Young Frankenstein Was Born From Blazing Saddles
Brooks first met Wilder in 1963 when Wilder appeared in a play with Brooks’ soon-to-be wife, Anne Bancroft, and cast Wilder in his 1967′ film The Producers. While they were working together on 1974’s Blazing Saddles, Brooks took interest in a story Wilder was writing. Brooks has told slightly different versions of the story, but in his terrific 2020 memoir, All About Me!, he wrote:
“One day on the Western town set of Blazing Saddles, when we broke for lunch I noticed Gene Wilder leaning against the sheriff’s office and scribbling something on a pad propped up on his knees. I said “Gene, how ’bout lunch?” He said, “In a minute I have to finish a thought I have.” … He handed me the pad and at the top had written the words ‘Young Frankenstein.’
Wilder explained that it was an idea for a movie “about Baron Frankenstein’s grandson. He’s an uptight scientist who doesn’t believe any of that nonsense about bringing the dead back to life. Even though he is clinically a scientist, he is as crazy as any Frankenstein.”
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