Gene Wilder’s Widow Karen Boyer Recalls His Touching Last Words in New Documentary

Gene Wilder’s widow recalls some of the actor’s final moments.

In the new documentary Remembering Gene WilderKaren Boyer, who was married to Young Frankenstein star from 1991 until his death at age 83 in 2016, shares his experience with Wilder in the years between his Alzheimer’s diagnosis and his final days.

“He didn’t walk alone [in a long time] and it was just a few days before he died and I looked up and he was walking across the kitchen and then he said, ‘I want to go swimming,'” Boyer, who was Wilder’s fourth wife, says in the documentary. “He dived into the pool like he used to – I saw his little gusto in the air – and I was amazed.”

“And he took two hits, stood up, shook his head like he always did to get the water out of his ear and said, ‘That’s good,'” she recalled. “He went back to bed and I think he just wanted to get in the pool one more time.”

Boyer also recalls in the documentary that the last words she heard Wilder say were as the couple listened to Ella Fitzgerald’s classic “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

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Gene Wilder memorial poster.

Lorber cinema

“There was music playing in the background — Ella Fitzgerald singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ and I was laying next to him, and he sat up in bed and said, ‘I believe you,'” she said. “And then he said, ‘I love you.’ That’s the last thing he said.”

Wilder was known for his long career on stage and screen; he memorably starred in classic films like Proud (1967), Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), Blazing Saddles (1974) i Young Frankenstein (1974), among dozens of other roles.

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Karen Boyer and Gene Wilder.

Ron Asadorian / Splash News

He first met Boyer, who was working as a speech consultant, while doing research for his 1989 film. See no evil, hear no evil. The couple did not go on a first date for more than a year after first meeting. Wilder and Boyer’s relationship came about after his third wife, comedian and actress Gilda Radner, died at the age of 42 in 1989 from ovarian cancer.

“Gene was wonderful; he was the best husband I think anyone could ask for. To love and be loved is the best gift anyone could ask for, and we had that,” Boyer says in the documentary.

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Karen Boyer and Gene Wilder September 8, 2008

Nick Laham/Getty

Boyer also says in the film that she first noticed Wilder’s memory problems when he struggled to remember the title Young Frankensteinwhich he calls “his favorite film” in the documentary.

“He never accepted that he had Alzheimer’s, and maybe his hippocampus wasn’t allowing him to remember,” she says in the film. “So I’m not sure he ever knew. Seeing him slip away from me made me sick to my stomach, but I had to keep laughing and telling him it was okay.” Remembering Gene Wilder now playing in theaters in New York. The documentary will begin screening in Los Angeles on March 22 and will later expand to national screens.

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Source: HIS Education