Pierre Casiraghi and Beatrice Borromeo are one of those couples who shoot their backs. But they are minor words. You couldn’t get any cooler than John Cassavettes and Gena Rowlands. Or further back, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. Then there are the couples in which their beauty does not stand out, but they are also cool. Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards. Or Mel Brooks and Ann Bancroft. Of these two couples, Julie Andrews and Mel Brooks are the widowers. The 95-year-old widower Brooks has published his memoirs, All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Showbusiness. The comedian, screenwriter, actor and director has dispatched some 800 pages beginning in 1931 going to see Frankenstein. The director and screenwriter of Young Frankenstein (with Gene Wilder and Mary Shelley, of course) he saw her at the age of five and, fearful, closed the window to sleep. Even if it was terribly hot. To convince him to open it, his mother told him yes, that Frankenstein wanted to come eat it. But there would be problems. He had to go from Transylvania to Brooklyn first. Take a bus or train and then a boat. No one would come to pick it up. And once he arrived in America he would have no idea how the subway works. Should he make it to Brooklyn, he’d have to find South Third Street and eat the Rothsteins first, whose window would be the first open he’d find. He considered his mother a “true hero”, but he was not very clear about where the monsters came from.
He writes a lot of the years with Sid Caesar. From Your Show of Shows. He never considered himself a writer until in 1950 he first saw his name in the credits of Your Show of Shows (He, Mel Tolkin and Lucille Kallen wrote it). But I’m going to 1961, when he met Anne Bancroft. She accompanied a friend who had to play the piano for her in a rehearsal. When he saw her and heard her sing he got up, started clapping and yelling, “Anne Bancroft! I Love You!” She laughed and replied, “Who the hell are you?” “I am Mel Brooks, no one you’ve ever heard of. “” That’s not true. I have your album with Carl Reiner ‘2000 Year Old Man. It’s fantastic.’ All shouting. And that’s when it all began. When he whistled to call a taxi, she told him it was the best whistle to call a taxi that He had never listened. It was February 5, 1961. He began to investigate where Anne was at all times. And he would appear in a restaurant, in a night club, wherever he went. “It’s incredible. We are always in the same places. It is destiny, “he said.” It is not destiny. You are following me. If you want to see me, why don’t you ask me out on a date?He did and they saw each other every night. They both liked foreign movies. They both liked Chinese food. This was fine because it was the cheapest. But he didn’t have a penny. Since she knew the situation, Once the bill arrived, he passed him a $ 20 bill under the table. The bill was $ 11 or $ 12 and he released the waiter as he handed him the bill: “Keep the change.” Bancroft caught a rebound: “Look, big shot, don’t tip my money.”
Mel wanted to marry Anne, but he couldn’t see how. “I wasn’t making enough money to support her. Not so that she would live as she was used to, so that she would live in any way.” But in 1964 he had a stroke of luck. Get Smart. In other words, what was called here Super Agent 86. Danny Melnick and David Susskind: “We need a series and we want you to write it. Inspector Clouseau and James Bond are the biggest hits now. Do you have any ideas?” They also asked him if he wanted to write with someone. Sure, with Buck Henry (later he would write The graduate and The sky can wait). At that time there were secret agents in film and television. Sean Connery in film as Bond and Robert Vaughn and David McCallum in The Man from U.N.C.L.E (here it was called The Cipol Agent). Mel Brooks wanted to do something crazy. No one had ever done a show about a CIA agent who was a jerk, so he decided to be the first. Another stroke of luck was having Alpha-Betty Olsen as a secretary, who was a friend of hers and who kept up with them. It took Buck and Brooks three and a half months to write the pilot. They were delighted with Don Adams and Barbara Feldon. They had a blast inventing trinkets. Mel came up with the slipper. They presented the pilot to ABC and the network was not interested in what it saw. But another stroke of luck came. Brooks had friends on NBC. Grant Tinke asked him if he had anything left over from the days of Sid Caesar, something he hadn’t used. They were looking for fun shows. He immediately saw the pilot and bought it. “The same thing happened to me ten years later with Columbia Pictures and Young Frankenstein… When I told them that I wanted to film in black and white they went crazy and said in life. So we took Alan Ladd Jr. to Twentieth Century Fox. The rest is not just history; it’s something I explain in a later chapter. “
Super Agent 86 It was good money for Mel Brooks. “So on August 5, 1964, I was able to marry Anne and pay the bills. Not only could I take her out to dinner, but I didn’t have to pass the money under the table to pay the bill.” During the wedding in New York they had to hold back the laughter because the one who officiated it had a crazy voice, “Dooo youuuu Anna Marie Louise Italianooooo”. I imagine him something like the Gallo Claudio. At no time during the ceremony were they able to look at each other so as not to fall to the ground laughing. Also, Mel had forgotten her ring and they used an earring from Anne. In the end they caught a taxi on the way to their new home in the Village kissing and kissing the earring that had served as their ring.
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