Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder Waged Epic Battles Over ‘Young Frankenstein’

Young Frankenstein was born on the set of Blazing Saddles.

Mel Brooks caught his star, Gene Wilder, scribbling on a pad between scenes of the Western satire, according to the memoir All About Me! Brooks read the words at the top of the page.  

“Young Frankenstein,” Brooks said. “What is that?”

Wilder explained his idea for a comedy about Baron Frankenstein’s neurotic grandson. “My dream is for you to write it with me and direct the movie,” Wilder told Brooks. 

“You got any money on you?” 

“I have $57.” 

Brooks took Wilder’s cash as a down payment for cowriting the script. 

Wilder was a mild-mannered guy, but according to Brooks, “we fought and we fought,” during the writing process. “Our tempers rose, and we almost got into a fistfight.” 

The biggest battle, Wilder told Conan O’Brien, was over the movie’s signature musical number. “One night, he came over and he looks at the pages and he says, ‘You tap dance to Irving Berlin? In top hat and tails with the monster? Are you crazy?’”

Wilder fought back. “I argued for about 20 minutes until I was at least red in the face, I think it may have been blue,” he told O’Brien. “And all of a sudden he says, ‘Okay, it’s in.’ And I said, ‘Well, why did you put me through this?’ He said, ‘Because I wasn’t sure if it was right or not. And if you didn’t argue for it, I knew it would be wrong, but if you really argued I knew it was right.”

Brooks recalled a different version in his memoir, in which Wilder asks Brooks to film the scene and test it with an audience. “If it doesn’t work, I promise we’ll throw it out,” Wilder offered. At that first screening, viewers went bonkers for the scene. “I have never been so wrong in my life,” Brooks confessed. “I think I ate more humble pie on that day than ever before.” 

The two tussled over other issues. Wilder had to convince Brooks not to act in the film, since the comedian had a habit of breaking the fourth wall and winking at the audience while others played it straight. Brooks eventually agreed — he’d focus on directing, as he’d done in The Producers. 

Wilder won another argument when Brooks suggested that the monster’s first words should be a Cary Grant phrase, according to the biography, Funny Man: Mel Brooks. Wilder only pretended to write down the idea, rightly hoping Brooks would eventually forget all about it. 

Brooks could be volatile during writing sessions, according to Wilder’s memoir Kiss Me Like A Stranger.  One night, Brooks really let it rip, then stormed out of Wilder’s house. Ten minutes later, Brooks was on the phone. “WHO WAS THAT MADMAN IN YOUR HOUSE? I COULD HEAR THE YELLING ALL THE WAY OVER HERE. YOU SHOULD NEVER LET CRAZY PEOPLE INTO YOUR HOUSE — DON’T YOU KNOW THAT? THEY COULD BE DANGEROUS.” 

“That,” wrote Wilder, “was Mel’s way of apologizing.” 

Despite the fighting, Wilder knew the volatile chemistry was crucial to nailing the screenplay. “I had to tone Mel down,” he said, “and he had to keep me from being too subtle.”

And once the men got on the set, the animosity was gone. Filming Young Frankenstein, Wilder said, was “the happiest I’d ever been on a film. It was like taking a small breath of heaven each day.”