Gene Wilder - Kiss Me Like a Stranger - My Search for Love and Art

Of course, this all happened in little pictures that popped into my head during the long pauses with Margie. The whole memory probably lasted only a few seconds. Margie’s voice suddenly burst in:

“Where are you?”

“… What do you mean?”

“Lie down on the couch. You’re not as innocent as you pretend and Dr. Steiner assures me that you’re no dummy. I want you to start talking and tell me everything that crosses your mind – everything – however embarrassing or insignificant you think it is. I don’t know whether or not I can help you and I don’t know how many times you and I will be seeing each other in the future, but whether it’s one more time or several years … don’t ever lie to me.”

Milwaukee

I used to be Jerry Silberman. When I was eight years old, my mother had her first heart attack. After my father brought her home from the hospital, her fat heart specialist came to see how she was doing. He visited with her for about ten minutes, and then, on his way out of the house, he grabbed my right arm, leaned his sweaty face against my cheek, and whispered in my ear,

“Don’t ever argue with your mother – you might kill her.”

I didn’t know what to make of that, except that I could kill my mother if I got angry with her. The other thing he said was:

“Try to make her laugh.”

So I tried. It was the first time I ever consciously tried to make someone laugh. I did Jewish accents and German accents and Danny Kaye songs that I learned from his first album, and I did make my mother laugh. Every once in awhile, if I was a little too successful, she’d run to the bathroom, squealing, “Oh, Jerry, now look what you’ve made me do!”

Some people – when they step into the ring – lead with their left; some lead with their right. I always led with my sister.

It was a Saturday night. I was eleven. My sister, Corinne, was sixteen and she was giving an acting recital at the Wisconsin College of Music, where her teacher, Herman Gottlieb, had his studio. It was a small auditorium stuffed with about two hundred people. While everyone sat and waited for the show to start, there was so much loud talking that I wondered how Corinne would stand it. When the lights started to fade, everyone talked louder for a few seconds. Then they all whispered. Then … darkness!

A spotlight hit the center of the stage, and there was Corinne, wearing a full-length aqua gown. For the next twenty minutes she performed “The Necklace,” a short story by Guy de Maupassant that she had memorized. All eyes were on Corinne. The audience was listening to every word. You could hear a pin drop. Everyone applauded her at the end. I remember thinking that this must be as close to actually being God as you could get.

I went up to Mr. Gottlieb and asked if I could study acting with him.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Eleven.”

“Wait till you’re thirteen. If you still want to study acting, I’ll take you on.”

When my mother was in pain, the fat heart specialist came to our house. I say “fat” only because Dr. Rosenthal died of a heart attack a few years later, and even though I was very young, I instinctively associated his death with how many Cokes he drank whenever he came to our house. One day he came because my mother felt a terrible pressure in her chest. Dr. Rosenthal told me to go around the corner, where they were putting up a new house, steal a heavy brick, and then wrap the brick in a washcloth and place it on top of my mother’s chest, over her heart. It sounded crazy. I waited until all the workers had left the new house, at the end of the day, and then I picked up a good-sized brick, tucked it under my sweater, and walked home as fast as I could. I wrapped the brick in a washcloth and placed it on top of my mother’s chest.

“Oh, honey, that feels so good.”

In the months that followed I would substitute my head for the brick. I’d push my head down with both hands as hard as I could, and she liked that even more than the brick.

One Sunday afternoon my dad dropped me off at the Uptown movie theater, so I could see a Sunday matinée. I didn’t tell him that I’d taken his flashlight out of the utility closet and hidden it in my jacket.

After I paid the cashier and bought my popcorn and Milk Duds, I went into the theater, which was almost full. The picture had already started, but in those days most people were used to coming in after a movie started – they would stay until they saw a familiar scene in the next showing and then leave. This Sunday the movie was Double Indemnity , with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. It was in black and white.

I watched for about twenty minutes, but when it started getting mushy (kissing), I took the flashlight out of my jacket and began shining it onto the screen. When people looked around to see which punk was doing this, I shut the flashlight off, fast. When the audience settled down again, I switched the flashlight back on. I started making circles on the screen – my beam of light competing with the beam from the projector. I got such a feeling of joy from doing this, until the manager came down the aisle with a horrible look on his face and told me to come with him. I followed him into his office.

“What’s your name?”

“Jerry Silberman. Please don’t tell my father.”

“Give me the flashlight.”

He took my father’s flashlight and kicked me out of the theater.

It was drizzling outside. I felt ashamed, standing under the overhang in front of the theater, wondering whether or not to tell my dad about his flashlight and about the manager kicking me out. I decided it would be safer if I waited till my dad noticed the missing flashlight himself … and that might not happen for months. He was born in Russia but came to Milwaukee with his family when he was eleven. He wasn’t dumb, but he was very innocent, and I knew what I could get by with if I wanted to evade a situation.

After I waited in the rain for an hour and ten minutes, my father drove up. I jumped into the car.

“So – how was the movie?” he asked.

“It was great, Daddy. It was really good.”

I started taking acting lessons with Herman Gottlieb the day after my thirteenth birthday.

I was eleven when I learned about sex – from my cousin Buddy, naturally. We were both in a co-ed summer camp. I couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“Oh, Buddy, what’re you talking about?”

“It’s the truth! You put your poopy into her thing – honest to God.”

“Well, how could that ever make babies?”

“Because you’ve got to put your germs into her germs. That’s how you do it.”

“… Well, what if you’re embarrassed? I’m not going to take it out in front of a girl.”

“Are you telling me you wouldn’t like to show it to her if she showed you her whatcha-call-it?”

“… Well …”

Then Cousin Buddy told this crazy idea to Alan Pinkus, another one of our friends. Alan was more shocked than I was.

“You’re nuts.”

“Well, how do you think you get babies, Alan? Do you think the stork brings them?”

Buddy tried his best to make Alan feel like a baby. Alan was embarrassed.

“No, of course not…. I just thought it came from … putting your saliva in with her saliva.”

“You mean spitting at each other?” Buddy laughed so hard that I started laughing too. That was when I figured that Buddy must be right. He was an expert about these kinds of things.