Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art (20 page)

The Demon flashed through my brain: the memories of praying for hours at a time, the Vaseline in my hair, the feeling that people thought I was a freak as they watched me pray in front of buildings—and all I was really asking God was this same question.

Quentin Crisp shaded his eyes and looked out into the audience.

“Where are you, dear?” he asked. “Please stand up.”

A young girl—perhaps twenty years old—stood up.

“How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Nineteen,” she said.

“Oh, my dear . . . my dear girl . . . you’ll find that if you take care of the person on your left and the person on your right—you’ll have a full-time job.”

I wished that some wise person had given me this same advice when I was nineteen and going through the torments of my Demon. But, of course, it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference . . . not until I could come to that simple epiphany on my own. I hear you, Margie: “Bravo,
Mister
Wilder.”

When I was making
Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother
in London, Peter Sellers called and asked if we couldn’t take a little walk in the park some Sunday afternoon. I said it would be a pleasure.

We went to Green Park and—as I walked along a little stream amongst all the ducks and pigeons—I saw that Peter was taking pictures of me. He explained that, apart from his acting, he was also a professional photographer and that he just wanted a few mementos. After awhile I noticed that every time I heard the camera click, I was in some Leo Bloom pose. Peter told me that he and George Harrison exchanged a copy of
The Producers
every two weeks.

Peter and I had dinner together several times during that year. Once, when I was in Stockholm doing publicity for a film, he had
a woman friend of his call me at my hotel—I suppose she was a Swedish beauty—who asked if I wouldn’t like to have some company. (In case you’re wondering, I said no.)

I went from Stockholm to Copenhagen for a day and a night, to do publicity for the opening of
Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother
in Scandinavia. The biggest lesson I learned during that short time was never to pronounce the city of Copenhagen as CopenHAAgen—the way the Nazis pronounced it—but rather CopenHAYgen. It may seem like a small point, but it wasn’t small to the Danes. It also made me wonder why no one bothered to inform Danny Kaye about the correct pronunciation in his film about Hans Christian Andersen, when he sang, “Beautiful, beautiful CopenHAAgen . . .”

While I was in CopenHAYgen, I was interviewed by a lovely woman named Gunilla who worked for a Scandinavian magazine. She was about thirty-five and extremely smart, with a playful smile. She was one of the most naturally cheerful people I’d ever met. I remember thinking that if she were ever to come to Los Angeles on some assignment, I would certainly like to ask her out, but I didn’t tell that to Gunilla because I didn’t want her to think I was just another one of those typical American men who flirt with all the pretty European women and are actually full of bullshit.

In 1978 I went to Scandinavia again, to do publicity for the opening of
The World’s Greatest Lover,
but this time the press junket was in Stockholm, in an outdoor café that 20th Century-Fox had rented. And there she was, sitting amongst all the other journalists, smiling at me. I gave Gunilla a nod and then answered questions for about an hour.

“What are you going to be doing next?” one of the gentlemen from Norway asked.

“A film about a Polish rabbi who comes to America at the time
of the Gold Rush and becomes best friends with a bank robber and is captured by Indians.”

When the interviews were over and the other journalists were leaving, I went up to Gunilla and shook her hand—holding on to it longer than necessary—as I said hello and good-bye to her. What a shame that she lived in Sweden.

“By the way, Mr. Wilder, I’m coming to Los Angeles to do a series on Hollywood for my magazine.”

“. . . When?”

“In November, for about a week.”

“If I give you my telephone number, will you call me and tell me where you’re staying?”

“Yah, sure. . . . I was hoping you might say that,” she said with a smile. “Maybe I can do an interview about your new movie.”

*  *  *

The film about the rabbi and the cowboy was called
The Frisco Kid
. The wonderful Robert Aldrich was going to direct, but we still had to find a costar—someone Warner Bros. would approve.

Bob Shapiro—who was vice president in charge of production at Warner Bros. and the man who offered me the film—suggested several names, and I suggested several actors, and Robert Aldrich suggested some more names. In each case, the actors mentioned were either not available or not approved by Warner Bros. Then Bob Aldrich suggested John Wayne.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “How could we ever get John Wayne?”

John Wayne wouldn’t read the script until he was offered his usual fee: one million dollars and 10 percent of the gross. After a lot of stupid haggling on the part of Warner Bros., John Wayne was offered what he asked for. To my great surprise, after reading the script he said yes. He also said that he loved that little rabbi.
Apart from being able to work with John Wayne. I was also relieved, because in spite of the presence of the rabbi, with John Wayne starring,
The Frisco Kid
would be perceived as a Western, not as a Jewish film.

A few days after Mr. Wayne had accepted, some very experienced Warner Bros. executive went to talk to him, at his home in Long Beach. A few hours later, John Wayne pulled out of the film.

“What the hell did you do?” Bob Shapiro asked the executive.

“I tried to get him for seven-fifty instead of a million—I thought we could save a little money.”

So we lost John Wayne, and the search for a costar began again. I was asked to look at the work of an up-and-coming young actor by the name of Harrison Ford. I thought he was charming and might possibly get somewhere in the business. Since we all liked him, he was hired.

Terry Marsh was hired as production designer on
The Frisco Kid,
and Mace Neufeld was the producer. We went to Greeley, Colorado to film for a week. Since there wasn’t much to do in Greeley, Harrison and Terry and Mace and I went to the Chuck Wagon for dinner every night. The food was good, but the best part of the evening came after dinner. The restaurant had a dart room attached, and we all played darts and had an after-dinner drink.

During the filming of
Frisco Kid,
I developed a fondness for Bob Aldrich. He was smart, and he knew exactly what he was doing all the time. And like all of the best directors, he left the doors open for you to surprise him. He liked what I was doing with the rabbi, and if he said, “Try another one,” I knew that what he really meant was, “Surprise me.”

Later, when were filming in southern Arizona, we all went over the nearby border into Nogales, Mexico, for dinner. Bob Aldrich was a gracious host. He would only drink Coca Cola on the set, but when we went out to dinner on a Saturday night, he was a good drinker and a good storyteller. When we got back to Los Angeles, I received a phone call from Peter Sellers.

“Genie, how are you?”

“Fine, thank you, Peter. And you?”

“Fine. Fine. Genie, I want to know what you think of the director, Robert Aldrich. I’ve been asked to do a farce about lady wrestlers, and I want your opinion of him.”

I always get a little nervous when people ask my opinion of an actor or a director—knowing full well that I might have an influence on whether or not someone gets a job. But Peter was one of the greatest talents I had ever seen, and I wanted to honor him with an answer.

“Peter, I get along great with Bob. He’s a wonderful director, but you have to understand that my picture is a Western—with shooting and socking and blood and lots of action. How he would be if he were directing a farce, I can’t say. He was always wonderful with all the comedy things I did. I loved him.”

The next day Bob’s daughter, Alida, called me. “How could you have done that to my father?”

“Done what?”

“Blackballed him on the movie he was going to do with Peter Sellers. Sellers told the movie company that Gene Wilder said Aldrich wasn’t any good.”

Here’s my advice: BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARING GIFTS . . . or other actors or directors who ask your advice about someone you’ve just worked with.

In December, Harrison and I were filming interiors for
The Frisco Kid
at a studio in Los Angeles. I got home from work one evening, and there was a message from Gunilla on my answering machine, saying that she was staying at a small hotel near the Farmers’ Market. She left her telephone number. I called and made a date to see her the next night. It would be a Friday, and I would have the whole weekend off.

After work on Friday I took Gunilla to a very nice, very quiet restaurant. The food was delicious, and, to my surprise, Gunilla was a great eater, even with her slim figure. Over dinner she told me about her two daughters, thirteen and eleven, to whom she was devoted. She had been divorced for several years and basically was raising her daughters on her own. They had occasional visits with their father. I told Gunilla about Katie and a little about my marriage to Mary Jo, but when I thought I was sounding too sad, I changed the subject. I told Gunilla that if she would come to my house for dinner the following night, I would cook the best roast chicken she ever had, plus baked potatoes. She flashed one of her playful smiles and said yes.

I picked Gunilla up at her hotel early Saturday evening. She loved the chicken. I told her how simple it was to make, but she had to use
Spice Islands Garlic Salt
and no other. While we ate, we talked about films, and she told me how badly the Swedish government was treating Ingmar Bergman. There was no mad rush to make love, but when I started talking with a Swedish accent and making up Swedish words, the lovemaking came about slowly and easily. I asked her beforehand if she used any birth control devices, and she said that she had the newest copper IUD, which was very popular in Sweden. The lovemaking was sweet and affectionate.

The
Frisco Kid
company was moving to Santa Barbara on Monday, for two days and a night. I asked Gunilla if she’d like to come along, and she said yes.

We all arrived at a beautiful stretch of beach, and the camera crew set up for the first shot. Santa Barbara was beautiful, but very cold that December day. Harrison and I were dressed in our costumes—long johns—and we waded gingerly into the ocean, which was freezing. While our lips were turning blue, we waited until we heard, “ACTION,” and then we ran out of the water, as playfully as we could, and wrestled on the sand. As soon as we heard, “CUT!” the prop department rushed over and covered us with blankets and gave us each a shot of brandy to stop our teeth from chattering. Then we did it all again, two more times.

I stayed with Gunilla in the Biltmore Hotel that night, where it was nice and warm. We ate in the room and made love for the second time. The next day we returned to Los Angeles. Gunilla got on a plane to Sweden, and I left for northern California with the film company.

Two weeks later, while we were filming near the Black River, which was about two hours north of San Francisco, I was talking to Harrison while we sat on our horses, waiting for the next shot. I mentioned that when I was thirteen I had gone to a place in Los Angeles called Black/Foxe Military Institute.

“They’ve torn the whole place down now, you know.”

“Good! I hated that place.”

“I bought a lot of the floorboards from the dormitory.”

“Why?”

“Well, I’m also a carpenter, and those boards were made from really good wood.”

I didn’t go into detail with Harrison, but it was eerie for me to
think that he might be building a garage, or a child’s playroom, using the floorboards from my old bedroom, where I was beaten up and “sort of” corn-holed by Jonesy.

When filming ended, I got a call from my French friend Denise Breton—the woman who had called Federico Fellini for me. She wanted to know if I would like to join her and her family in Paris, in February, and then go to a ski resort near Grenoble during her kids’ winter vacation. I was very close with her family, having stayed at their home several times when I was doing publicity in Paris, and even though I didn’t know how to ski, I said yes.

A few weeks later I got a call from Gunilla, saying that she was working in Paris for two weeks while her daughters were staying with their father during their winter vacation. I told her that fate must be working its magic, because I was going to be in Paris on February 14, Valentine’s Day, just for a night, before I left to go skiing with my French family. We arranged to meet at a little hotel where I used to stay.

On February 14 Gunilla and I had a joyful reunion. I had slept on the plane, and since it was a beautiful winter day, we took a long walk along the Avenue Montaigne and looked at all the expensive shops—not inside, just the windows. Gunilla was enjoying our walk, but she seemed preoccupied. I took her to a small restaurant called Chez Edgar, which was around the corner from my hotel. I waited until we sat down for dinner and then said, “Something’s bothering you. Please talk to me.”