It's Good to Be the King

by James Robert Parish

  Throughout this long gestation period, David Geffen had become increasingly busy with his duties at DreamWorks, a film production company he had cofounded, and with his music industry responsibilities. Geffen finally realized he would not have the necessary time to devote to The Producers as it headed to Broadway and dropped out of the project. This led to a crucial backers’ audition held on April 9, 2000, at the Nola Rehearsal Studio on West 54th Street. To Brooks’s great relief, the invited money people were enthralled with the pending show and the backing fell quickly in place. (Mel traded his underlying rights in The Producers for a percentage share as one of the producers. Later, after the show became a gigantic hit, he sighed, “I wish I would have put a million bucks into it. I mean, I would have gone to a bank and borrowed it and I would have been [really] rich today. But I’m OK, you know? Who’s complaining?”

  To play the pivotal role of Max Bialystock, Mel had one person in mind: Nathan Lane, who had excelled in a variety of Broadway shows over the last several years (including a revival of the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum). One day in 1998 Lane was staying at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and decided to take a swim in the hotel pool. He recalled, “I got excited seeing the pool empty. And then up from the water pop the heads of Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks. That was the first day he ever mentioned my playing Bialystock.” Nathan was flattered by Mel’s offer but was unconvinced that he could erase people’s memories of Zero Mostel in the film original. Brooks remained tenacious in pursuing Lane to take on the key role.

  On March 2, 2000, when Nathan was guest host on TV’s Late Show with David Letterman, Brooks was a guest. During his segment, Mel whipped a piece of paper out of his pants, slapped it down the desk and said it was a contract for Lane to star in The Producers. Brooks demanded that the actor sign it on the spot. Lane said, “That’s what I like about you. The soft sell.” (Nathan didn’t sign it because it wasn’t a real contract. But the deal was already in the works.)

  Matthew Broderick first won Brooks’s attention after the actor did a Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in the mid-1990s. Mel decided that he wanted Matthew to take on the Leo Bloom role in The Producers. After hearing the music and reading the script, Broderick said yes. Others to join the cast were Cady Huffman as the Swedish bombshell (Ulla), Brad Oscar as unhinged playwright Franz Liebkind, Gary Beach as bizarre stage director Roger De Bris, and Roger Bart as Carmen Ghia (Roger’s prissy subordinate/lover).

  After a sellout pre-Broadway engagement in Detroit, The Producers bowed on Broadway at the St. James Theater on April 19, 2001. Daniel Okrent (of Entertainment Weekly) cautioned, “If you’re a Brooks fan who’s been disappointed with his films recently (and not so recently; he hasn’t made a good one in 20 years), you can rejoice in this cascade of bad taste, overripe satire, and inspired nuttiness. If you’re not a Brooks fan, stay away. This show is too funny, over-the-top, and skillfully staged to waste on the likes of you.” John Lahr (of The New Yorker) enthused, “What’s first-rate about this particular seduction is not the lyrics or the music or the choreography but Brooks’s antic imagination and the atmosphere of audacious liberty with which he whips up both the audience and his collaborators.”

  Michael Phillips (of the Los Angeles Times) was more cautious in his reaction to The Producers. He noted, “Brooks isn’t above stealing from himself, not to mention anybody else. ‘The King of Broadway’ sounds a great deal like Brooks’ ‘Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst’ from his 1970 film The Twelve Chairs. A lot of the Producers score glides in one ear and out the other (‘I Wanna Be a Producer,’ ‘’Til Him,’ even Lane’s climactic lament, ‘Betrayed’). But arranger Glen Kelly and orchestrator Doug Besterman have done wonders in terms of fleshing out Brooks’ efforts.” Don Shewey (of The Advocate) alerted, “If you’re the kind of person—like me—who has difficulty ignoring the fact that a straight audience is roaring at old-fashioned cliches of ditsy mincing queens, you may find The Producers hard to enjoy at times. Everybody else seems to love it.”

  Following the highly successful opening night, The Producers became the hottest show on Broadway—the biggest hit since 1975’s A Chorus Line. Prices for the musical were raised to a $100 high (with scalpers selling prime seats at $400 to $500 a shot). In a typical week, the show was grossing $1.1 million. In less than six months, the show, which had cost $10.5 million to mount, made back its initial outlay.

  Making Mel Brooks’s miraculous comeback truly complete, The Producers won a series of awards, first from the Drama Desk, then at the Tony Awards in early June 2001. Out of 15 nominations, it claimed 12 Tonys, beating the previous record of 10 wins held by Hello, Dolly! A beaming Mel bounded onto the Radio City Music Hall stage that night to accept three personal awards: Best Book (with Thomas Meehan), Best Score, and Best Musical. Buoyed by the show’s resounding success and his having proven all the doubters wrong about his ability to stage a show business resurgence, Brooks was at his most zany in accepting the trophies. At one point, he said, “I’m going to have to do the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life—act humble.” At another juncture in the limelight, Mel donned a Ftihrer-like moustache and thanked Hitler “for being such a funny guy on stage.” When Brooks called his fellow producers up on stage to join him in accepting the Best Musical prize, he said, “It would be foolish to try to thank them all.” He then looked at the assemblage and said, “You should have worn signs.” (Stroman, a two-time Tony winner that momentous night, said later of Brooks’s chutzpah at the Tonys, “He’s an extraordinary creature, really. No one else could have gotten away with what he did Sunday night.” She also acknowledged his guidance on the musical, “He gave me some great advice. He said to me, ‘Don’t tap the bell—ring the bell!’”)

  During the course of his Tony Awards acceptance speeches, Brooks thanked, among others, Sidney Glazier, who had produced the film version of The Producers but had no participation in the profits of the Broadway show. By now, Glazier was in his mid-80s and in poor health. When his children called the retired producer and told him about Brooks’s victory and his reference to Sidney, Glazier told his son, “The son of a bitch owes me money.”

  • • •

  As the newly anointed king of Broadway, Mel was constantly in the limelight—and loved most every minute of it. When a PBS documentary was shot to capture the cast recording session of The Producers, Mel was the focal point of the footage. (Both the album and the documentary won Grammy Awards.) Brooks and Thomas Meehan coauthored 2001’s The Producers: The Book, Lyrics, and Story Behind the Biggest Hit on Broadway! Later, Mel was on hand to help Susan Stroman pick replacements for Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick when they departed the long-running Broadway version of The Producers (only to return later for a special encore run). It was Mel who got the lion’s share of attention as various national touring companies of The Producers were launched and when he approved Jason Alexander (as Max Bialystock) and Martin Short (as Leo Bloom) for the musical’s high-profile Los Angeles engagement in 2003. There was much ado about Richard Dreyfuss when he was hired to play Max Bialystock in the London production of the megahit. However, amid great controversy, Dreyfuss left the show before its West End bow and Nathan Lane flew to London to take over the demanding part until a replacement could be found.

  Amid the avalanche of publicity concerning Brooks’s Broadway success and his tremendous show business comeback, Mel’s only sorrow was that neither his father (who had died back in 1929) nor his mother (who passed away in 1989) could share in his newfound acclaim. However, Brooks must have taken great comfort in knowing how proud they would have been of Melvin Kaminsky, who fought his way out of a Brooklyn ghetto to emerge the unsinkable monarch of comedy. As he told Thomas Meehan one day in Chicago during the tryout of The Producers, “This is the happiest I’ve been since I was 9 years old.”

  32

  Carrying On

  Don’t grow up. Growing up will do you in. Getting old doe
sn’t make you wise or smart. It just makes you old.

  —Mel Brooks, 2004

  In the wake of the hugely successful Broadway launch of The Producers in the spring of 2001, Mel Brooks found himself increasingly engulfed by supervisory chores on various U.S. and foreign productions of the acclaimed show. Over the coming years, versions of the hit musical were staged in Australia, Japan, Korea, Denmark, Italy, Israel, and elsewhere around the globe, including Las Vegas.

  Certainly, Brooks thrived on all the newfound industry respect, public attention, and financial rewards generated by his fantastic comeback. However, eventually it reached a saturation point at which Brooks and Anne Bancroft felt the show essentially had taken control of their lives. (An amusing spin on this predicament of excessive success was played out in winter 2004 on the fourth season of the cable TV comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. In this Larry David sitcom, Mel made several guest appearances as himself, and he was joined by Bancroft in the plot-twisting season finale that wrapped up a story arc about why Larry David had been cast to take over the demanding role of Max Bialystock on Broadway.)

  The Brookses did their best to separate their daily existence from the swirling world of The Producers. When their married son, Max, who had been on the writing staff of TV’s Saturday Night Live from 2001 to 2003, wrote a book parodying a survival guide (2003’s The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead), Mel used his celebrity status to help promote the tome. (Mel himself had been signed in early 2003 to write a book—an anecdotal memoir—but it had not yet reached fruition.) While Anne was seen in the cable TV version of Tennessee Williams’s The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone in 2003, Mel’s one-act play, Of Father and Sons, was given a reading in New York City (but did not lead to a stage production). In addition, Mel took on the role of Wiley the Sheep in the PBS cartoon series Jakers—The Adventures of Piggley Winks, which debuted in September 2003. (Brooks accepted this TV series assignment as a project to amuse his young grandchild Samantha—the daughter of his son Edward.) Mel also lent his distinctive voice to the role of master inventor Bigweld in the expensively produced animated feature Robots, released in 2005.

  Bancroft saw a showcase performance of Ann Randolph’s one-woman show Squeeze Box, based on Randolph’s experience working in a homeless shelter. Anne was so enchanted with the piece that, later, she backed an off-Broadway production of the property that was mounted in 2003. Having already provided a voice for the animated comedy/fantasy feature Delgo (set for a 2006 release), Bancroft was cast in late 2003 to play a character lead in the film Spanglish. However, she dropped out of this Adam Sandler vehicle due to poor health and was replaced by Cloris Leachman in the part of the star’s mother-in-law.

  • • •

  Ever since The Producers became a smash hit in New York City, it was assumed that one day the stage show would be converted into a film musical. By mid-2004, that supposition had become a reality. The picture was to be made by Universal Pictures in conjunction with Brooksfilms and other backers. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick were hired to re-create their roles on screen, while Susan Stroman was green-lighted to make her film directing debut with this $45 million project.

  Initially, the movie was to have been shot in Toronto, Canada. However, Brooks and the other decision makers were persuaded by tax incentives to shoot instead at the new Steiner Studios in Mel’s hometown of Brooklyn. Nicole Kidman was announced to play the part of the high-voltage Ulla, but she dropped out and was replaced by Uma Thurman. TV/film comedian Will Ferrell was cast in the role of Franz Liebkind, while Gary Beach and Roger Bart repeated their roles as, respectively, Roger De Bris and Carmen Ghia.

  It should have been a joyous time for Mel as filming on The Producers got under way at the Steiner Studios on February 28, 2005. The huge sets were ambitious and elaborate and the costumes flashy, and the screen adaptation had been done by Brooks and Thomas Meehan. (Mel wrote a new song, “There’s Nothing Like a Show on Broadway,” for the film edition.) However, as it was revealed later, Brooks was then undergoing tremendous personal stress. Anne Bancroft had been diagnosed with uterine cancer. Her condition had greatly deteriorated and she had been admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital. During this torturous period, Mel did his utmost to keep the tragic situation out of the media so he could deal privately with his wife’s ordeal. As a result, Brooks was on the set of The Producers far less often than he had anticipated and was not available to the degree he had intended in order to help and guide Stroman through her directorial debut.

  On June 6, 2005, Anne Bancroft, age 73, died at Mount Sinai Hospital. She was buried at the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, in Westchester County, New York. A few weeks later, on June 22, a tribute to Anne Bancroft was held at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills. Carl Reiner hosted the event, at which a retrospective of film clips from Bancroft’s movies and TV appearances was shown. At the start of the event, Brooks requested that no one come up to him to express their sympathy. He explained that he didn’t need their tears; he had more than enough of his own. On June 27, 2005, Mel organized a private memorial for Anne at Manhattan’s St. James Theater, where The Producers was still playing. Among the notables who spoke of their friendship with the luminous Bancroft were actors Matthew Broderick, Patty Duke, and Nathan Lane, and musician Paul Simon (who played a solo acoustic version of “Mrs. Robinson,” the memorable song so closely associated with Anne’s movie The Graduate). As at the prior service in Beverly Hills, Brooks instructed the attendees, “If any of you are grieving, keep it to yourself. I don’t want to hear it.”

  • • •

  In the months following Anne Bancroft’s death, Mel remained much in seclusion, coping with his vast distress and anger at the loss of his wife of over 40 years. Because of his great grief, Brooks found it too difficult to participate much in the promotion of The Producers movie, which debuted on December 16, 2005. Unfortunately, the critical response to the movie was largely negative.

  A. O. Scott (of the New York Times) labeled the 134-minute offering an “aggressively and pointlessly shiny, noisy spectacle.” Scott asked, “How come the movie feels, in every sense, like a rip-off?” He answered his own question with, “No effort has been made to adjust the show to the scale of the movie screen. Mr. Lane rants and mugs with his characteristic energy and agility, but you wish he would modulate just the tiniest bit. Or failing that, that Mr. Broderick could dry off enough to function as an interesting foil, rather than as a flailing, hysterical ninny.… Ms. Stroman, meanwhile, does not have the filmmaking instincts to match her deft, emphatic choreography.”

  Kevin Crust (of the Los Angeles Times) observed of the PG-13-rated feature: “The original movie—a culture-clash time warp of New York theater nostalgia and ‘60s grooviness (remember Dick Shawn as L.S.D.?)—holds up because it’s sharp and biting. The new film is more stolidly set in 1959, though as in the stage show, the Village People seem to have replaced hippies as the out-of-place pop cultural touchstone.”

  Mick LaSalle (of the San Francisco Chronicle) pointed out why the megasuccessful stage property did not translate well to the big screen: “Theater audiences are thrilled to see stars. If a star takes a pratfall, audiences are excited, because it’s happening just for them and in real time. Theater audiences appreciate an effort. If something has the broad shape of comedy, they will often laugh, if only to acknowledge the energy and generosity being lavished on them. Yet all this translates into exactly nothing for a movie audience, which is why Lane and Broderick, who were reputedly great on stage (I never saw them), are barely good onscreen.”

  The costly, highly touted movie musical of The Producers generated a domestic gross of only about $20 million, and fared even worse abroad. It was a tremendous and awful anticlimax to the property’s success on the Broadway stage, but Brooks was too stunned by his wife’s untimely death to discuss publicly any reaction he might have had to the movie’s whopping failure.

  • • •

/>   By early 2006, Brooks had begun to get on with the fabric of his life. Besides monitoring the assorted stage companies of The Producers that were playing—and scheduled to open—around the world, the tireless showman had several new projects in the works. Warner Bros. Pictures was preparing a big-screen version of Mel’s old Get Smart TV series, with Steve Carell (the star of the movie The 40 Year Old Virgin) playing the lead. Meanwhile, MGM-TV had hired Brooks and Thomas Meehan to write a sequel to Spaceballs in the format of an animated series for the small screen. In addition, Mel and Thomas were collaborating on a stage musical adaptation of Young Frankenstein, hoping to strike the same jackpot as they had with The Producers. Of the “blood, sweat, and tears” expended on creating the new musical, Mel predicted—in typical Brooksian hype—that the new project was “going to be wonderful.”

  A DVD set of eight of Brooks’s features (The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World: Part I, To Be or Not to Be, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights) was released in the spring of 2006. By then, Mel had sufficiently regained his energy and humor to heavily promote the product. Shifting into high, wry huckster mode, he suggested of the DVD boxed set: “I think people should buy 20 of them. Buy 20 and save a lot of them for Christmas presents. Who knows how many of these they made?”

  • • •

  In retrospect, it has proved to be an amazingly bumpy, zigzagging, and colorful life’s journey for Melvin Kaminsky, a poor Jewish boy from Brooklyn, to emerge as Mel Brooks, the world-famous show business personality (who, to boot, was married for decades to the glamorous, highly talented Anne Bancroft).

  Brooks easily might have rested on his laurels gained as a comedy writer on the landmark 1950s TV programs Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour. Or after he made his sensational record album bow as the 2000 Year Old Man in 1960. Or after cocreating the classic TV sitcom Get Smart in the mid-1960s. Or, especially, following 1968’s The Producers, his motion picture debut as a director and (Oscar-winning) scenarist. However, Mel was, and is, too full of creative energy and an overwhelming need for constant public recognition to allow himself to fade too long from public attention. This unquenchable thirst to entertain and be applauded by the world propelled him to turn out such milestone movie comedy fests as 1974’s Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (rated, respectively, numbers 6 and 13 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 Funniest American Movies of All Time). Then, to satisfy his bent for filmmaking on serious topics, he formed Brooksfilms Ltd. in the late 1970s.