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The Marriage
Like in the romantic fairy tales I always loved, Gene Wilder and I were married by the mayor of a small village in the south of France, September 18, 1984. We had met in August of 1981, while making the movie Hanky Panky, a not-too-successful romantic adventure-comedy-thriller. I had been a fan of Gene Wilder's for many years, but the first time I saw him in person, my heart fluttered—I was hooked. It felt like my life went from black and white to Technicolor. Gene was funny and athletic and handsome, and he smelled good. I was bitten with love and you can tell it in the movie. The brash and feisty comedienne everyone knew from "Saturday Night Live" turned into this shy, demure ingenue with knocking knees. It wasn't good for my movie career, but it changed my life.
Up to that point, I had been a workaholic. I'd taken one job after another for over ten years. But just looking at Gene made me want to stop ... made me want to cook. . . made me want to start a garden ... to have a family and settle down. To complicate things, I was married at the time and Gene had been married and divorced twice before and was in no hurry to make another commitment. I lived in a house I had just bought in Connecticut and he lived in Los Angeles. I got an amicable divorce six months later and Gene and I lived together on and off for the next two-and-a-half years. My new "career" became getting him to marry me. I turned down job offers so I could keep myself geographically available. More often than not, I had on a white, frilly apron like Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year when she left her job to exclusively be Spencer Tracey's wife.Unfortunately, my performing ego wasn't completely content in an apron, and in every screenplay Gene was writing, or project he had under development, I finagled my way into a part.
We were married in the south of France because Gene loved France. If he could have been born French, he would have been—that was his dream.
The only time I had been to France was when I was eighteen. I went with a girlfriend in the sixties when it was popular to go for less than five dollars a day—of course, your parents still gave you a credit card in case you got in trouble. We went on an Icelandic Airlines flight. The plane was so crowded, it seemed like there were twelve seats across and it tilted to whatever side the stewardess was serving on.
We landed in Luxembourg and then our next stop was Brussels. My girlfriend was of Polish descent, but had been born in Argentina—she spoke four languages fluently. After four days, she was sick of me saying, "What?," "What did they say?"—she couldn't stand me. She just wanted to kill me. I was miserable all through the trip. I was miserable in Luxembourg. I was miserable in Brussels. We slept at the University of Brussels; you could stay there for a dollar a night in the student dormitory, where we spent the evening watching the movie Greener Pastures with French subtitles. We went on to Amsterdam where we stayed in a youth hostel. I'll never forget that there was pubic hair on the soap in the bathroom and it made me sick. Years later, I had Roseanne Roseannadanna talk about it.
There I was, eighteen years old in Europe, and all the terrible things that happen to tourists happened to me. In Amsterdam I lost my traveler's checks and spent one whole day looking for the American Express office. I was so upset by the Anne Frank House that I got horrible diarrhea in the lobby of the Rembrandt Museum and never saw one painting. When we went on to France, my girlfriend's boyfriend met us in Paris—romantic Paris! I found the city hectic and weird. Plus, I was on my own. My friend was with her boyfriend; I was the third person—the girl alone.
I don't know why, but everywhere I went, everywhere I looked, a man would be playing with himself. I always have been a starer—a voyeur. I must have been staring too much at other people because I would always get in trouble. I'd be waiting to sit down in a restaurant and a man would come out of the restroom (this must have happened about four or five times), and he would suddenly start staring at me and undoing his fly and playing with himself. Yuck! This wasn't the romantic Paris I had heard of.
I was very isolated because of the language barrier. I felt lonelier than I had ever been. One night after a terrible less-than-two-dollar dinner, I actually ended up running out into the middle of the Champs Elysées trying to get hit by traffic. Yeah, I ran out onto the boulevard and lay down on the ground before the cars came whipping around the comer—you wouldn't believe how fast they come around there. My girlfriend's boyfriend ran out and dragged me back. I was lying down in the street waiting to get run over because I was so lonely and he picked me up and dragged me back. The next day I made a reservation on Air France first class to go home. I only stayed two weeks and spent a fortune flying home. I never went back until Gene took me in 1982. It was the first summer we were living together, and Gene couldn't wait to show me Paris and the French countryside and the southern provinces of the country he adored.
Gene reintroduced Europe to me, and with him I learned it could be a pleasure and I could love it. He took me to one particularchâteau in the mountains in the south of France. We stayed two weeks and I discovered that traveling can be wonderful if you stop to enjoy where you are. Our room was luxurious, with a spectacular view of the Riviera. There was a tennis court and a pool and a restaurant that had one star in the Michelin guidebook. Food was served like precious gems, and I remember we watched the French Open tennis tournament on television in our splendid room, in French. Mats Wilander won.
Tennis is another joy of Gene's life, so I took lessons in California for thirty-five dollars an hour twice a week. I bought a Prince racket and some perky Chris Evert-type outfits, and learned to hit the ball. Gene was infinitely patient with me, hitting balls to me while I klutzed all over the court. I wanted to be M-A-R-R-I-E-D to Gene, but it sure wasn't my tennis game that got him...
