Even though we had Albert Whitlock to paint most of our historical settings, we decided that for the French Revolution we would use Blenheim Palace in Oxford, England, to be the backdrop for the Palace of Versailles. While we were shooting at Blenheim Palace, which was the ancestral home of the Dukes of Marlborough, we were visited by the current Duke of Marlborough. When I addressed him as “Your Grace,” which I found out was the proper manner when addressing a duke, he said, “Please, please. Call me Sonny.” Which was the nickname that he asked most friends to call him. He asked me if I would have dinner with him at his club in London. Since he was kind enough to lend us Blenheim Palace, the least I could do to repay him was to have dinner with him.
It turned out that his club was named “Brooks’s Club” and that it was one of the oldest (established in 1762) and most well-known exclusive gentlemen’s clubs in all of London. Before dinner we had a glass of wine together and then we were greeted by the austere, handsomely attired ma?tre d’ of the club. He said, “What a wonderful occasion, that Brooks’s Club should be visited by such an accomplished film director with the same surname! Like yourself, Mel Brooks dining at Brooks’s.”
Throwing caution to the wind, I went for a laugh.
“To tell you the truth, I actually changed my name to Brooks,” I said. “My real name is Melvin Kaminsky. What was the club’s name before it was changed to Brooks?”
For a moment, there was dead silence and then the ma?tre d’ cracked up with a burst of laughter that shook the room. Sonny joined in the laugh, and it turned out to be one of the best nights out I ever enjoyed in England. To top it off, the wine we had with dinner was Chateau Lafite 1970. (Thank god, Sonny picked up the check.)
When I saw the first assemblage of the rough cut of the movie, I said to myself, “Something’s missing. What’s missing? I know, coming attractions!”
So I cheekily made some coming attractions for my imaginary next movie, History of the World, Part II. The first was “Hitler on Ice,” which was a downright terrific title. I hired a great ice skater, slapped on a Hitler mustache and a swastika armband, played some waltzy Germanic music, and had him do beautiful jumps and loops around the ice.
At one screening I actually heard somebody whisper, “Wow! I had no idea that Hitler was such a great skater.”
I finished with a coming attraction entitled Jews in Space. We see a huge spaceship shaped like the Star of David fighting off dozens of enemy fighters. We cut to inside the spaceship and we see the rabbinical attired Jewish pilots linking arms and dancing a victorious hora. Crazy, but it worked. I got so many letters from fans telling me how much they loved the coming attractions.
To tie all the sections of the movie together I needed a great narrator. I immediately thought of Orson Welles. There was simply no voice as majestic, that would resonate so thrillingly, like the voice of Orson Welles. I knew that words emanating from his mouth would immediately lend stature to the narration. I called my dear friend Alan Yentob in London. Alan was the creative director at the BBC and I also knew he was a good friend of Orson’s. Alan put me in touch with Orson, and when Orson read the narration, he called me and said, “It’s wonderful, count me in.”
It was a thrill to meet Orson Welles. He was so generous with his compliments of my movies. I returned the favor and told him how much I loved Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and not to mention the brilliant Touch of Evil. Orson had some strange requests: First, he wanted his fee in cash, and second, he wanted to have equal say as to what takes of his narration would be used in the final cut. Of course, I trusted his judgment and dutifully met both requests. I got Fox to give me his fee of twenty-five thousand dollars in cash. I put it in a paper bag and gave it to him on the first day of recording.
“Orson, you don’t have to tell me, but I’m so curious,” I said. “What are you going to do with that twenty-five thousand dollars in cash?”
He said, “I am going to spend it all on fine Cuban cigars and the best Beluga caviar.”
(This is entirely true—you couldn’t make it up!)
Orson Welles was going to record the voiceover narration between nine a.m. and four p.m. every day for five days. He started Monday morning at nine a.m., and by three o’clock, with a half hour break for lunch, he had recorded the entire narration of History of the World, Part I. Twice. Perfectly. He asked if he had to come in again, and I said, “No, we got it!”
Every word of every line exactly as it was needed. His magnificent voice lent a wonderful sense of grandeur to the ambitious title, History of the World, Part I. It was a dream come true.
I thanked him and saw him on his way. I then called Alan in London and woke him up to tell him all about Cuban cigars, Beluga caviar, five days of work done in five hours, and again thanked him profusely for connecting me to the incomparable Orson Welles.
By this point, I had reached a level in my filmmaking career where I felt I deserved a fifty-fifty split with the studio, in this case, Twentieth Century Fox. As the studio chief, I asked Laddie to make the following agreement: Fox would spend a modest amount of money on the film and own the domestic distribution, and Brooksfilms would put in half the budget and receive all of the foreign distribution rights.
One of the reasons I wanted this arrangement with the studio was my relationship with Emile Buyse. Emile Buyse was the president of foreign distribution for Fox, and also had become a close friend. He always did a superb job of making my movies popular throughout the world. It seems that Emile had a falling-out with the new head of distribution at the studio, who wanted not only to be head of domestic distribution but also to control foreign—making Emile Buyse’s superb gift for foreign distribution redundant. Emile promptly handed in his resignation and was no longer working for Fox.
I was appalled. It upset me to no end. And then in a brilliant stroke, I asked Emile to work for me and to be Brooksfilms’ foreign distributor of all future films. He immediately agreed, and it was his strong suggestion that made me ask Laddie for this new arrangement, where Brooksfilms would own foreign distribution on History of the World, Part I.
Laddie said, “I agree that you certainly deserve to have such a deal, but as chief of the studio I could be setting a dangerous precedent. Let me think about it.”
He didn’t think about it for long. The next day he called me and said, “Okay. You’ve got a deal.”