Mel Brooks turns 'Young Frankenstein' into a monster smash
Mel Brooks' fixation on "Frankenstein" began when he was still in kneepants.
"I must have been just five or six when I first saw the movie [James Whale's 1931 classic, "Frankenstein"], and it left an indelible impression on me," Brooks recalled during a recent chat. "I still remember that it was summertime, and after I got home I told my mother to close the window to the fire escape in our fifth floor apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I was convinced that Frankenstein's monster was going to climb up and eat me. And I knew, even at that age, that you couldn't reason with a creature like that, or sit down and ask him 'What do you need?' It was hot, and my mother said we needed the air. And she reassured me that the monster would have to come all the way from Transylvania, and that he probably didn't have the money for a boat. Plus, she said even if he got to New York he wouldn't be able to climb up to the fifth floor."
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At the time, Brooks lived for two types of movies -- monster pictures and Westerns.
"Comedies didn't interest me then," he said. "Irony and satire doesn't mean a thing to a kid. You need references for comedy. That comes later in life."
And of course "later" has meant most of the rest of his 83 years. (And he is still counting, buoyantly and energetically.)
Brooks, who began his career as a stand-up comic, and moved on to become a comedy writer for some of the great television shows of the 1950s, only brought his anarchic humor to Hollywood starting in the 1960s. He wrote and directed his first hit movie, "The Producers," in 1968. He kept the outrageous zaniness going with "Blazing Saddles." And he then collaborated with Gene Wilder on "Young Frankenstein," a faithful yet thoroughly demented parody (and homage) to Whales' black-and-white movie, and to the horror films of his youth.
Of course deep inside Brooks there also was a yen to do what nearly everyone in show biz dreams of doing at one point or another -- work on a Broadway musical.
"I don't write notes, but I do write music," said Brooks, when asked to explain the method he uses when creating his Broadway scores. "I played the drums in many bands. I know middle C on the piano. And I can write out the basic tunes of my songs before handing them over to the people who can chord them and orchestrate them. The signature of the tunes is mine, and it's on the manuscript. Later I sing everything into a tape recorder."
"The Producers," which premiered in Chicago in 2001, quickly became a megahit Tony Award-winner on Broadway. And in the immediate afterglow of that success, ideas began to percolate about musicalizing "Young Frankenstein." The latter show -- think Boris Karloff-meets-Kurt Weill (complete with the film's iconic nod to Irving Berlin along the way) -- opened on Broadway in 2007. It luckily avoided the stagehands strike that temporarily shuttered many theaters (the Hilton Theatre, where it played, had a special contract)). But it got mixed reviews and, more crucially, Brooks believes it didn't have as long a run as it might have due to the onset of the recession.
In any case, "Young Frankenstein" is now on its first national tour and will open on Tuesday, with a run through Dec. 13 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre.
Brooks' first exposure to Broadway musicals came at nine.
"My uncle Joe took me to see [Cole Porter's] 'Anything Goes,' and I just couldn't believe it," Brooks recalled. "We were sitting in the last row of the third balcony. There were no microphones back then, but I remember Ethel Merman was too loud. It was one of the greatest experiences ever, and it took me 50 years to get back to it."
Although he says 'Guys and Dolls' is his "hands-down favorite Broadway musical," with "The Bells Are Ringing" coming in second, it's the true "musical comedies of Guy Bolton and Irving Berlin and Cole Porter" that he still loves most. And he dubbed the recent mock-vintage show "The Drowsy Chaperone" as "utterly charming."
"Silly musical comedies are a very strange art," said Brooks. "It's very hard to write funny songs."
He quickly credits fellow conspirator Gene Wilder with coming up with the idea of having the monster dance to "Puttin' on the Ritz" in the film.
"We were having tea and digestive biscuits at the Bel Air Hotel in L.A. and were thinking of how Dr. Frankenstein's monster needed to perform something more demanding than a simple walk to suggest how amazing he was. Gene had the idea. And we only got permission from Irving Berlin's estate by promising not to change a word."
It was Hollywood producer David Geffen who first pushed Brooks to musicalize "The Producers." Brooks thought Jerry Herman (of "Hello, Dolly" and "La Cage aux Folles" fame) would be the ideal composer, but Herman told Brooks he should write it himself. And almost as soon as "The Producers" took off, "Young Frankenstein" became the next property to tackle.
"The first song I wrote was 'He Vas My Boyfriend' -- for Frau Blucher [housekeeper at the Transylvanian castle]. It was very Kurt Weill, with all that talking-singing style. Joanna Glushak is playing Blucher in Chicago. You need an actress who is just a little tetched, and both scary and funny."
Reprising the roles they created on Broadway will be Roger Bart (as Dr. Frankenstein) and Shuler Hensley as the monster.
Brooks once again tapped Tony Award-winning director-choreographer Susan Stroman ("The Producers") to collaborate on "Young Frankenstein."
"Stro is a natural," said Brooks. "She has a vision for each and every song, and she can catch anything I throw, from fast ball to screwball. She sees the whole picture. And she puts together the very best possible ensembles."
Stroman loves Brooks right back.
"It's just a joy to work with him," she said. "He's very gracious, very collaborative and has the most spontaneous brain. He'll come to the rehearsal studio around lunchtime, just in time for his tuna sandwich, and he'll jump up and play all the characters, from the monster, to Igor [the lab assistant whose name is pronounced "Eyegor"], to Inga [Dr. Frankenstein's love interest].
"And after the death of Anne Bancroft [Brooks' wife], I think he found it very helpful to create something again. Oddly enough, 'Young Frankenstein' is a musical about creating life. It's also full of great love stories."
The storyline, of course, concerns what happens when Frederick Frankenstein, an esteemed New York brain surgeon, inherits a castle and laboratory in Transylvania from his grandfather, the deranged genius, Victor Von Frankenstein. Will he (or won't he) carry on the family tradition?
"This musical really has an epic gothic feel. It's a bigger story than 'The Producers,'" Stroman said. "And I think Mel's score is amazing -- with a real old movie musical quality that puts you right in Transylvania and the whole world of horror films. The orchestrations are brilliant, and the lyrics are so simple but great fun."
There already is talk of working on a musical version of "Blazing Saddles." But for the moment Stroman has a new Off Broadway project, "The Scottsboro Boys," about a crucial case in the racial and legal history of this country. It was the last musical penned by the team of Kander and Ebb. (Fred Ebb died in 2004.)
For actors Bart and Hensley, the opportunity to work on a Brooks' show is a show business dream come true.
"Mel has a unique style," said Bart, whose parents met at M.I.T., and whose dad is a chemist and mother teaches science. ("I guess it makes perfect sense that I would grow up to play a mad scientist," he quipped.)
What attracts him to Brooks' work is this: "Most of Mel's characters are really subversive clowns, and he gives them subversive material. At the same time, he mixes that with all the ingredients of vaudeville and Borscht Belt comedy. And he and Stroman just let me be and let me play with that."
Hensley, who stands 6'3" in real life, and adds a good four inches thanks to the platform shoes he wears as Frankenstein's monster (a role that also comes with a special body-padding foam suit that wicks sweat), said he came to the role with vivid memories of the film, though once he was hired he never watched the movie again.
As Hensley, whose mother founded the Georgia Ballet, and whose dad was an all-American football player who became a civil engineer, noted: "From the get-go Mel said: 'You can't recreate the movie.' So I began thinking of it as a sort of 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' thing, with the audience anticipating what was coming. Plus, they get the songs."
So what, in the final analysis, keeps things funny over time?
"You need a talented writer who understands the human condition and can write as if the pen is in his heart not his head," said Brooks. "The great Russian novelists were never wrong about the human condition. Neither was Charles Dickens."
"You know, I could play the Blind Man in 'Young Frankenstein' tomorrow. And if I were a bit younger I would be a wonderful, impish Eyegor."