Mel Brooks Recalls Trying to Help Gene Wilder with His Memory After Alzheimer's Diagnosis: 'It Was So Sad'

Mar. 15, 2025

Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks on Nov. 8, 2007.Photo:Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic

Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic

Mel Brooksis recalling his reaction to learning his longtime friend and collaboratorGene Wilderwas diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Brooks, the legendary comedian and filmmaker, appears throughout the new documentaryRemembering Gene Wilder, which celebrates the life and legacy of Wilder, whodied at 83in 2016.

Wilder and Brooks, 97, first met in the 1960s and embarked on a creative collaboration that included films likeThe Producers(1967),Blazing Saddles(1974) andYoung Frankenstein(1974), among other movies. The pair remained friends throughout Wilder’s life. In the documentary, Brooks recalls struggling to help Wilder with his memory after the two-timeAcademy Awardnominee was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in the 2010s.

“I called him a lot thinking, ‘Maybe if I gave him enough references I could get him out of it,’ " Brooks shares in the documentary. “Insanity [on] my part. He was in the throughs of that terrible disease. We could never talk too long after he got it. It was so sad, it made me cry a lot.”

Remembering Gene Wilder poster.Kino Lorber

Kino Lorber

Wilder’s widow Karen Boyer, one of a number of figures in Wilder’s life interviewed in the new documentary, recalls in the film that she first noticed Wilder’s memory loss when he would struggle to remember the name of movies likeYoung Frankenstein. When Wilder died in 2016, his nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman shared in a statement that Wilder did not want to disclose his diagnosis publicly in order not to sadden his fans.

“I was inconsolable for a couple of weeks [after Wilder’s death,]” Brooks recalls in the film. “When he lived his life he lived it, loud and eloquently. He was an outstanding actor and also an outstanding person.”

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“I miss his enjoying my humor — I could make him laugh where he would sometimes grab his belly, hit the ground and roll around on the ground and laugh,” he adds. “That’s the real payment in being a comic, and boy, he paid.”

Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder on the set of 1974’s Young Franksenstein.20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock

20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock

Remembering Gene Wilderis playing in theaters.

source: people.com