As tributes flowed for comic actor Gene Wilder, who passed away on Tuesday aged 83, it has emerged that so much of Wilder’s genius extended far beyond the screen.

Wilder, who starred in Blazing Saddles, The Producers and Young Frankenstein, was also a gifted comedy writer.

But he is best remembered for his performance in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’s eponymous lead role.

And his idea for one of that film’s best scenes serves as a testament to his storytelling intelligence.

Wilder’s suggestion was not only funny, but also perfectly established Willy Wonka as an unpredictable trickster not to be trusted.

A piece of cinema brilliance

When Willy Wonka first greets the group of golden ticket winners in the film, he emerges from his factory, hobbling out with a limp and a cane in hand.

Wonka hasn’t been seen in public for several years, so nobody is quite sure if his apparent condition is real or not.

And just as he looks like he’s going to collapse on to the red carpet, Wonka rolls through with a graceful somersault.

It later emerged that Wilder himself had conjured the idea.

Gene Wilder and great mate Richard Pryor in See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Photo: AAP

In a 2013 interview with 92nd Street Y, he recounted how director Mel Stuart asked him to look over the script.

“I said, ‘It’s very good but there’s something missing’,” he explained.

“If I play that part, I want to come out with a cane and there’s something wrong with my leg and come down the stairs slowly and then have the cane stick into one of the bricks that are down there and then get up, start to fall over, then roll around and then they all laugh and applaud.”

Wilder recounted that Stuart was puzzled about, and resistant to, the idea.

“‘What do you wanna do that for?’ (he asked). I said: ‘From that time on, no one would know if I was lying or telling the truth’.”

The ad-lib vignette turned out to be a piece of cinematic genius.

Throughout the whole film, Wonka’s motives are impossible to read, as Wilder’s seemingly innocuous script built upon Wonka’s character as volatile and wildly unpredictable.

Watch the full clip below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9jc5blzRM

Wilder revealed in the same interview that he had also contributed the entire Transylvania Station scene to his 1974 film Young Frankenstein, which arguably contains a subtle piece of comedy referencing the Glenn Miller classic, Chattanooga Choo Choo.

Watch the scene from Young Frankenstein below: