The movie, a comedy called The Frisco Kid, featured Gene Wilder as a Polish rabbi on his way to San Francisco. Wayne was set to play Tommy Lillard, a bank robber who befriends the protagonist.

Gene Wilder entered the world with the given name ... Perhaps Wilder’s most Jewish role was in 1979’s “The Frisco Kid,” in which Wilder plays Rabbi Avram Belinski, who travels from Poland ...