The female star that Mel Brooks called “the single greatest comedian that ever lived”
The 20th century saw a dizzying evolution in comedy. With Vaudeville, physical comedy, and the slapstick humour of Laurel and Hardy, things morphed into the witty banter of comics like the Marx Brothers and the sitcoms of the 1950s. By the end of the decade and into the 1970s, everything changed. With the dawn of counterculture came a cohort of irreverent, absurdist, anti-establishment comedians who threw out all the rules and started from scratch. The comedy world exploded with new talent, but even in a free-for-all of Spike Milligans, Monty Pythons, and Richard Pryors, Mel Brooks stood out.
Having gotten his start writing for television in the 1950s, Brooks moved into filmmaking in the late ‘60s with the theatre satire The Producers. His melding of high-brow references and sharp dialogue with slapstick comedy and sight gags made him an instant success with audiences, and he’s been a giant in the comedy scene ever since. He even became an EGOT recipient in 2001, demonstrating his influence on the entertainment industry as a whole.
Brooks’s career has spanned more than seven decades, and in that time, he’s worked with some of the greatest comedic actors of the century, including Sid Caesar, John Candy, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, and countless others. Of all of them, however, there was one who he believed was the greatest of all time. During a conversation with the American Film Institute about his classic 1974 farce Blazing Saddles, Brooks said that Madeline Kahn was, potentially, “the single best comedian that ever lived.”
Throughout her career, Kahn epitomised the type of absurdist humour and impeccable timing that Brooks’s scripts called for, which is why he cast her in so many of his films. Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, and History of the World, Part I were all defined by her work. She had the glamorous look of a Hollywood movie star, but she never hesitated to descend into the most low-brow, obscene comic territory.
In Blazing Saddles, she played German seductress-for-hire Lili Von Shtupp, a character that capitalised on both her beauty and her knack for complete and utter absurdity. It earned her an Oscar nomination, which in itself tells you everything you need to know about her talents. The Academy is loath to acknowledge comedy, let alone a comedy as broad as Blazing Saddles. It’s no coincidence that in a cast full of comedic heavy-hitters and a script that continues to be quoted on a regular basis, only Kahn, the music, and the editing earned nominations.
“She always had it first take,” Brooks remembered of her performance. “She didn’t need another take. She was perfect.”
Like nearly all the greatest comedians, Kahn could do much more than comedy. She began her career as an opera singer and showed her dramatic skills in movies like Nixon and Paper Moon, the latter of which earned her her first Oscar nomination. She earned an Emmy and a Tony Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe, as well. Had she lived past her fifties, she might have joined Brooks as an EGOT winner.
