They’d drag Mels Brooks body up and down Hollywood Blvd with a Hummer limo if he tried to make a movie like that today.
True story: When my son was about 4 months old, I took my wife to see Blazing Saddles, just to get her out of the house. We sat in the back of the theater so that we could go call the babysitter once in a while without disturbing the audience.
When Mel Brooks came on as the Indian chief, saw the black people in the covered wagons at the end of the wagon train, he said, “Loessem gein” (basically, “Let them go”).
Two groups of people in the audience laughed while the rest went “ uh, what did he say”? The first group, including my wife, were people who spoke German (my wife lived in Germany for 11 years), and the other group was Jewish, who understood Yiddish.
Mel Brooks could do more with Yiddish than anyone I ever knew of. Just look at “Young Frankenstein” (and Terri Garr), and “History of the World, Part I”, and you’ll know what I mean.
Madelaine Kahn, RIP, one of the greatest single line Yiddish-speaking comedians around.
Add in Marty Feldman, Ken Marrs, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, and Peter Boyle, and you have the core of great, true comedy and comedians.
They’d drag Mels Brooks body up and down Hollywood Blvd with a Hummer limo if he tried to make a movie like that today.
True, that! Slim Pickens said he read the script and turned Brooks down cold. No way! Brooks finally talked him into it but he had an aweful time with the dialog, saying ni**er over and over again.