The one and only movie Mel Brooks wasn’t allowed to make: “I’d never had a no in my life”
On paper, battling against the odds to create one of the defining comedy movies of its era should give the person who wrote and directed it the creative carte blanche to make whatever they want. Unfortunately, Mel Brooks quickly discovered that wasn’t the case.
As far as directorial debuts go, The Producers was as impressive as it was important. Brooks was constantly facing studio pushback, and the plot being so heavily reliant on the lingering spectre of Adolf Hitler didn’t sit too well with some sections of the public, either.
The first-time feature filmmaker stuck to his guns, though, and with a helpful and much-needed assist from Peter Sellers, received a wide theatrical release, won him the Academy Award for ‘Best Original Screenplay’, and eventually settled into its ongoing position as one of Hollywood’s greatest comedies.
Finding that kind of success right out of the gate can often go straight to an auteur’s head, but since he was already approaching two decades in showbusiness by the turn of the 1970s, Brooks was well within his rights to think he could make whatever he wanted, especially with an Oscar under his belt.
However, when he approached 20th Century Fox with his next idea, he was instantly shot down. In the studio’s defence, it wasn’t the easiest sell, since the hypothetical movie was based on an 18th-century play that had already been the subject of four feature film adaptations, although there hadn’t been one for over 30 years by the time Brooks pitched his.
“I wanted to do my version of She Stoops to Conquer,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s an English comedy you may have heard of. And they said no. I’d never had a no in my life. I said, ‘Are you people crazy? This is Mel Brooks. I’m talking to you. I’m offering you a movie. Just say yes! God bless you! Thank you! We can’t thank you enough!’ Those are your lines. And they said, ‘No, it’s too weird.'”
Presumably, he wanted to put his own spin on the material because it isn’t all that weird. The story, which unfolds over the course of an evening, finds a woman trying to win the affections of a man who’s constantly nervous around society’s upper crust, but perfectly at ease with the lower classes, so she masquerades as a pub barmaid to set her plan in action.
Brooks planned to set his version of She Stoops to Conquer in the United Kingdom, once explaining that “in some scenes I have subtitles to explain what they’re saying,” and he had ideas of being more on-the-nose about the play’s overarching themes of class divide, since he wanted to “have beggars do downtrodden the rich walk on their faces.”
The studio wasn’t interested in the slightest, so he went back to the drawing board. Not that it was a total loss, since his return from said drawing board saw him sign a deal with Warner Bros, and present the studio with his next picture, a raucous western comedy called Blazing Saddles.
