It's Good to Be the King

by James Robert Parish

  While Mel and Gene were refining their latest draft of Young Frankenstein, Mike Medavoy negotiated a potential deal for its filming at Columbia Pictures, where Peter Guber was then head of production. By the time Brooks and Wilder finished revamping the screenplay, the project was estimated to require a $2.3 million budget. However, Leo Jaffe, chairman of Columbia Pictures and part of the old guard who didn’t “get” Brooks, insisted the studio would only fund the project to a maximum of $2 million.

  Negotiations between Columbia and Brooks/Wilder had bogged down over the budget, but what really killed the prospective transaction was Brooks’s insistence that Young Frankenstein be filmed in black and white rather than in color. Mel was not being arbitrary or old-fashioned in this “artsy” demand. He reasoned that since this picture would be a tribute to director James Whale’s classic genre entries (Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein), the new entry must recapture the look of those atmospheric 1930s productions, which had been filmed in black and white. On a more practical basis, Brooks’s team had already done makeup tests for the monster and discovered that the appropriate skin look (i.e., a greenish tone) lost its proper effect when photographed in color.

  Columbia refused to back down on the issues of the budget and their insistence that the movie be lensed in color. (In actuality, the studio was not that excited about the script.) This prompted producer Mike Gruskoff to shop the project elsewhere. Among others, he sent a script to his friend Alan Ladd Jr., a top production executive at Twentieth Century-Fox. Almost overnight, a deal was made with Fox.

  • • •

  During this period, Brooks had grown quite enthusiastic about making Young Frankenstein. Among the property’s many virtues for Mel were that the film would deal with an individual who finds a way to sidestep death. This certainly appealed to Brooks, who had a lifelong concern with mortality. For another, Mel would be working in a genre that was close to his heart. “These [horror pictures] were the movies I loved most as a child. They burned images in my head: long shadows, backlighting, fog. I mean there was always fog in the rooms for no reason. Why fog? Crazy, but I loved it.” Another intriguing aspect for the moviemaker was the story line’s focus on medicine, long a topic of special interest to Mel.

  In a mixture of facetiousness and utter seriousness, Brooks observed about the screenplay he and Wilder had fashioned, “In many ways we’ve gone back to the original thinking of Mary Shelley, if not her original story. I think she was the first person to discover womb envy. I think I’m the first person to call it that, but what it is, is that most men get even with women for being able to have children by saying ‘I can paint, I can write,’ and women say, ‘You’re full of shit. Look—a baby.’ And of course, she’s the winner. So here’s this scientist and he says, ‘All right, so can I make a baby. I’ll put a few rods in his neck and plug him in somewhere and we’ll make a life.’ That’s really it: to create life, like a woman.”

  Since Brooks was coscripting, directing, and coproducing the venture and was the pivotal force behind the success of Blazing Saddles, he met with little opposition when he stepped into the role of spokesman for the new project, which owed so much to Gene Wilder’s idea and collaboration on the screenplay. Mel pointed out that his forthcoming picture dealt with “the ignorant vs. the intelligent. The mob vs. the intelligent people.… The story of Dr. Frankenstein addresses itself to the fear quotient. The monster is just symbolic of his mind, and the mob hates his mind, they hate his imagination.” But Brooks also noted of this film, which tipped its hat to such horror genre satires as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein: “If they [i.e., moviegoers] pay three dollars to forget about their problems and just want to laugh, that’s fine too.” In a rather disingenuous statement, Brooks (who always highly valued the importance of money) insisted, “You know, they could never pay me enough money to do what I do; it’s a total joy, hearing people laugh.… it’s wonderful, it’s thrilling. That’s the best.”

  • • •

  By now, Brooks had developed a rationale for how he filled key roles in his movies. “I like people with big talents and small neuroses—not always an easy combination to find. I’ve discovered that if the neurosis is too big, it diminishes the talent and you wind up working too hard for what you get. I reserve the right to be the only psychotic on the set. I also try to surround myself with the people I love—make a family out of the company. So I tend to use the same people over and over.”

  The cast for Young Frankenstein was quickly assembled. Wilder was to be the finicky Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, a man who eventually learns to embrace his forebear’s scientific accomplishments. Peter Boyle was to play the scary creation assembled from odd parts of stolen corpses, while Marty Feldman was to be Igor, the humpback servant at the eerie Frankenstein castle in Transylvania. Kenneth Mars (of The Producers) was handed the wacko role of the village’s demented police inspector. Veteran actress Cloris Leachman, best known to the public for costarring on Mary Tyler Moore’s TV sitcom, was hired as the loony housekeeper at the castle Frankenstein. (Leachman and Brooks had worked together on a few past TV shows. He wrote the role of the mysterious and sinister Frau Blücher especially for Cloris.)

  Initially, Teri Garr, a dancer/singer with several (minor) credits on TV and in film, was tested to play Dr. Frankenstein’s refined fiancee. However, Brooks finally convinced Madeline Kahn to accept this featured role of the emotionally fickle young lady who develops an overwhelming yen for the physically well-endowed monster. Thereafter, Garr auditioned for and won the part of the German Inga, the scientist’s buxom and very accommodating assistant. (Teri’s mother had already been hired to do the women’s wardrobe on this picture. During the production of Young Frankenstein, Teri and Gene Wilder embarked on a romance.)

  Gene Hackman filled the last of the film’s lead assignments. A seasoned stage, TV, and film performer (and the winner of an Academy Award for The French Connection), Hackman thought it would be a lark to be part of the inspired insanity of a Mel Brooks movie. Preferring not to be billed (and thus give moviegoers a surprise), Gene took on the role of the Blind Hermit, who tries to befriend the inarticulate monster.

  As for Brooks, in this feature, his performance contributions consisted of providing the noise of a screeching cat during the dart sequence, making the sounds of a werewolf in one of the Transylvania scenes, and doing a voiceover of the elder Frankenstein that is heard when his descendant explores the hidden lab. (It was also Brooks’s handwriting seen in a close-up of a lab label that read, “Do NOT use this Brain—Abnormal.”) To score this picture, Brooks signed on the faithful John Morris, with John C. Howard as film editor (as he had been for Blazing Saddles). Veteran cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld joined the production team and, in years to come, would photograph several other Brooks projects.

  • • •

  Originally Young Frankenstein was scheduled to start shooting in November 1973, but it was not until February 26, 1974, that the cameras actually began to roll. During the 54-day shoot, the cast and crew went on location to the University of Southern California (for the Baltimore Medical School sequence) and to MGM’s backlot. At Metro, the nighttime grave robbery sequence was shot in the yard of the church where Greer Garson was wed in Mrs. Miniver. The Young Frankenstein railroad station sequence was filmed at the site of Ronald Colman’s arrival in Random Harvest. Part of the footage for the villagers storming the Frankenstein castle was accomplished on the central set of MGM’s The Brothers Grimm. Brooks and company used the Mayfair Music Hall in Santa Monica to represent the Bucharest Hall of Science, where Dr. Frankenstein demonstrates his creation’s lifelike capabilities.

  Back at Twentieth Century-Fox, the Frankenstein castle—which covered 15,000 square feet and had battlements that rose to an impressive 35 feet—was erected by production designer Dale Hennesy at a cost of $350,000. Some of the atmospheric laboratory equipment utilized was supplied by Ken Strickfaden, who had saved many of the apparatuses he had c
reated for the 1931 Frankenstein movie.

  • • •

  In a considerable change from his highly tense days as director of The Producers, Brooks felt one of his key jobs on the sets of Young Frankenstein was “to make everyone laugh.” It was not unusual for Mel, in the midst of one of his impromptu performances for the cast and crew, to crumple to the floor and lie there clutching his sides with laughter. At other moments—between takes—he might engage one of his actors in an imaginary sword fight. A bit later, without warning, he might launch into his impersonation of Gene Kelly singing and dancing the title song of Singin’ in the Rain. Completing his spur-of-the-moment exhibition, he might shout out to the onlookers, “[Federico] Fellini and Dick Lester are great directors, but are they tops in taps?”

  Madeline Kahn enthused of her director on Young Frankenstein, “Mel is involved with controlled madness. I love that. I just love it. Mel is going for lunacy. He gets several takes on a scene and then he says ‘Now do one more and go bananas!’—and often that’s the one he likes. He is a courageous man. His humor is connected up to some main artery, like Mad magazine and the National Lampoon, and he’s always on. I could never be that way: I’ve spent all my time and money to be respectable and dignified; to be a lady. I’d be afraid of just walking around and doing what I think is crazy. But Mel loves it!” (Years later, Kahn said regarding her several moviemaking adventures with Brooks, “They were fun, but there was also tension because everyone wanted to please him, so they felt they had to be funny.”)

  Sensing that one day Wilder would want to direct his own vehicles, Brooks made time during the Young Frankenstein shoot to give his friend pointers. Gene detailed, “Mel would say, ‘Do you know the trouble I’m in because I didn’t shoot that close-up? Don’t do that.’ I would say, ‘To whom are you talking?’ ‘You, when you’re directing.’ ‘Directing what?’ Never mind,’ he said.” Meanwhile, Wilder gave his director/coscripter a few tips on their project, suggesting Brooks be less broad in his interpretation of their script.

  As filming drew to a close, Gene got sentimental. He explained, “We’ve got only two more weeks of shooting. I don’t want to leave Transylvania. I’ve been so happy here.” Brooks grew expansive about his latest screen project. He enthused, “What I wanted, was the truth behind the horror conventions, the way real people—crazy but real—would behave in that castle. And I wanted to do it with the greatest affection for those great old films. All the time we were shooting, I was sure the picture was going to be a failure. We were having too wonderful a time. Work should be painful, I thought. How can this be good if we’re enjoying it so much?”

  Brooks said of the tone he employed for Young Frankenstein, “It’s not satire, it’s a salute. It says, ‘Mel Brooks Presents Young Frankenstein’ so the audience will, of course, know that the comedy will go an inch or two further than one usually expects. But you can’t keep winking because it diminishes the melodrama. The melodrama has to be there.” He also pointed out, “Again I’m fooling around with the Germans. The only noticeable Jew is Dr. Frankenstein himself, who is played by Gene Wilder. We didn’t play it Jewish, but I think it was there.”

  Above all, Mel highlighted with great fervor, “I don’t want to make just another movie. I want to make trouble. I want to say in comic terms, 7’accuse.’ We dealt with bigotry in Saddles and with neo-Fascism in Producers. Underneath the comedy in Frankenstein, the doctor is undertaking the quest to defeat death—to challenge God. Our monster lives, therefore he wants love too. He’s really very touching in his lonely misery.”

  Mel’s primary criterion for judging if a scene worked was if it made him laugh. (He claimed he did not especially care what filmgoers at a showing might think of a particular sequence because, he reasoned, who knew if there ever would be an audience.) The next point was to please “the actors you’re working with, and then it’s the crew. You get a general sense of what’s going on through the reactions of people on the set. You ask everybody. A sandwich girl comes by and you play a scene for her; she’s totally uninterested, and if you get a laugh from her, you know you’re doing well. Then the editing room and finally the screening. I believe in showing the rough cuts and reworking a film. I can change a picture right up until the end, I have that in my contract. And that means the sound track as well.”

  Unlike his past productions, Mel condensed the editing process on Young Frankenstein. Nevertheless, he remained true to his editing philosophy: “My principle of cutting is you start with a scalpel and end with a blunt axe. Everyone usually does it the other way around. You know, knocking out whole scenes and ending by refining. But I start by taking out an “and,” an “if,” or a “but.” I play with a scene. Then when you have the rough cut, you start eliminating scenes.… In the final third of a picture you have to accelerate the pace; it has to gather speed and go over the top.” (One film editor of a Brooks project noted, “The man is a demon. Nothing less than greatness will satisfy him. He has the lonely passion for perfection.”) All told, Brooks edited Young Frankenstein 12 times—frame by frame. In the final week of postproduction work, the filmmaker spent many hours in a recording studio, providing grunts, snorts, groans, sighs, and so on to fill tiny gaps in the sound track.

  • • •

  As Young Frankenstein pushed toward its December 15, 1974, release date, Twentieth Century-Fox launched a strong promotional campaign. Brooks insisted upon actively participating in this crucial process. A facet of the studio’s publicity onslaught was to have a huge billboard painted on the side of the Playboy Building on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. Soon thereafter, the Writers Guild of America West objected to the ad, which labeled Young Frankenstein a “Mel Brooks Film” without listing the picture’s writing credits. Meanwhile, one of the studio ads was submitted to the guild, and this, too, was termed a contract violation, as was the film itself (which failed to repeat the writing credits at the end of the film along with the credits for the producer and the director). In the settlement, the guild received a $10,000 award—of which script collaborator Gene Wilder got $7,000.

  Young Frankenstein premiered at the Avco Theater in Westwood, a community just west of Beverly Hills. Many critics noted that the film was far better structured than Blazing Saddles but—for better or worse—contained the usual array of lewd vulgarity, as well as Brooksian wordplay. (For example, arriving at the Frankenstein castle, Wilder’s scientist notes, “What knockers,” referring to the ornate fixtures on the massive front door. To which Teri Garr’s shapely Inga responds proudly, “Thank you, doctor.” There was also the inclusion of Mel’s beloved gambit in which the odd servant opens the door and instructs Frankenstein, “Walk this way,” and the doctor immediately duplicates the strange loping gait of the humpbacked Igor.)

  The new release earned several enthusiastic reviews. Charles Champlin (of the Los Angeles Times) endorsed the picture as a “likable, unpredictable blending of slapstick and sentiment.” Vincent Canby (of the New York Times) ranked it as “Mel Brooks’s funniest, most cohesive comedy to date.” Made at an estimated cost of $2.8 million, Young Frankenstein grossed well over $38 million dollars in domestic distribution and earned far more through its foreign release, reissues (promoted as “The Scariest Comedy of All Time”), and ancillary income. (By the late 1990s, Mel had earned well over $5 million from his involvement with Young Frankenstein, as he did similarly with Blazing Saddles. Over the decades, Young Frankenstein remained for many in the legion of fans of Brooks the filmmaker’s ultimate creation: a well-crafted satire bursting with zany performances, loony plot twists, wonderful atmospheric set pieces, and amusing satirical spins on the horror film genre.

  Thanks to Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles being back-to-back hits, Brooks was Hollywood’s new King of Comedy. It was a lofty position once held by Jerry Lewis and, earlier, by Charles Chaplin. However, the always wary Brooks remained suspicious of his latest run of good luck. Of his enviable industry standing he insisted, “I’ll believe
it when I’m dead. Five years from now, I could be back in the shit.”

  26

  On the Hollywood Treadmill

  Now it’s emotional. I don’t buy too much, but I can say no to jobs. I can say no! A great relief. My throat doesn’t click with anxiety when pick up the check. I drive the only Buick around here. That’s a Jewish car.… but money means to me, walking by a sporting-goods shop, I see a nice pair of sneakers, I buy it.

  –Mel Brooks, 1975

  While Mel Brooks was absorbed in the making of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, Anne Bancroft focused her primary attention on raising their toddler, Max. Nevertheless, she found time to headline a 1974 ABC-TV special, Annie & the Hoods (for which Mel was one of the guest performers), and to costar in two 1975 theatrical film releases, Neil Simon’s The Prisoner of Second Avenue and the period thriller The Hindenburg.

  By now, Mel was weighing his career options under his recent multifilm production deal with Twentieth Century-Fox Pictures. (Brooks’s Crossbow Production Company had its headquarters on the studio lot.) There were rumors that Brooks and Gene Wilder would follow up Young Frankenstein with a spoof of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. However, the rosy success of Wilder’s latest film allowed Gene to negotiate his own production agreement with Twentieth Century-Fox. In turn, this led to Wilder’s writing, directing, and starring in 1975’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’s Younger Brother, a project that utilized some of Mel Brooks’s “stock company” of actors and technical talent. As a result of this and subsequent other Wilder showcases, Gene and Mel went in different career directions and were unable to continue their successful working relationship, although they remained friends over the years.