Almost a decade on from his death, Gene Wilder‘s widow is opening up about some of his final moments.
Karen Boyer, who was married to the late Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory star for 25 years before he died aged 83 in 2016, has revealed his touching final words in a new documentary.
“The music was playing in the background – Ella Fitzgerald was singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and I was lying next to him and he sat up in bed and he said, ‘I trust you’,” Boyer says in Remembering Gene Wilder.
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She continues: “And then he said, ‘I love you.’ That’s the last thing he said.”
Wilder, whose lengthy stage and screen career included memorable roles in The Prouders (1967) and Young Frankenstein (1974), was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s three years before his death.
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The Oscar nominee’s diagnosis was not disclosed by his family until after his death, as per his wishes.
In the documentary, Boyer – who became Wilder’s fourth wife when they married in 1991 – says she first noticed her late husband’s memory challenges when he struggled to remember Young Frankenstein‘s title, which she says was “his favourite movie”.
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“He never really accepted that he had Alzheimer’s, and maybe by the time we found out that’s what it was, his hippocampus didn’t let him remember,” Boyer says.
“So I’m not sure that he ever knew. When I’d see him slip away further from me I was sick to my stomach but I had to keep smiling and tell him that everything was okay.”
The couple met when Wilder was conducting research for his 1989 film See No Evil, Hear No Evil.
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Boyer, who worked as a speech consultant, did not go on her first date with Wilder until more than a year after their first meeting.
Their relationship began after Wilder’s third wife, actress and comedian Gilda Radner, died in 1989 aged 42 following an ovarian cancer diagnosis.
”Gene was wonderful; he was the best husband I think anybody could ask for,” Boyer says.
“To love and be loved is the best gift anybody could ask for, and we had that.”
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