Kiss Me Like A Stranger by Gene Wilder, St. Martin's Press, New York, 2005,  261 pages including index, $23.95

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif. —Gene Wilder's Kiss Me Like A Stranger is not a conventional autobiography or memoir.  It is presented as a continuing conversation between Wilder and his psychiatrist, in which the actor candidly discusses disastrous sexual encounters and other childhood traumas that may have affected who he is today.

Born Jerry Silberman, Wilder's Judaism also was unconventional.  On the screen—and in some of his professional relationships—he often seems a Jew at ease with his religion and its traditions.

Here, for example, is the way he recalls a conversation with fellow comedian Mel Brooks after Wilder wrote and sold Young Frankenstein to Columbia Pictures.

Brooks, who would direct the movie comedy, said to the celebrating Wilder, "Think you're pretty good, huh?"

Trying to hold back a smile, wilder replied: "Yeah."

"Well, I got news for you, Jew boy, now the work begins."

Later in his career, Wilder was asked at a news conference to describe his next project.

"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," he replied, pretty well summarizing the entire plot of The Frisco Kid.

But, off screen, he and other members of his family seemed bewildered by the rules of his inherited religion

Once he asked his father why ham and pork chops were considered dangerous to their health, but spareribs and bacon passed muster.  His father explained that he had immigrated at age 11 with his parents from Russia to Milwaukee, and that his mother was not that conversant with the English language. "My mother didn't know from 'spareribs' and 'bacon'—she only knew about 'pork chops' and 'ham.'.. I never thought about getting sick from eating spareribs or bacon because she never said those words."

A more serious disconnect came while he was serving in the Army and his mother died.

At the cemetery, "I got into an argument with two of my uncles, who told me that—according to the Jewish religion—I couldn't be a pallbearer for my own mother.  I grabbed one of the handles that held up the casket and I walked along, with five other men.  We set her down in her grave."

When his acting career was just beginning, he took the stage name "Gene Wilder" —the latter name in honor of the playwright Thornton Wilder.  "Gene," he said was after a favorite character in Look Homeward Angel.

His psychiatrist didn't accept his explanation at face value, however. She asked what his mother's name was.   "Jeanne.." he replied.

Wilder was married four times.  The first two marriages ended in divorce, while his third marriage—to comedienne Gilda Radner—ended with her death from cancer.  He is now married to Karen Webb, who had served as a consultant on his film, See No Evil, Hear No Evil.