . It’s a fake cab.”

  “IT’S GOT NEW YORK LICENSE PLATES. DID YOU STEAL THOSE TOO?”

  “No, sir. . . . Those are . . . those are fake license plates.”

  The other policeman, who was with the bulldog who was doing all the talking, whispered something into the bulldog’s ear.

  “YOU’RE ACTORS, HUH?”

  We both said, “Yes, sir,” as sweetly as we could.

  “ALL RIGHT, YOU CAN DROP YOUR HANDS.”

  We both said, “Thank you, Officer,” at the same time.

  As the bulldog got back into his police car, he yelled out, “AND DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN AGAIN!”

  ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD

  In 1967, when I visited Mel in a recording studio as he was putting music into Springtime for Hitler, I was told that there was a phone call for me from Mike Nichols. Bonnie and Clyde hadn’t opened yet, but Arthur Penn showed Mike the outtakes of my scenes from Bonnie and Clyde.

  Mike said, “I’m going to do Catch-22. Promise me you’ll be in it.”

  I said, “Mike, I’d rather work with you than anyone, but I never read Catch-22. I don’t know it at all.”

  “Get it! Read it! The part is Milo Minderbinder. We’re filming in Mexico. Promise me you’ll be in the movie.”

  “If I’m right for the part, I promise you I’ll be in the movie.”

  That night I read the book and loved it. I could see why Mike wanted me for Milo Minderbinder—someone who’s doing the most horrible things during World War II but thinks that he’s doing good for everyone.

  A few days later I got a call to meet with Norman Lear at his office in New York. When I got there, he offered me the leading role in a big film he was producing called Start the Revolution Without Me—a comedy that took place during the French Revolution. His partner, Bud Yorkin, would be directing. I would play twins—a peasant and an aristocrat. It was going to be filmed in Czechoslovakia that summer. The script arrived the next day, and I loved it.

  The film script for Catch-22 arrived by messenger a few days later. I didn’t have to make a choice. The irony of Milo Minderbinder had not made it into the script, except for a few token sentences. It was just about all the horrible things that Milo was doing—without his crazy rationale for why he was doing them. I felt that there was nothing for me to act. I accepted Start the Revolution Without Me.

  A few weeks later, Russia invaded Czechoslovakia, and our location was changed to Paris.

  ALL THI
S AND PARIS TOO

  In June, Jo, Katie, and I flew to London, where I got fitted for costumes and wigs, and then a week later we flew to Paris. This was an actor’s dream—something you might fantasize about, knowing it will never happen. But it did happen! Wigs, costumes, Paris! Donald Sutherland was cast in the other leading role, and he was also playing twins. Two actors in four parts. This would be fun.

  I had never heard of “French hours” before, but what a wonderful idea it is. Since so many French actors who work in films during the day also work onstage at night, filming in France doesn’t begin until noon. But there’s a terrible trap involved. The production company lays out an enormous lunch at 11:00 A.M. For the crew that’s fine, but it’s deadly for the poor American actor who, after lunch, has to act straight through until 7:00 P.M. At my first lunch there weren’t any tuna salad sandwiches; all these cheapskates served was appetizer, main course, white wine, red wine, cheese, fruit, and dessert. After the first lunch I learned to say, “No, merci.”

  Orson Welles was playing the Narrator in Start the Revolution Without Me, and I wanted to meet him. He only had two filming days, and I thought it would be more polite if I waited until the second day to say hello. On the second day, at about three in the afternoon, I got to the chateau where they were filming; Orson Welles was gone. I asked Bud Yorkin what happened.