Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor Are Perfect Together in This Comedy Thriller

When the subject of iconic on-screen duos gets raised among movie lovers today, they often look to interracial buddy action comedies: Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in Rush Hour; Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in 48 HRS.; and Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black. Many of these movies owe a debt of gratitude to one movie that pioneered the genre: Arthur Hiller’s 1976 comedy-thriller Silver Streak, starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor.

Silver Streak combined three trends in early ‘70s Hollywood, resulting in one of the industry’s groundbreaking blockbusters of the decade. First, the movie capitalized on popular disaster movies of the era by setting its murder mystery premise on a high-speed train. Simultaneously, it cast its main protagonist as Wilder, whose star was on the rise thanks to his memorable collaborations with director Mel Brooks and his legendary performance in the title role in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Then there’s the addition of stand-up comedian Pryor, who was racking up multiple Grammy awards for his revolutionary comedy albums. The combination of a thriller with the pairing of Wilder and Pryor seemed like a recipe for disaster on paper. Yet, Silver Streak found lighting in a bottle in ways nobody saw coming.

‘Silver Streak’ Starts As A Hitchcock-Inspired Thriller

Silver Streak was the brainchild of screenwriter Colin Higgins, who later transitioned to a brief but successful directing career with hits such as Foul Play and 9 to 5. Conceived as a lonely man meets beautiful woman tale on a train, the movie initially was designed as a solo vehicle for Wilder playing the role of Los Angeles book editor George Caldwell. While taking the Silver Streak train from L.A. to Chicago, Caldwell finds himself attracted to Hilly (Jill Clayburgh), the personal secretary to a Rembrandt historian. As the two are about to make love in Hilly’s cabin, Caldwell witnesses the historian’s body get thrown off the train. Caldwell tries to search the historian’s cabin for answers when confronted by two goons (Ray Walston and Richard Kiel) who subsequently toss him off the train.

With help from a biplane pilot, Caldwell gets back on board the train, where he meets Silver Streak’s main antagonist, Roger Devereau (The Prisoner’s Patrick McGooghan). Devereau is a major art dealer who has been forging Rembrandt paintings and assigns his goons to find the dead historian’s letters that prove his crime. When Devereau frames Caldwell for killing the federal agent (Ned Beatty) who investigated him on the train, Caldwell evades and kills Kiel with a harpoon gun before getting knocked off the train again. In the tradition of Strangers on a Train, Silver Streak plays like a Hitchcockian thriller, with Wilder’s straight-man hero acting the polar opposite of his previous over-the-top characters. The gears shift, however, when Pryor shows up on screen midway through the movie.

‘Silver Streak’ Found Magic In Pairing Wilder And Pryor

From the very moment Wilder’s Caldwell hops on board the train in Silver Streak, he comes across the variety of the aforementioned colorful characters. But none of them had a bigger impact on the story than Pryor’s fugitive car thief Grover T. Muldoon. Though Pryor co-wrote the Western satire hit Blazing Saddles for Mel Brooks, the comedian was robbed of the chance to work alongside Wilder as Black Bart due to his well-documented drug abuse. Director Hiller, however, saw an opportunity to translate Pryor’s standup act into a credible acting performance. What they did not expect was the match made in heaven between Pryor and Wilder.

Pryor’s Grover enters the movie after he’s discovered by Caldwell in the backseat of a hotheaded sheriff’s stolen patrol car. From that moment forward, Silver Streak becomes a buddy movie where Pryor’s streetwise con man breaks the initial dramatic tension by breaking the classically trained Wilder out of his comfort zone. Even more genius is the fact that their comedic scenes do not slow down the overall narrative. Among such unforgettable moments that exemplify this approach is when Pryor uses shoe polish to put Wilder in blackface and teach him jive talk with a boombox to pass the authorities getting back on the train. Though it is a scene that many deem offensive from a 2024 mindset, the irony is so do Pryor and Wilder.

Originally, a Caucasian train rider was supposed to enter the bathroom startled by the sight of Caldwell dancing and jiving. Wilder later recounted his uneasiness about the scene when reading the script during the 2009 interview Gene Wilder: Be In The Moment, Today. The actor revealed that after reading the scene, he suggested Pryor play Grover with the belief he could make it less offensive. His instincts proved correct when Pryor suggested replacing the random Caucasian man with a black shoe polish worker who walks in unfazed by the situation. It resulted in one of Silver Steak’s most laugh-out-loud moments for audiences in 1976.

In addition to his dynamite chemistry with Wilder, Pryor revealed how he could tonally shift his performance in an instant. The comedian makes the most of his improv abilities throughout his screen time in Silver Streak. That culminates midway through the movie when Pryor’s Grover poses as a train steward, interrupting a tense conversation between Caldwell, Hilly, and Devereau. Planning to rescue his new friend, Grover playfully flirts with Hilly, much to the annoyance of Devereau, who calls him the “N Word.” The comedy stops dead in its tracks as soon as a defiant Grover brandishes a gun to Devereau’s face. While Grover’s heroic moment in the defiance of racism added to Silver Streak’s winning comedy, it added a layer of reality that Pryor was so gifted at displaying on screen, which would make anyone stand up and cheer.

‘Silver Streak’ Is A Rare Action Movie For Wilder And Pryor

Much like the Billy Crystal action comedy Running Scared, Silver Streak is a rare picture in Wilder and Pryor’s respective filmographies featuring heavy action sequences. Fighting for his life, Wilder’s Caldwell is put into physical jeopardy against some deadly goons and running atop the moving train. Additionally, Wilder and Pryor’s characters get into a big shootout with Devereau’s goons before jumping off the train. These action set pieces were so big that some were later used as stock footage for the ‘80s stuntman-themed television series The Fall Guy starring Lee Majors.

The biggest action sequence of Silver Streak is a climax fitting for the era of The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, and Earthquake. The finale sees Caldwell and the authorities engage in a major shootout with Devereau and his men on the stalled train. Things get real when Devereau takes control of the train while holding Hildy hostage, and it is up to Caldwell and Grover to save the day. With helicopters, a high-speed train and Wilder using an AR-18 rifle to stop Devereau, Silver Streak reaches its larger-than-life finale with the runaway train’s spectacular crash into Central Station in Chicago. In the pre-CGI times, the majority of this sequence was executed with physical stunts and miniatures that seem like a lost art in modern cinema.

Silver Streak was a completely refreshing comedy-thriller that dared to break the conventions of blockbusters in the ‘70s. Instead of the movie leaning hard on a serious interracial partnership as seen in such classics as The Defiant Ones and In the Heat of the Night, Streak’s Wilder and Pryor were able to combine their gifted comedic talents to make their on-screen chemistry cross racial lines. They would go on to find greater success in the 1980 film Stir Crazy, where their relationship is front and center, and later re-teamed for See No Evil, Hear No Evil in 1989 and Another You in 1991. Additionally, Streak’s combination of the buddy comedy and the dramatic thriller genres would leap forward six years later with Walter Hill’s 48 HRS., ushering in a wave of interracial action comedies.

Silver Streak is available to rent on Apple TV+ in the U.S.

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