Karen Boyer, Gene Wilder’s widow, remembered the last words her late husband said before his death in August 2016.
A new “Remembering Gene Wilder” documentary focused on the actor’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease and into his final days.
Within the film, Boyer recalled listening to Ella Fitzgerald’s legendary hit, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” with Gene before he spoke for the last time.
“The music was playing in the background — Ella Fitzgerald was singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ and I used to be lying next to him, and he sat up in bed, and he said, ‘I trust you,’” she said, per People magazine.
“After which he said, ‘I really like you.’ That’s the very last thing he said.”
Wilder died on August 29, 2016, from complications with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 83.
Boyer remembered the primary time she became aware Wilder was fighting his memory when he couldn’t remember the title of “Young Frankenstein,” which she said was “his favorite movie.”
“He never really accepted that he had Alzheimers, and possibly by the point we came upon that’s what it was, his hippocampus didn’t let him remember,” she said in the film.
“So I’m undecided that he ever knew. Once I’d see him slip away farther from me, I used to be sick to my stomach, but I had to maintain smiling and tell him that every little thing was okay.”
Boyer added, “Gene was wonderful; he was the most effective husband I feel anybody could ask for. To like and be loved is the most effective gift anybody could ask for, and we had that.”
Wilder was married 4 times. His third marriage to fellow comedian Gilda Radner, an original “Saturday Night Live” forged member, lasted from 1984-89, when she died of complications from ovarian cancer.
The previous couple met on the set of the Sydney Poitier directed movie “Hanky Panky.”
He married Karen Webb (Boyer) in 1991, a supervisor for the New York League for the Hard of Hearing who had been an authority on his 1989 film, “See No Evil, Hear No Evil.”
Brian Scott Mednick, who published a biography in regards to the Hollywood icon titled “Gene Wilder: Funny and Sad,” remembered Wilder being completely enamored with Karen.
“Gene called Karen the nice love of his life,” Mednick told Woman’s World in 2018. “It was his fourth marriage and the longest; he died shortly before their twenty fifth wedding anniversary.
Gene admitted he was very unhappy for a very long time with Gilda. He didn’t think he’d get married again, and he said he didn’t consider in fate.
“And he nearly cried when telling an interviewer how passionate his love for Karen was. He said he all the time felt you make your life after which call it fate, but Karen made him consider in fate. Like several marriage, it wasn’t without its problems, but it surely was a really strong, loving marriage. He just idolized her.”