Balancing calm and crazy made Gene Wilder a brilliant comic actor

In the mid-1970s, my favorite actor, and probably the country's leading comic performer, was Gene Wilder. In 1974, both "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein" were huge hits, setting up Wilder for an improbable run of pictures built around his odd blend of talents. His face should have doomed him to be a character actor, but...