Karen Boyer, the widow of Gene Wilder, revealed in a new documentary the actor’s final words, who died in 2016.
+ Police receive report of ‘man with knife’ and find Harry Potter fan with a wand
In the new documentary “Remembering Gene Wilder,” the actor’s widow shared what happened in the final moments of cinema’s first Willy Wonka; Wilder played the eccentric chocolatier in the 1971 film “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Boyer was the actor’s fourth wife; they were married from 1991 until his death in 2016 at the age of 83 due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
“The music was playing in the background, Ella Fitzgerald was singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ and I was lying next to him, and he sat up in bed and said, ‘I trust you'”; “And then he said, ‘I love you.’ That was the last thing he said.”
Wilder and Boyer’s relationship began after the actor’s third wife, comedian and actress Gilda Radner, died at the age of 42 in 1989 from ovarian cancer. “Gene was wonderful; I think he was the best husband anyone could ask for. To love and be loved is the best gift anyone could ask for, and we had that,” says Boyer in the documentary.
Wilder was an American actor, screenwriter, and filmmaker; he was known for roles in popular Hollywood films and for his partnership with Mel Brooks, which yielded successful comedies such as “The Producers” (1967), “Blazing Saddles” (1974), and “Young Frankenstein” (1974).
