Faces of Frankenstein: The Enormous Schwanzstucker / Dissecting YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
By Brian Keiper
Previous ⬅ Faces of Frankenstein: The Early Funny Ones
Walk This Way
When Melvin Kaminsky was five years old, his brother took him to see James Whale’s Frankenstein at the Republic Movie Theater in Brooklyn. It scared the hell out of him. He was certain that the Monster would crawl in through his bedroom window and, in his words, “grab me by the throat and kill me and eat me!” So, he insisted on sleeping with the little window in his bedroom shut even though it was a hot summer night. His mother, ever the problem-solver, belied her son’s fears by appealing to his burgeoning sense of reason.
“’Mel,’ she said, ‘let’s say you are right. That Frankenstein wants to come here and kill you and eat you. But let’s look at all the trouble he’s going to have to get to Brooklyn. First of all, he lives in Transylvania. That’s somewhere in Romania. That’s in Europe. And that’s a long, long ways away. So even if he decides to come here, he has to get a bus or a train or hitchhike to somewhere he can get a boat to go to America. Believe me, nobody is going to pick him up. So let’s say he’s lucky enough to find a boat that would take him here. Okay, so he is here in New York City, but he really doesn’t know how the subways work. When he asks people they just run away! Finally, let’s say he figures out it’s not the IRT, it’s the BMT and he gets to Brooklyn. Then he’s got to figure out how to get to 365 South Third Street. Okay, it’s going to be a long walk, so let’s say he finally gets to Williamsburg and he finally finds our tenement. But remember, all the windows at 365 are going to be wide open and he’s had a long journey, so he must be very hungry. So if he has to kill and eat somebody, he probably would go through the first-floor window and eat all the Rothsteins who are living in apartment 1A. And once he’s full, there is no reason for him to go all the way up to the fifth floor and eat you.’”
With some trepidation, young Mel accepted his mother’s logic, though the fact that he starts his memoir All About Me: My Remarkable Life in Show Business with this anecdote proves that the Monster still haunted him nearly 90 years later. His childhood fear turned to affection and eventually admiration for Frankenstein, specifically James Whale’s two early 1930s installments.
This all came in handy decades later when Melvin Kaminsky grew up to be Mel Brooks and, on the jail set of the film then known as “Black Bart,” found Gene Wilder furiously scribbling on a yellow legal pad during a lunch break. Mel asked Gene what he was writing and Gene showed him the title he had written in blue felt-tipped pen at the top of the first page: Young Frankenstein. After Wilder gave the elevator pitch for what his eventual screenplay would be, Brooks was intrigued and asked him “What is your dream for this movie?” to which Wilder replied, “My dream is for you to write it with me and direct the movie.” Mel replied, “You got any money on you?” Gene gave him the fifty-seven dollars he had on him which Mel took “…as a down payment on writing Young Frankenstein” and agreed to direct if he liked their final product.
At least, this is how Mel Brooks tells the story.
According to Brooks biographer Patrick McGilligan, the story is less romantic and more along the lines of classic Hollywood dealmaking. Gene Wilder’s agent at the time, Mike Medavoy, who also represented Peter Boyle and Marty Feldman, encouraged Wilder to write a project for the three actors to do together. Medavoy also suggested that Mel Brooks direct since he and Wilder had had such a positive experience on Brooks’s debut film The Producers (1968). Wilder responded, “I’d love it, but you’re whistling Dixie, because he won’t direct something he didn’t conceive of.” But Medavoy persisted and set up a deal with Columbia to produce the film, with the contingency that Wilder and Brooks write the script together, and contacted Brooks to set up a meeting. According to McGilligan, this meeting occurred before Brooks headed to Hollywood to shoot what was then called “Black Bart,” a film that Wilder had declined appearing in as Mayor Hedley Lamarr (which went to Harvey Korman) feeling that he was not funny enough to be in the company of such a talented comedic cast. After Brooks left, Wilder set about writing the first draft of Young Frankenstein.
It was not long, however, before Brooks called upon Wilder in a panic. Gig Young, the actor intended to play Jim, the Waco Kid, had collapsed from alcohol withdrawal on the set of “Black Bart” and was in no shape to play the part. Wilder stepped in and continued to write while playing one of his most memorable roles. After filming wrapped, Wilder headed off to his next film project while Brooks began post-production on the film that would soon be renamed Blazing Saddles (1974). Soon, Wilder returned to Los Angeles and holed himself up in the Hotel Bel-Air working on the script where Brooks would join him in the evenings after spending his days in the editing room. These writing sessions were not always harmonious. Brooks contends that they only had one major fight, over the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” number, but Wilder seems to disagree. But as iron sharpens iron (to drop a Biblical reference) so the collaboration between the passionate artists produced an exceptional script, but undoubtedly some sparks flew in the process. Wilder put it succinctly by saying their disagreements during the writing process came down to one central issue that ultimately benefitted the script and final film, “I had to tone Mel down, and he had to keep me from being too subtle.” This was a process that would continue during filming and post-production.
After completing the script, Brooks and producer Michael Gruskoff presented it to Columbia per the deal arranged by Mike Medavoy. Columbia was very interested, and Brooks described the meeting as “fine.” But when he shouted, “Oh by the way, we’re shooting it in black and white” on the way out the door, “a thundering herd of Jews followed us down the hall from the meeting room.” Mel’s insistence on black and white was a dealbreaker and Columbia passed. Brooks knew that aspect would be a difficult sell, and he did not yet have the caché in Hollywood he would soon enjoy.
“In 1973[…]Personally, I hadn’t made a nickel for any studio. I made The Producers in 1968 and it got me an Academy Award for original screenplay, but it didn’t make any money. I made The Twelve Chairs in 1970, which made even less. Blazing Saddles would be a hit in 1974, but that hadn’t come out yet. To the studios, I was just an interesting guy to meet for lunch.”
Enter Alan Ladd “Laddie,” Jr., the new head of 20th Century Fox and son of legendary actor Alan Ladd. Laddie had great faith in Brooks and at least told him and Gruskoff that black and white was fine because “all the old horror films were in black and white.” Later he admitted that he did worry that theater owners would reject the movie because it was not in color “but I didn’t tell them that. And we made a deal.” He even gave them $400,000 more than they asked for, setting the budget for Young Frankenstein at $2.4 million.
Casting: You Take the Blonde I’ll Take the One in the Turban
When it came to casting, three of the principals — Wilder, Boyle, and Feldman — were already in place. Gene Wilder would naturally play the lead of Frederick Frankenstein. He had after all written the part for himself and it fit him like a tailored tuxedo. Considering his size and surprising sensitivity, Peter Boyle was perfect for the Monster. Boyle adored Karloff’s performances as the Creature and sought to imbue his interpretation with the same kind of childlike wonder and empathy. Brooks later said of Boyle:
“You couldn’t find a better actor for the Monster than Peter Boyle. He understood the poetry and the beauty of the Monster. He understood that the notes [of the music] were like butterflies. He loved the original picture and he loved the simplicity and the naivete of the original Monster when beauty struck him.”
Marty Feldman’s manic energy and unusual look made for a natural Igor (“Actually it’s pronounced Eye-gor”). What they could not have accounted for was the natural electricity that sparked between he and Wilder. The two quickly found a rhythm and Feldman later said, “Gene’s timing was like Oliver Hardy. It forced me to be like Stan Laurel.” This interplay gives the film an energy that is only enhanced when combined with and amplified by the rest of the cast, which fell into place through Cher’s German wig stylist, a game of tennis, and stealing from Peter Bogdanovich.
Teri Garr was a dancer on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour in the early 1970s but had very little acting experience when she went to a cattle call audition for the part of Elizabeth in Young Frankenstein. According to Garr, Brooks already knew he wanted Madeline Kahn for that role, “But then Mel told me that if I came back the next day with a German accent I could read for the part of Inga.” Fortunately for her, Cher’s wig stylist at her current day job had a heavy German accent. So, Garr sat in a chair listening to her talk for hours. According to Wilder, “Teri Garr walked in and read with a German accent […] I thought it was a good part, but I didn’t know it was going to be such a good part.” Garr’s character of Inga is the one major character in the film that does not really have an antecedent in the Universal Frankenstein series. Instead, she seems to have subconsciously descended from buxom characters in the Hammer series, specifically Susan Denberg from Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) and Veronica Carlson from Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969).
Another case of switching roles came from Madeline Kahn. Wilder wanted her to play Inga but “Madeline didn’t want to pay the lab assistant she wanted to play the fiancée,” Wilder later recalled, “I thought ‘she must be nuts’ because I thought the lab assistant was a much better part. Well, it was until Madeline put her own stamp on my fiancée.” Brooks, on the other hand, knew he wanted Kahn for the role of Elizabeth while he and Wilder were writing the screenplay. Mel Brooks admitted to stealing Madeline Kahn from Peter Bogdanovich after seeing her in What’s Up Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973), and casting her as Lili Von Shtupp in Blazing Saddles for which she received an Academy Award nomination.[1] Though Khan’s Elizabeth does not bear much resemblance to either Mae Clarke or Valerie Hobson, she does have the honor of making homage to Elsa Lanchester’s Bride complete with white-streaked beehive and swan-like hiss to Boyle’s, by that point in the film, civilized and domesticated Monster.
Madeline Kahn was not Brooks’s only theft from Bogdanovich. Cloris Leachman won an Oscar for her heartbreaking portrayal of Ruth Popper in The Last Picture Show (1971), a part that could not be more different from Frau Blücher (horses whinnying) in Young Frankenstein. “I was madly in love with Cloris right from the beginning, because she could do anything,” Brooks recalled. Blücher is something of an amalgamation of the busybody Minnie (Una O’Connor) from Bride of Frankenstein and the cold and stoic Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940). Contrary to popular belief, blucher does not mean “glue” in German but was the name of a Prussian general at the Battle of Waterloo and Brooks liked the sound of it. Unlike Garr, Leachman came to the set unprepared for her German accent but found it by conversing with Mel Brooks’s mother who happened to be on the set that day.
In a kind of reversal of stealing from Bogdanovich, Kenneth Mars began with Brooks in his scene stealing role as Franz Liebkind, the writer of Springtime for Hitler, the sure-to-be-a-flop play that Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder’s characters decide to mount in The Producers. Mars then went on to appear in Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc? before returning to Brooks for Young Frankenstein as Inspector Kemp, an exaggerated (but not really that much) version of Lionel Atwill’s Inspector Krogh from Son of Frankenstein (1939). According to Mars, Brooks told him that his character would have an eyepatch and on top of the eyepatch, a monocle. “Is that too much?” Brooks asked. To which Mars replied, “of course not!” Running with the German accent theme, Mars proposed having an accent so heavy that no one could understand him and suggested putting subtitles with his dialogue. Brooks responded that he wouldn’t do that, but he would have the townspeople shout “What?” after his lines.
For the final important role, essentially an extended cameo, Brooks and Wilder did not have any specific ideas. At the time, the two Genes, Hackman and Wilder, were tennis partners and played together often. Hackman had made a name for himself playing tough guys in hard hitting dramas, a persona cemented by his Oscar-winning role as “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection (1971), and “he was itching to do comedy.” When he heard that Wilder was writing a new film he asked if he had a part for him. Wilder said he might be able to give him the role of the blind man who lives in the woods but would have to confer with Brooks first. Brooks thought it was a great idea. Hackman seems to have expected a short commitment, but the scene ended up taking, by some recollections, ten days to shoot. The result is one of the most memorable sequences in any comedy ever made.
Notably missing from the cast of Young Frankenstein is Mel Brooks himself, who appeared in all but two (the other being The Producers) of the eleven films he directed. Gene Wilder insisted that Brooks not appear in the film, and it was the source of an early, though quickly passing, conflict between the two. Wilder felt the film required a straighter acting style without “winks to the audience” as was Brooks’s preferred style. Brooks quickly realized his co-writer was right. Despite not having an onscreen character in the film, Brooks did manage to make two offscreen cameos, providing the howl of the werewolf (“There wolf. There castle.”) early in the film and the sound of the screeching cat during the dart game between Frankenstein and Kemp. Brooks’s onscreen absence ultimately achieved Wilder’s desired effect of Brooks putting the entirety of his considerable energies into directing the film, resulting in his most visually disciplined and accomplished film.
Production: Give My Creation Life
Like any film, the making of Young Frankenstein had its share of challenges and joys, though the consensus seems to favor the latter. Much of the onset conflict seemed to come at the beginning of the process as the key figures involved were learning how to work together. The first group to lock into step was the combination of cast and director. “There was a certain indefinable chemistry on the set, a magic in the way this ensemble of gifted misfits worked together. It was kismet,” Brooks would later write. Producer Michael Gruskoff recognized the magic right away, particularly between the director and his leading man saying, “Mel directing Gene was like Billy Wilder directing Jack Lemmon.” The cast had an instant and unmistakable bond that oozes from the screen in the final film.
Less instant was the bond between Brooks and cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld worked through the transition from old-school to new wave Hollywood, having lensed films for Sidney Lumet (Fail Safe-1964, Child’s Play-1972), Frank Perry (Last Summer-1969, Diary of a Mad Housewife-1970), and Herbert Ross (T.R. Baskin-1971). He was also one of the few working cinematographers who had made a significant number of black and white films. Like most cinematographers, he was also a perfectionist. When shooting the sequence that tracks down a line of increasingly decomposed heads to reveal Igor at the end, he noticed a distinct wobble and called “cut.” Brooks immediately bristled and said, “You don’t call cut. I call cut.” When Hirschfeld explained himself, Brooks said, “I want that wobble.” Brooks then explained that in 1931, Whale did not have smooth dollies with big rubber wheels. In essence, he explained that he wanted to not just parody the perfections of the original movies, but the imperfections as well.
There was also some need to adjust the lighting of the film. Hirschfeld and Brooks eventually came to the right balance with establishing shots, often mimicking the look of the Whale films, while the closeups are much brighter and warmer. Where Whale and his cinematographers used high contrasts on character’s faces, perhaps to underscore their inner duality, Brooks and Hirschfeld lighten these shots to allow for comic expression from the actors. Soon, director and director of photography found their groove with each balancing the others’ tendencies. Brooks kept Hirschfeld from getting caught in the weeds of perfectionism while Hirschfeld kept Brooks from going over the top with the satire. Together they worked to recreate not just the look but the feel of Whale’s films.
Playing no small part in creating this feel was production designer Dale Hennesy whose magnificent sets are vital to the success of the film. The production design not only evokes Whale but other great directors like Orson Welles, with more than a little inspiration drawn from Citizen Kane’s (1941) Xanadu sets and MacBeth’s (1948) rough-hewn, moisture dripping castles. Another addition to the sets came straight from Whale’s films themselves. The production manager Frank Bauer had found that Kenneth Strickfaden was still alive and living in the Los Angeles area and he kept the original electrical lab equipment he had created for Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein in his garage. “So we went to Strickfaden’s garage, and he plugged it all in for us,” Michael Gruskoff later said. “Mel and Gene were going crazy. They loved it!” Strickfaden asked for a small rental fee of $1,000 for the equipment. Though money was tight on Young Frankenstein, even Gruskoff thought that was too little and paid him $2,500.
Ultimately, shooting the film was best summed up by a story told by Brooks in his book on the making of the film:
“On the last day of shooting, after we shot the last scene and everybody had left, Gene sat down at the edge of the bed we used in the scene with him and Teri. He said, ‘I’ve got some more ideas for some other scenes for the movie.’ I said, ‘Gene, it’s over. We shot it out. It’s got a beginning, middle, and end. Perfect!’ Gene buried his face in his hands and said, ‘Mel, I don’t want to go home. I want to stay here. This is the happiest time of my life.’”
Post-production ended up being more challenging. “It was much harder to edit Young Frankenstein than it had been to edit Blazing Saddles,” Brooks admitted. The first test screening cut of the film clocked in at two hours and twenty-two minutes — and it was a disaster. Brooks assured those in attendance that this would be trimmed to a “one hour and forty-minute masterpiece” given a little more time. Brooks and his editor John C. Howard, along with his assistants, trimmed the film down to 106 minutes, still on the long side for a Frankenstein film, but they melted away the dross to find the gold within. Brooks would later write, “I didn’t take scenes out; I shaved them down,” bringing out the diamond in the rough of each sequence. The result is a practically perfect comedy.
Young Frankenstein opened on December 15, 1974, the same day as The Towering Inferno and five days before The Godfather Part II. Despite this stiff competition, it would eventually become one of the highest grossing films of the year and the second-highest grossing comedy behind Blazing Saddles. It was also a great personal accomplishment for Mel Brooks. In Young Frankenstein, he created his most accomplished film. It transcends being a comedy, a parody, or even a satire. It is thematically rich, “technically eloquent” (as Brooks himself described it), beautifully written, flawlessly performed, and outrageously funny all at once.
Into the Realm of Genius
Young Frankenstein is a film about destiny, particularly when it comes to heritage. Some describe it as a film about identity, which is also apt. Are we the sum of the parts we are created with or more? Are we beholden to the “sins of the fathers” to borrow a Biblical reference, or can the downfalls of the past be overcome? These ideas are most thoroughly explored in the “two-sides of the same coin” characters of Frederick Frankenstein and the Monster, an exploration that can be found in the best versions of Frankenstein going back to Mary Shelley’s original novel.
Frederick Frankenstein embodies the mania of Colin Clive, the cold clinical brilliance of Peter Cushing, a bit of the subversive sinner of Ernest Thesiger’s Dr. Pretorius, and the debonaire quality of Basil Rathbone’s Wolf from Son of Frankenstein (down to the pencil mustache) all wrapped up in the thoroughly likable personage of Gene Wilder. He also embodies an element essential to any Mel Brooks movie — he is Jewish, but really only in subtext. As Mel Brooks noted to critic Vincent Canby, “the only noticeable Jew is Dr. Frankenstein himself […] We didn’t play it Jewish, but I think it was there.” By this reading, at the beginning of the film Frederick is an assimilated American Jew who has left his nation of origin and does a great deal to conceal his lineage. Jeremy Dauber notes in Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew, which examines the ways Brooks’ work is informed by his Jewish heritage, notes “How can a movie not be about acculturation when much of its triumphalism comes in accepting your original name, unchanged from the old country?” This acculturation is a key element in defining Frederick’s identity and eventual embrace of it.
In essence, Frederick does everything he can in the first part of the film to distance himself from his lineage. Not only does he reject his grandfather’s work, which he declares to be “doo-doo,” but his very name, correcting the pronunciation to “Fronkensteen” on several occasions. He calls his grandfather “a famous kook” and “a very sick man,” but right from the first scene we see that Frederick is something of a kook himself, specifically in the rather inhumane way he treats his demonstration subject Mr. Hilltop (Liam Dunn).[2] To his credit, however, after kneeing Hilltop in the groin, Frankenstein does instruct his assistant to “give him an extra dollar.”
As much as Frankenstein believes he can escape the sins of his fathers, one of the town villagers declares, “He’s a Frankenstein! And they’re all alike! It’s in their blood. They can’t help it.” Inspector Kemp later tells Frederick during their famous dart game that he and the villagers are concerned with “genes and chromosomes” and more importantly a repeat of the disaster brought upon the town by his grandfather. After the Monster escapes the theater toward the end of the film, Kemp declares to the villagers that “He will curse the day that he was born a Frankenstein.” Though he denies its power, Frederick himself has restless dreams of destiny, crying out rhythmically in his sleep “Destiny! Destiny! No escaping that for me.”
As everyone else seems to realize, and even Frederick himself subconsciously understands, fate, destiny, and identity are inescapable. Or so they all seem to believe. Ultimately, Frederick is able to escape the fate of his grandfather by breaking the cycle of abuse toward his creation. Frankenstein’s greatest sin in the original novel and in the Universal series is his rejection of his responsibility for his creation. In modern parlance, he is a deadbeat dad who is faced with a reckoning when his child returns home. At first, it appears that Frederick will, as Inspector Kemp puts it, “Volloow een ees grndvazer’s vtshteps.” (What?) Follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. Instead, he takes responsibility for him, eventually sacrificing a piece of himself to improve life for the Monster.
In one of the film’s best scenes, Frederick locks himself into a cell with the Monster, telling Inga and Igor that “Love is the only thing that can save this poor creature.” After a moment of fear and doubt (“I was joking! Don’t you know a joke when you hear one?”), Frederick becomes the compassionate father he should have been from the beginning. He cradles the Monster in his arms and says, “You are not evil. You. Are. Good! This is a nice boy. This is a good boy. This is a mother’s angel. And I want the world to know once and for all and without any shame that we love him!” as the Monster disintegrates into tears. The scene climaxes with Frederick reclaiming his birthright, his identity, and his name by correcting Inga’s cries of “Dr. Fronkensteen” and shouting with all the panache of Peter Cushing, accompanied by the swelling, triumphant score, “My name…is Frankenstein!”
Unfortunately, this reclamation of identity results at first in exploitation where he puts the Monster on display in front of a high society crowd in a nod to another monster classic, King Kong (1933). During the famous “Puttin’ on the Ritz” scene, Frankenstein displays the Monster like a dancing bear, even popping a treat in his mouth after he performs a trick. Yes, he is showing the world how marvelous and sophisticated the Creature is, having even taught him to warble out the climactic line of the song, “Puddin on da Riiiitz,” but is doing it only for his own aggrandizement, not for any benefit to his creation, and the results are disastrous. Ironically, this disaster comes about during a musical moment, the one element that has, up to this point, been able to calm the Creature and connect him to his creator and others.
The music of Young Frankenstein, composed by John Morris, is vital to the thematic and narrative fabric of the film. In Bride of Frankenstein, the music played by the hermit touches the monster’s heart. In Young Frankenstein, it is taken to an even deeper level. The film’s main musical motif is a vaguely Germanic lullaby that expresses the inner life, a mostly forgotten childhood, and suggests the presence of a soul in the Monster. Boyle portrays this beautifully, building upon the innocence of the Karloff performances and deepening the pathos in a way that only years of love for and reflection upon such performances can bring. Frederick’s soul and unconscious memory is also stirred by the music, underscoring the father-son relationship between himself and the Monster while linking Frederick to his grandfather. Frau Blücher (horses whinnying) also underscores the theme of destiny through music when she begins to subdue the Monster by playing the violin for him. Frederick immediately recognizes the music. Blücher sees his reaction and says, “Yes, it’s in your blood. It’s in the blood of all Frankensteins. It reaches the soul when words are useless. Your grandfather used to play it to the creature he was making.”[3]
An element of Young Frankenstein that came from more contemporary Frankenstein trends was healthy doses of sex — and the film is absolutely dripping with it. It comes in the form of innuendo as when Inga asks Frederick if he would like to have a “roll in the hay,” and Frederick asks her to “Elevate me” and she says “Right here? Now?” Elizabeth’s constant shutting down of Frederick’s romantic advancements that ultimately send him into Inga’s arms (and bed) is a running gag throughout the film. Inga also comments during the discussion of making the creature larger to make him easier to build that “He would have an enormous schwanzstucker” to which Frederick responds, “that goes without saying.” The scene continues with Inga exclaiming “Woof!” and Igor commenting “He’s going to be very popular.” This popularity is illustrated by a controversial scene in which Elizabeth succumbs to the Monster’s sexual advances which climax (literally) in her breaking into singing “Oh sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found you,” which ultimately becomes the film’s final joke with Inga breaking into the same song on her wedding night with Frederick. More sophisticated is Frederick’s scientific speech during the creation scene that he, Igor, and Inga are about to “penetrate into the very womb of impervious nature herself.” Paging Dr. Freud.
More than anything, what makes Young Frankenstein great is that Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder deeply understood the essence of Frankenstein. “You have to really know a genre to make fun of it, you have to love it,” Brooks wrote. Wilder articulated in an interview his feelings about why Young Frankenstein endures saying:
“I think the thing that makes Frankenstein live as a concept — a creature, disformed, who has love in his heart, wants to be loved and is misunderstood — is a classic theme. People have tried it in other ways but it always worked best, I think, in the Frankenstein frame. And even though we were doing a comedy, that classic theme is still there. And I think that’s why it lives.”
The sense of esteem for these themes and ideas oozes from every frame of Young Frankenstein as does the love and care that went into creating it. “To this day,” Brooks wrote, “I think it’s my best work, and it seems like a lot of people agree with me.” There is no doubt that Young Frankenstein has only grown in esteem to become even more towering than the massive poster by Anthony Goldschmidt and John Alvin painted on the side of the Playboy building on the Sunset Strip to advertise the film over fifty years ago. It is not just a great work of comedy, a key entry in the Frankenstein subgenre, or of horror-comedy in general, but among the great works of any genre. Not only is it arguably Mel Brooks’ best work, but it stands among the best work of any of his contemporaries as well. In short, Young Frankenstein can be described in a single, elegant, and woefully overused word, but in this case, it is not hyperbole to call it what it is. Young Frankenstein is a masterpiece. 🩸
Footnotes
[1] She also received one for her role as Trixie Delight in Paper Moon.
[2] Dunn was a casting agent who had also appeared in Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc? as the judge and in Blazing Saddles as the preacher. He would also later appear in Brooks’s Silent Movie (1976).
[3] This scene culminates in what is my personal favorite moment in the movie when Frau Blücher says, “Yes! Say it! He vas my boyfriend!”
Sources
All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business by Mel Brooks
Funny Man: Mel Brooks by Patrick McGilligan
It’s Alive: Creating a Monster Classic, Produced by Steven C. Smith
Making Frankensense of Young Frankenstein, directed and produced by Patrick Cousans
Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew by Jeremy Dauber (2023)
Young Frankenstein: The Story of the Making of the Film by Mel Brooks with Rebecca Keegan (2016)
About
Brian Keiper is a featured writer for Manor Vellum. Brian’s also written for Bloody Disgusting, Dread Central, F This Movie!, and others. Follow him on Instagram @brianwaves42, Threads @brianwaves42, and/or X @Brianwaves42.
Visit MANOR’s Linktree to follow your residence of horror on websites and social media platforms.
© 2025 Manor Entertainment LLC
