Mel Brooks Wanted to Cut ‘Young Frankenstein’s Best Joke

Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein is clearly one of the greatest horror parodies of all-time, and the greatest Frankenstein movie ever made in which the Monster dons a tuxedo and tap dances to an Irving Berlin tune. 

In addition to the fact Brooks didn’t want to shoot that iconic musical number, it turns out that the director came shockingly close to cutting what may be the movie’s most famous joke. 

When Marty Feldman’s Igor picks up Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) at a foggy train station, he instructs him to “walk this way” as they leave. Of course, he wants the doctor to literally walk “this way,” prompting him to similarly hobble forward on a miniature cane. The gag played so well back in the ‘70s that Aerosmith wrote a whole song inspired by it.

According to Wilder, Brooks came up with the line on the spot, admitting that it originated with a decades-old vaudeville gag. “Man walks into a drugstore and says to the pharmacist, ‘I’ve got terrible hemorrhoids — have you got some talcum powder?’” Brooks recounted to Wilder. “Pharmacist says, ‘Yes sir — walk this way.’ Man says, ‘If I could walk that way, I wouldn’t need the talcum powder.’”

Feldman claimed that he was the one who ad-libbed the line on set, which made “Mel laugh because it was an old Yiddish joke.” But it was Brooks who insisted on putting it in the actual movie, even though Wilder and Feldman tried to talk him out of it since “it was a cheap joke and corny.”

When it came time to preview the first cut of the movie for an audience, according to assistant editor William Gordean, Brooks soured on the joke after becoming worried the movie might be “perceived as slow and dull.”

“Mel was starting to take out some gags,” Gordean explained in the documentary Making FrankenSense of Young Frankenstein. “And at one point, he said, ‘Well, we’re going to take out the gag at the railroad station in Transylvania where Marty says to Gene, walk this way.’” 

The other assistant editor, Stanford Allen, objected. “Stan said, ‘No, please don’t do that, please,’” Gordean recalled. “And Mel said, ‘No, it’s coming out, it’s coming out. It’s a cheap joke.’ And Stan said, ‘Yeah, it’s a cheap joke, but it’s funny. Please don’t take it out.’”

“So finally Mel relented and said, ‘Okay. It’ll stay for the preview, but it’s coming out (on) Saturday,’” Gordean continued. “That scene came on, the audience howled. And we came up to Mel afterwards, out on the sidewalk, and said, ‘Alright, do we take it out tomorrow?’ And he said, ‘Get out of here!’”

Not only did Brooks keep the bit in Young Frankenstein, he used it again in several subsequent movies, with diminishing returns.

And we wouldn’t be surprised if the joke pops up yet again in the upcoming Young Frankenstein prequel TV series that somehow exists.