Mel Brooks

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 10:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1978 and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

On our Desert Island this week is the American film director, producer, writer, actor and comedian Mel Brooks. Now what's the first disc you've chosen to take with you?

Mel Brooks0:41

I was a drummer.

Mel Brooks0:43

When I began. And I got into show business, so to speak, as a comedian.

Mel Brooks0:48

When the comic fell ill, and I, I, the drummer, knew all that bad material, and I was asked by the owner of this hotel, would I replace him? So I jumped to the stage and I took over and I did these kinds of jokes. Good evening, ladies and germs. I just flew in from Chicago, and boy, are my arms tired. I got a room in Chicago that was so small the mice were hunchback. That's how small this room was. I met a girl in Chicago who was so skinny. I mean, this girl was really thin. I took her to a little restaurant, and the waiter said, Check your umbrella, sir. I mean, that's how skinny this was. So, well, you know, I did not make it as a comic because of that material. So, I decided to become a writer, and I wrote material for the one and only Sid Caesar. He's a famous television comedian in America. We had a long

Speaker 11:31

Television

Mel Brooks1:34

Long and wonderful run there. So before I became a comic and a comedy writer and uh a director and an actor and a producer and an usher, by the way, if you go to any theater where any of my films are playing, you will see me in aisle three leading people to their seats with a little flashlight. You call it a torch here in England, don't you?

Presenter1:50

Yeah.

Presenter1:52

Sure, yes. And checking the uh the accounts in the front.

Mel Brooks1:53

I'm gonna show you.

Mel Brooks1:55

Yes, yes, yes. The receipts are quite important. Yes, yes, we you gotta count them up because theater owners are notorious. You know, they have a way of one for you, one for them. At any rate, uh I love music. I've always loved music and uh

Speaker 12:04

At any rate.

Mel Brooks2:09

I would be s seriously bereft.

Mel Brooks2:12

And and at a great loss if music were taken away from my life.

Presenter2:17

Yeah.

Mel Brooks2:17

I love from the bottom of my left ventricle. Uh all sorts. I think you'll find that the things that I've chosen are the probably the most eclectic group uh of of recordings that you will ever have on the show.

Presenter2:29

You were going to tell us what the first one was.

Mel Brooks2:32

The first one is one of my favorite swing

Mel Brooks2:35

recordings. It was made by Audie Shaw, and it's Begin the Begin. Audie Shaw was a sensational clarinet player. And uh Begin the Begin

Mel Brooks2:46

is the most perfect example.

Mel Brooks2:50

of uh a swing record.

Presenter3:53

Artie Shaw, begin the begin. You're a New Yorker, aren't you, Mel?

Mel Brooks3:57

Yes, born and bred in New York and I I right now I'm living in California because it is a major center of film production and that's what I do for a living. But I I miss New York and uh big cities uh are thrilling for me because one walks in big cities and uh in California one is always

Mel Brooks4:13

In in a car. You're always driving. Did you hear a lot of music?

Presenter4:15

Here I'll

Mel Brooks4:18

Yes, oh yes, we had a Philco radio and uh

Mel Brooks4:21

There were great squabbles and fights about who would hear what, you know, and uh when I was very young I wanted to hear all the adventure programs, The Lone Ranger and Jack Armstrong and what have you, and my brothers wanted to hear Tommy Dorsey, and finally they won out, and that's uh why I'm such a swing aficionado.

Speaker 44:29

Uh

Mel Brooks4:38

Ever since then, I've loved jazz and I love swing and uh I I um

Mel Brooks4:43

A tidbit of information. Only a few blocks away from where I live. Buddy Rich, the famous swing drummer, one of the best that ever lived.

Presenter4:51

He asked.

Mel Brooks4:52

Buddy Rich did teach me some there some rudimentary paradiddles, etcetera, about drumming and

Presenter4:57

When did you start drumming?

Mel Brooks4:58

Oh, when I was about thirteen and a half, fourteen years.

Presenter5:00

And then when did you first play for money?

Mel Brooks5:03

I played for money at fifteen.

Presenter5:05

In what?

Mel Brooks5:06

Well I played weddings by mitzvahs, uh also uh, you know, uh subway platforms, uh any place that would g you know, I or I could uh g get a couple of bucks, you know.

Presenter5:15

Right, you've started your career at that important point. Let's break your second record.

Mel Brooks5:16

Alright.

Mel Brooks5:20

I also

Mel Brooks5:22

Somewhere along the way, I managed to hear some classical music. And I was absolutely thrilled by Bach and by Beethoven, especially.

Mel Brooks5:33

When I heard the Fifth Symphony, I said, Oh my God, you so many men working together to do such a great good thing. I mean, how could that be? Usually, when a lot of men get together, it's called war. And here all these guys got together and they made all this wonderful music. And the best example of thrilling symphony for me.

Mel Brooks5:53

would be Beethoven's fifth.

Mel Brooks5:55

and if I had my way, conducted by Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter7:01

The opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Arturo Toscanini, and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Now you told us how you got up from your drums and went on the stage, used the comics material. This was when you were on the Borch circuit, I guess you.

Mel Brooks7:14

Yes, you'll be able to do that.

Presenter7:15

Going around the cat's girlfriend.

Mel Brooks7:16

Known affectionately as the Borscht Bell because of the of the voluminous amounts of Borsch that were consumed by the people who would attend those places. Now, these were mostly resorts that immigrants would go to to speak their native language, Ukrainian, Jewish, Russian, Polish, etc. And they were wonderful. Mostly they were Jewish mountain resorts. And that's where many comedians and musicians got their beginnings. And I noted some wonderful observations when I was working there. One, that Jews had a tendency to eat too much sour cream and then to rock it off, so to speak. They would sit in rocking chairs on the verandas, on the porches of these hotels and rock.

Mel Brooks8:02

Sometimes they would sing a song. Normally they would sing a song in the wrong key. Now it was very dangerous to sing Dancing in the Dark in the wrong key because it goes very high. So many Jews would suffer terrible fainting spells and strokes because they would start Dancing in the Dark something like this. Dancing in the dark till the tune ends. Now you know that's too high. We're dancing in the dark and it soon ends. And we can face the music together. Dancing in the dark.

Presenter8:38

It's a great strain on a man.

Mel Brooks8:39

Yeah. But I I thought it was very I thought it was sensational to me to notice that they were all in the wrong key. And I saved many Jewish lives by simply instructing them to start in a lower key.

Presenter8:50

Right, you were up in the Catskills. Yeah. The television industry was was growing up and you moved in.

Mel Brooks8:52

Yeah.

Mel Brooks8:54

It moved in.

Mel Brooks8:55

It was in black and white, it was new, it was live, it was exciting, and nothing was on tape, and we were on our metal, so to speak, all along. What was your first?

Presenter9:02

What was your first job?

Mel Brooks9:04

The first job was uh b the job that I continued on for for eight or nine years to do. I was a comedy writer for Sid Caesar. It was called The Show of Shows. Sid Caesar, Imogene Coco, Karl Reiner, and Howard Morris were the leads in it. And my fellow writers at that time, believe it or not,

Speaker 19:12

Please answer.

Mel Brooks9:19

The writing staff consisted mostly of uh

Mel Brooks9:22

Mel Brooks, Woody Allen.

Mel Brooks9:24

and Neil Simon.

Presenter9:25

That's not a violent bunch of

Mel Brooks9:26

Quite a nice bunch of writers to have good writing material for you.

Presenter9:28

Quite good.

Presenter9:29

You also wrote a couple of Broadway shows.

Mel Brooks9:32

Yes, there was a

Mel Brooks9:34

There was a wonderful show called New Faces of 1952. Leonard Sillman produced it, and Ronnie Graham and I wrote most of the sketches, and yes.

Presenter9:39

Ronnie Graham, and I think he was.

Mel Brooks9:42

Earthikit was discovered in in that show.

Presenter9:45

All-American you did too.

Mel Brooks9:46

And then I did All American. Josh Logan directed that and and Ray Bolger was in the lead and that had quite a nice run. And I got very interested in writing music uh from those shows. And then when I entered films I began to write songs for my own films.

Presenter9:59

Well, we'll talk about that later. Let's have your third record.

Mel Brooks10:02

Perhaps the greatest American singer that ever lived was Bing Crosby. Now, I say that knowing that young people don't realize how good Bing Crosby was because they.

Mel Brooks10:12

They only hear the old grown up when when Crosby had segued into a new vocal pattern because he couldn't make those silver notes any more. And so when I was growing up, when I was in my teens, I always thought Crosby was passe. And then somebody laid this record on me, and I heard the Crosby of the late twenties and the early thirties. One of them was Dancing in the Dark, by the way. But he did the song that absolutely made me swoon, and I fell madly in love with Crosby and have been ever since, was a song called Can't We Talk It Over?

Speaker 410:44

I hate the thought of spending nights all alone.

Speaker 410:50

Missing a thread.

Speaker 410:52

Overnight

Presenter10:53

I don't believe no.

Presenter10:56

Can't we talk it over?

Speaker 410:59

Uh

Presenter10:59

Before it's over.

Speaker 110:59

Or

Speaker 411:00

For it all

Speaker 111:00

Uh

Presenter11:02

Before you whisper

Presenter11:05

Goodbye forever.

Presenter11:08

Let's talk it over, dear.

Presenter11:13

Ben Crosby, the young growner. You had a big success with some discs you made.

Presenter11:18

I made some comedy records, yes. One of them sold a million.

Mel Brooks11:21

Uh yes, the first one. Two thousand year old man with Karl Reiner and Mel Brooks. That that did sell a million copies and uh it paid the rent until I was able to do my first film.

Presenter11:31

Well you you made a bit of a killing in television. You devised and wrote a very successful spy series, Send Up Spy Series.

Mel Brooks11:37

Yes, together with Buck Henry. We must give Buck Henry credit, very bright writer. Buck Henry and I created a series called

Mel Brooks11:43

Get Smart based on uh Maxwell Smart, an American secret agent who was a blunderer, who could do nothing right, and had a shoe telephone, and always spoke to his shoe and and and embarrassed everybody.

Presenter11:55

Write films. You started by writing and directing a short film, The Critic.

Mel Brooks12:00

Yes, there were some avant-garde colour and light cartoon shorts done by McLaren, Norman McLaren of Canadian. Yes. And I thought they were fabulous. But sitting next to me was a little Jew from uh Minsk or Pinsk, and he he kept trying to make sense out of these these uh avant-garde uh surrealistic uh forms. And he said things like uh

Presenter12:07

The Canadians.

Mel Brooks12:25

It must be a cockroach. It looks like a bug. Somebody'll kill it. No, it's our boss. It's our boy. It's our car. What the heck? I came to see a dirty French big show. I'm looking to disclaim. So I said, this is this is precious. I mean, this is a diamond of a concept. So I went to Ernie Pintoff, who was doing wonderful cartoons at the time. I said, Ernie, you draw it, and I'll be this little old man, and we'll do it. And we did it as a lock. We never intended to release it. I thought it was rather private. And we did release it. It was a big success. And I won an Academy Award for it.

Presenter12:48

I don't know.

Presenter12:53

An Academy Award which evened things up nicely at turn because your wife and Bancroft had got one for the medical work. It's nice to have one on each end of the sideboard.

Mel Brooks12:59

It's nice to have one on each end of the site.

Mel Brooks13:01

Well, we don't have our Academy Awards. She gave us to her mother w and I gave mine to my mother. We're very good children.

Presenter13:07

That's fair enough.

Mel Brooks13:08

And my mothers, for some reason, both keep them on their television sets.

Presenter13:12

So, and was it the success of the critic which opened the way for your first full-length film? Not at all.

Presenter13:18

How did that happen?

Presenter13:20

That's nice.

Mel Brooks13:20

Uh no, the critic didn't mean a thing. Uh as a matter of fact, I w the the office I got were to write television shows and I I wanted to go on to films and uh so I starved for a year or two and I wrote this

Mel Brooks13:34

Script call Springtime for Hitler.

Mel Brooks13:37

Which later became the producers. And I took it to everybody, and everybody said, no, you can't direct it.

Speaker 113:38

And I

Mel Brooks13:42

It's in shocking bad taste, and we won't do it, and we won't do this song Springtime for Hitler.

Mel Brooks13:47

So, I don't know, I just kind of bummed around for a while and I couldn't make a nickel and I was in a lot of trouble. But I wouldn't give up. And I finally met this fellow, Sidney Glazer, who's an independent producer, who had just won an Academy Award for the Eleanor Roosevelt story. And he had a great faith in it and in me. And he said, it's before its time, but let's give it a a good whirl. And we went to Joseph E. Levine, who had just formed Embassy Pictures, and had lunch with him. And Joe said to me,

Mel Brooks14:12

Listen, kid.

Mel Brooks14:13

From the bottom of your heart, and don't lie to me, do you think you can direct a real movie? I said, I think I can. We shook hands, and he gave me the job, and uh...

Mel Brooks14:23

Ten months later, we had

Mel Brooks14:25

In theaters everywhere the producers

Presenter14:26

For which you've got another Oscar, so your mother's got two of them.

Mel Brooks14:28

Yeah, my mother has two Oscars. I got an Oscar for the screenplay of that. And uh that was a great experience as uh you know, uh firstborns always are a a a a a majestic miracle and uh I'm still very proud of that film.

Presenter14:41

It's my favorite film of yours still.

Mel Brooks14:42

Denoya, you're a tasteless

Presenter14:44

You've put it on record that the producer played by Zero Mostel was based on a man you'd wept for when you were fifteen. I is this right?

Mel Brooks14:51

Yes, yes. Zero Must Up was one of the world's great grotesque comics. Zero was a.

Mel Brooks14:58

was Promethean.

Mel Brooks15:00

It wasn't enough to be on the screen, or it wasn't enough to be on the stage. If you went to a restaurant, sometimes a crazy cook would walk out of the back with a great big white hat with filth and garbage and lettuce all over him, and he would shout in Italian that there wasn't enough bread in the kitchen and go back to the doors. And of course, everybody would get up and leave. I mean, they said, My God, that's the cook. And that would be Zero Mostel. He was very. Very well commanded.

Presenter15:19

Very welcome everywhere.

Mel Brooks15:20

Doing a restaurant. Welcome, everybody. Very good, Roy. And Zero liked the script. As a matter of fact, his wife liked it better. And she urged him to do it.

Mel Brooks15:31

And he took a chance on this new young director, and I directed him, and I was lucky enough to find.

Mel Brooks15:37

In Leo Bloom, the other character, Gene Wilder, my wife and Jean were together in a play that Berto Brecht wrote called Mother Courage. Jean was playing the chaplain, and they got good good success on Broadway with it. And I watched Jean every night and I realized that this was an a very special

Speaker 115:45

DS

Mel Brooks15:52

Talent.

Mel Brooks15:54

And I told him I was writing a a movie for him, and he laughed and didn't believe me. And two years later, when I had finished it, he literally wept in his dressing room. He was doing love at the time. And it was a very emotional moment. I threw the script on the table and I said, You've got the lead. There it is. You're going to be in this movie. And he just broke down and wept. And wept and wept. And I dried his eyes and kissed him. And, you know. He hadn't even read it yet. No, no, he knew, but but he knew from the show of shows he was a great big fan of Sid Ceaser myself. And he he trusted that it would be funny.

Presenter16:18

He hadn't even read it yet.

Mel Brooks16:26

And uh it was a very w I'll never forget the moment. And then and then he wept again when I told him uh what I was gonna pay him.

Presenter16:33

Right, let's leave it there. Very embarrassing, yes. Record number four.

Mel Brooks16:35

Very embarrassing, yes.

Mel Brooks16:37

And then record number four is is uh

Mel Brooks16:40

One of my great favorites because it's Chopin, and it's it's the saddest and most beautiful song ever written. It's opus twenty eight, number four, played by my favorite uh classical pianist, Arthur Rubinstein, and I could not live without this sound in my life.

Presenter17:57

Chopin's Prelude Opus 28, number 4 in E minor, played by Arto Rubenstein. Let's talk about the films which followed the Proteus Mel. Wh which came next?

Presenter18:07

Right after the producers I went to Yugoslavia.

Mel Brooks18:10

to uh do a film called The Twelve Chairs. Yes, that was a Russian story. It was a story written by Ilfin Petrov, who who wrote two great novels, The Little Golden Calf and The Twelve Chairs. And uh not being allowed into Russia to film it, because it is rather anti communistic, I got into uh Yugoslavia.

Speaker 418:28

Yeah.

Mel Brooks18:28

Which we're a little softer about it. And I had a dreadful time in Yugoslavia because Tito had the car.

Mel Brooks18:34

There was only one of them. It was a green dodge, and and Tito used it uh most of the time. And so on Saturday nights it was just walking about in Belgrade Square, lit by one ten watt bulb.

Mel Brooks18:46

Rather bleak and they didn't even have spaghetti. I don't know what we were doing then. Anyway, we had a good time. We made the film. The Yugoslavian people are wonderful. They're brave. They're courageous. They're strong and willing workers. And they helped to make the experience palatable. And I shot for 106 days, six days a week.

Mel Brooks19:06

and lived there for nine months of my life, and gave birth to the twelve chairs, which I am very proud of.

Presenter19:12

Now you followed with a with a horror film, Young Young Frankenstein.

Mel Brooks19:16

Yes, right after that. Uh well, I didn't follow with a horror film. No, I did Blazing Saddles. Oh, Blazing Saddles, of course, that was next. I did a Weston after that. And uh.

Presenter19:20

Oh slip.

Presenter19:21

Of course that was next.

Mel Brooks19:24

Blazing Saddles was perhaps the acme of bad taste in modern American filmmaking, and I'm very proud of that. And everybody who says vulgarity and bad taste, I say nonsense. It's revelation. I have better words for it, you know. I say it's restoration comedy. What about Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Witcherly and Oliver Goldsmith, God bless them? I mean, they're as filthy as I am, and I'm very...

Presenter19:49

Yeah.

Mel Brooks19:50

And I'm I'm very proud of all of us.

Presenter19:51

Great. Well, that was a terrific success, wasn't it? Blazing Saddle.

Mel Brooks19:52

Well that was

Mel Brooks19:54

Old bra

Presenter19:55

Big

Mel Brooks19:56

But

Presenter19:56

Yeah.

Mel Brooks19:56

Success

Presenter19:56

And then Silent Movie, which was pretty noisy and a very funny film, the first silent film made for a long time.

Mel Brooks20:02

It is the noisiest silent film ever made, yes, yes. Because there's a the the sound effects and the soundtrack, yeah.

Mel Brooks20:08

Record number five.

Presenter20:09

No, what's that?

Mel Brooks20:10

Record number five Frank Sinatra

Mel Brooks20:12

Ah, per perhaps the best living singer, one of the great the great crooners, you know, legendary crooners, a legend in his own life. And here he is at the peak of his career.

Speaker 420:23

Be hers if only she would call

Speaker 420:31

In the wee small hours of the morning

Speaker 420:39

That's the time you miss the most.

Speaker 420:46

Oh

Presenter20:54

Frank Sinatra in the Wee Small L's of the Morning recorded in nineteen fifty five. Of course, he probably doesn't know yet that you put him out of business in your new film, High Anxiety, in which you sing his sort of song in his sort of way.

Mel Brooks21:08

Well, when I did high anxiety, I never expected to get offers from Las Vegas uh nightclubs and casinos. You had them? Yes. They said, Forget the comedy, kid. We love what you do with the mic.

Mel Brooks21:18

You know. I think they mean the way I manipulate the mic cord rather than my voice. But I'm not sure. It's all show business, you know.

Presenter21:25

Right. Now high anxiety you dedicate to Alfred Hitchcock.

Mel Brooks21:28

Yes. I may he never dedicate anything to me in return. But uh I love Alfred Hitchcock. I when I met him I thought I would meet a tough old Commurgeon and uh the acerbic witted uh you know doer sombre personality.

Mel Brooks21:42

Not at all. A a warm, sweet, bright, emotional, loving and affectionate man.

Presenter21:49

Did you show him the picture of the picture?

Mel Brooks21:49

Show him the picture of the picture. And he said, Don't uh at any costs do anything uh that I've done that's funny. Do the things that I have done that are super dramatic, that lend themselves to to parody and satire. And he was very helpful and helped me arrange the script and he was

Speaker 422:02

Yeah.

Mel Brooks22:06

He saw the film and sent me a a little note saying, splendid, I wish I had done it. And he also sent along a case of Chateau Aubrian, 1961, which is I'm a wino, and that is a very wonderful wine and very difficult to get. We we both love wine, and Mr. Hitchcock was just absolutely, I mean, you know, I'm just in that man's dead.

Presenter22:26

That's a very considerate gesture. You parroted the big chips.

Mel Brooks22:30

Oh, by the way, I've sold the wine. I've got a wonderful price for it.

Presenter22:35

Yeah.

Mel Brooks22:35

Uh

Presenter22:35

To make another picture.

Mel Brooks22:35

To make another picture. I would be glad to know what I got for it. Yes.

Presenter22:41

Good. Now you parody the big scenes from Psycho and Vertigo and uh and The Birds, but you more than that, you parody his editing and and his use of colour and all the

Presenter22:52

People in the trade and the really dedicated movie buffs are going to have great fun finding all the little touches that it's not.

Mel Brooks22:58

Unfortunately there are about 161 uh uh aficionados of Hitchcock and there are 161 million people that have never seen a Hitchcock film. So I mean uh I hope that 161 people that love Hitchcock will see this picture 161 times so that I can get my money out of it.

Presenter23:13

Let's get back to music. What next?

Mel Brooks23:15

Let's get back to music. All right, would you like to hear me play the harmonica? All right, briefly. Well, in in in in in in lieu of that, shall we have uh the Brandenburg Concerto, maybe number three. Uh JS Bach.

Presenter24:27

The opening of Bach's third Brandenburg Concerto, Yehudi Manwin conducting the Bach Festival Chamber Orchestra.

Presenter24:35

How do you think you'd manage on a desert island? Could you look after yourself? Are you a practical man? Could you put up a shelter?

Presenter24:40

I

Mel Brooks24:41

I could.

Presenter24:41

Uh

Mel Brooks24:41

I could put up a shelter.

Mel Brooks24:43

If there were fruit on the island I could survive.

Mel Brooks24:45

If um

Mel Brooks24:47

There were fish th that were near the shore. I'm sure I could I could catch them. Have you done any fishing?

Presenter24:51

Do

Mel Brooks24:52

Yes, yes, I'm quite a good surf caster, as a matter of fact. Good. Bluefish off the off the Montauk coast. Would you try to escape? The the island? Yes. Well, it depends. If I had no

Mel Brooks25:01

music or books or company.

Mel Brooks25:04

Or or a banana? Of course I'd escape. But as long as there was a banana and a few people and uh wha why escape? I mean, life offers what you d deem it should, not what the society intends that it.

Presenter25:17

Well, you'll very likely have the bananas, but no people.

Mel Brooks25:19

Oh, oh, well, I like people. I do like people. Record number seven. Record number seven is perhaps my favorite record in the whole world, because I was a I was a young man and a singer and a drummer, and uh th my two favorite people of that period were Helen Forrest and Dick Haymes. And they sing

Mel Brooks25:39

A beautiful song called In Love in Vain.

Mel Brooks25:42

Should cause you such

Presenter25:45

Misery and pain I thought that I would be in heaven.

Speaker 425:55

Uh

Speaker 425:56

Uh

Presenter25:56

But I'm only up a tree Cause it's just my look

Presenter26:04

To be loving.

Presenter26:09

In Love in Vain by Dick Hames and Helen Forrester. Now we come to your last record. What's that to be?

Mel Brooks26:14

Ah, my last record. Now, this is unseemly, and I'm very ashamed to say this. But.

Mel Brooks26:22

I am very emotionalized by this record. This record is a compendium, a collage, so to speak, of of all the the Melbrook's greatest hits, and the first song I ever wrote is on that.

Mel Brooks26:37

Record, and it's an especial favorite of mine, and I would really like to hear it on a desert island. And it's about.

Mel Brooks26:44

one of the most misunderstood

Mel Brooks26:46

Sweethearts in history, Hitler. It's called Springtime for Hitler. And I mean, apart from politics, I understand he was a wonderful dancer and he was a very good cook. But but no nobody nobody cares about that part of him. No, no. They just they're just upset by the political aspect of the of the man's

Presenter27:06

It's very unreasonable.

Mel Brooks27:06

But anyway, here's a song that I wrote: music and lyrics, and it's called Springtime for Hitler, and it was the centerpiece of the producers.

Mel Brooks27:16

For me, it's a thrill. So I'm I'm sorry to have to foist it upon you, right?

Speaker 427:25

Germany was having trouble what a sad sad story Needed a new leader to restore its former glory Where, oh, where was he? Where could that man be? We looked around and then we found the man for you and me.

Speaker 427:44

Now it's springtime.

Mel Brooks27:47

I'm

Speaker 427:48

Far ahead.

Mel Brooks27:48

It lore and Germany

Presenter27:52

Springtime for Hitler from the soundtrack of the producers. Mel, if you could take just one

Mel Brooks27:56

I would just like to apologize for that. Now we can go on.

Presenter27:59

Alright.

Presenter28:00

If you could take just one disc out of the eight you've played us, which would it be?

Mel Brooks28:04

Can't we talk it over, Bing Crosby?

Presenter28:06

Right.

Presenter28:07

And you're allowed to take one luxury with you to the island?

Mel Brooks28:10

If I could take only one luxury, I would take a case of wine, and the wine would probably be

Mel Brooks28:17

Chateau Lafitte Rothschild, nineteen forty five.

Presenter28:21

Very reasonable. One case is very modest. We'll give you enough to last.

Mel Brooks28:26

Alright.

Presenter28:27

And you're allowed to take one book. The Bible and Shakespeare are already there, and we don't allow big encyclopedias, but apart from that, help yourself off the shelves.

Mel Brooks28:35

I think I would take the charter house at Palmer.

Mel Brooks28:38

By standout.

Presenter28:39

Yeah.

Mel Brooks28:39

It's my favorite book.

Presenter28:41

Right.

Presenter28:42

And thank you, Mel Brooks, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Mel Brooks28:46

And I want to thank you, Roy, for being so kind. And so by the by, whilst we were having our discussion, I was given a cup of tea. I spilt it on the table all over Roy's lap. He never said a word about it. I'm sure he's in some pain. And I just I want to apologize for that too.

Presenter29:05

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 129:16

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.