Mel Brooks’ favourite Gene Wilder performance: “It’s his very best work in film”
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(Credits: Far Out / TCM)
For years, Hollywood has delivered some great director/actor duos who just seem to understand each other. You can’t think of Martin Scorsese without being reminded of Robert De Niro, while Kirsten Dunst will always belong to the beautiful cinematic world of Sofia Coppola. Then there was the iconic comedic partnership between Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, whose work together produced some truly great pieces of cinema.
Brooks started out in the 1940s, honing his comedic skills to a point of perfection before releasing his directorial debut The Producers in 1967. Wilder starred as Leo Bloom alongside Zero Mostel and Dick Shawn, playing an accountant who teams up with a failing producer to pitch one of the worst plays they can think of. A little controversial (they try to sell a play called Springtime for Hitler) but lots of fun, the movie marked the first collaboration between Wilder and Brooks, but it wouldn’t be their last.
The pair had met several years prior to the filming of The Producers through Anne Bancroft, whom Wilder was starring alongside in a play. Bancroft introduced Wilder to her boyfriend, Brooks, and they became solid friends, resulting in several instances of pure comedic genius.
Their next collaboration after The Producers was Blazing Saddles, which came in 1974. Spoofing the western genre with many satirical takes on themes like racism, which caused further controversy for Brooks, the movie still achieved great success. However, it was their final collaboration together, Young Frankenstein, that Brooks considered Wilder’s finest performance.
Released that same year, the pair clearly couldn’t get enough of each other, and they even wrote the screenplay together. Taking inspiration from Mary Shelley’s classic novel, the movie has come to be deemed one of the funniest comedies of all time and one of Wilder’s greatest acting roles.
Brooks is certainly of the belief that Wilder gave an astounding performance in the film, telling the Los Angeles Times, “His performance is absolutely Promethean. It’s his very best work in film.”
He added, “Gene was essentially really reticent and shy and when he broke out, he broke out like a volcano. He never just eased out of being mousy and quiet — he busted out like it was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and suddenly this new person would be yelling and commanding our attention. He did that beautifully in Young Frankenstein.”
However, during the production of Young Frankenstein, the pair had their first fall-out, with Wilder revealing to Conan O’Brien, “I would write all day, and then he would come over after dinner and look. And one night he came over and he looks at the pages and says, ‘You tap dance to Irving Berlin in top hat and tails with the monster? Are you crazy? It’s frivolous.’ And I started to argue, and I argued for about 20 minutes until I was at least red in the face, I think it may have been blue.”
After much arguing, Wilder explained how Brooks then changed his tune: “And all of a sudden, he says, ‘OK, it’s in’. I said, ‘Then why did you put me through this?’ And he said, ‘Because I wasn’t sure if it was right or not. And if you didn’t argue for it, I knew that it would be wrong. But if you really argued, I knew it was right.’”
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