Editing Mel Brooks (section)

===1970–1979: Career stardom===
With the moderate financial success of the film ''The Producers'', Glazier financed Brooks's next film, ''[[The Twelve Chairs (1970 film)|The Twelve Chairs]]'' (1970). Loosely based on [[Ilf and Petrov]]'s 1928 [[The Twelve Chairs|Russian novel of the same name]] about greedy materialism in post-revolutionary Russia, it stars [[Ron Moody]], [[Frank Langella]], and [[Dom DeLuise]] as three men individually searching for a fortune in diamonds hidden in a set of 12 antique chairs. Brooks makes a cameo appearance as an alcoholic ex-serf who "yearns for the regular beatings of yesteryear". The film was shot in Yugoslavia with a budget of $1.5 million. It received poor reviews and was not financially successful.<ref name="Wakeman, John 19882"/>

[[File:Gene Wilder 1970.JPG|thumb|right|190px|Brooks collaborated with [[Gene Wilder]] on several films including ''Young Frankenstein'' and ''Blazing Saddles'' (both 1974)]]

Brooks then wrote an adaptation of [[Oliver Goldsmith]]'s ''[[She Stoops to Conquer]]'', but was unable to sell the idea to any studio and believed that his career was over. In 1972, he met agent [[David Begelman]], who helped him set up a deal with [[Warner Bros.]] to hire Brooks (as well as [[Richard Pryor]], [[Andrew Bergman]], [[Norman Steinberg]], and [[Alan Uger]]) as a script doctor for an unproduced script called ''Tex-X''. Eventually, Brooks was hired as director for what became ''[[Blazing Saddles]]'' (1974), his third film.<ref name="Wakeman, John 19882"/> ''Blazing Saddles'' starred [[Cleavon Little]], [[Gene Wilder]], [[Harvey Korman]], [[Slim Pickens]], [[Madeline Kahn]], [[Alex Karras]], and Brooks himself, with cameos by [[Dom DeLuise]] and [[Count Basie]]. It had music by Brooks and John Morris, and a modest budget of $2.6 million. A satire on the [[Western film]] genre, it references older films such as ''[[Destry Rides Again]]'' (1939), ''[[The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (film)|The Treasure of the Sierra Madre]]'' (1948), ''[[High Noon]]'' (1952) and ''[[Once Upon a Time in the West]]'' (1968). In a surreal sequence towards the end, it references the extravagant musicals of [[Busby Berkeley]].

Despite mixed reviews, ''Blazing Saddles'' was a success with younger audiences. It became the second-highest US grossing film of 1974, grossing $119.5 million in the United States and Canada. It was nominated for three [[Academy Awards]]: [[Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress|Best Supporting Actress]] (for Madeline Kahn), [[Academy Award for Film Editing|Best Film Editing]], and [[Academy Award for Best Original Song|Best Original Song]]. It won the [[Writers Guild of America Award]] for [[Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay|Best Comedy – Written Directly for the Screen]]; and in 2006 it was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the [[Library of Congress]] and selected for preservation in the [[National Film Registry]]. Brooks has said that the film "has to do with love more than anything else. I mean when that black guy rides into that Old Western town and even a little old lady says 'Up yours, nigger!', you know that his heart is broken. So it's really the story of that heart being mended."<ref name="Wakeman, John 19882"/> Brooks described the film as "a Jewish western with a black hero".<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Tynan |first=Kenneth |date=October 22, 1978 |title=Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1978/10/30/mel-brooks-frolics-and-detours-of-a-short-hebrew-man |magazine=[[The New Yorker]]}}</ref>

When Gene Wilder replaced [[Gig Young]] as the Waco Kid, he did so only when Brooks agreed that his next film would be a script<ref name="vulture/funny-man-highlights">{{cite web |last1=Boone |first1=Brian |title=Highlights From Mel Brooks Biography 'Funny Man' |url=https://www.vulture.com/2019/03/mel-brooks-biography-funny-man-book-highlights.html |website=[[Vulture.com]] |publisher=[[New York (magazine)|New York]] |access-date=September 29, 2022 |language=en-us |date=March 19, 2019}}</ref> that Wilder had been working on: a spoof of the [[Universal Pictures|Universal]] series of ''[[Frankenstein (1931 film)|Frankenstein]]'' films from several decades earlier. After the filming of ''Blazing Saddles'' was completed, Wilder and Brooks began writing the script for ''[[Young Frankenstein]]'' and shot it in the spring of 1974. It starred Wilder, [[Marty Feldman]], [[Peter Boyle]], [[Teri Garr]], [[Madeline Kahn]], [[Cloris Leachman]] and [[Kenneth Mars]], with [[Gene Hackman]] in a cameo role. Brooks' voice can be heard three times: as the wolf howl when the characters are on their way to the castle; as the voice of Victor Frankenstein, when the characters discover the laboratory; and as the sound of a cat when Gene Wilder accidentally throws a dart out of the window in a scene with Kenneth Mars. Composer [[John Morris (composer)|John Morris]] again provided the score, and [[Universal monsters]] special effects veteran [[Kenneth Strickfaden]] worked on the film.

[[File:Mel Brooks High Anxiety still.jpg|thumb|left|Brooks in ''[[High Anxiety]]'' (1977)]]

''Young Frankenstein'' was the third-highest-grossing film domestically of 1974, just behind ''Blazing Saddles'' with a gross of $86 million. It also received two Academy Award nominations for [[Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay|Best Adapted Screenplay]] and [[Academy Award for Best Sound|Best Sound]]. It received some of the best reviews of Brooks's career. Even notoriously hard-to-please critic [[Pauline Kael]] liked it, saying: "Brooks makes a leap up as a director because, although the comedy doesn't build, he carries the story through&nbsp;... [He] even has a satisfying windup, which makes this just about the only comedy of recent years that doesn't collapse."<ref name="Wakeman, John 19882"/> In 1975, at the height of his movie career, Brooks tried TV again with ''[[When Things Were Rotten]]'', a [[Robin Hood]] parody that lasted only 13 episodes. Nearly 20 years later, in response to the 1991 hit film ''[[Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves]]'', Brooks mounted another Robin Hood parody, ''[[Robin Hood: Men in Tights]]'' (1993). It resurrected several pieces of dialogue from his TV series, and from earlier Brooks films.

After his two hit films Brooks got a call from [[Ron Clark (writer)|Ron Clark]] who had an audacious idea: the first feature-length silent comedy in four decades.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1976/07/18/archives/mel-brooks-talks-up-silent-movie-brooks-talks-up-silent-movie.html Mel Brooks Talks Up ‘Silent Movie’]</ref> ''[[Silent Movie]]'' (1976) was written by Brooks and Clark, and starred Brooks in his first leading role, with Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, [[Sid Caesar]], [[Bernadette Peters]], and in cameo roles playing themselves: [[Paul Newman]], [[Burt Reynolds]], [[James Caan]], [[Liza Minnelli]], [[Anne Bancroft]], and the [[mime]] [[Marcel Marceau]], who uttered the film's only word of audible dialogue: "Non!" It is an homage to silent comedians [[Charlie Chaplin]] and [[Buster Keaton]], among others. It was not as successful as Brooks's previous two films but did gross $36 million. Later that year, he was named fifth on the [[Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll]].<ref name="Wakeman, John 19882"/> Reviews were generally favorable; [[Roger Ebert]] praised it as "not only funny, but fun. It's clear at almost every moment that the filmmakers had a ball making it." Regarding the film's inside jokes, Ebert wrote that "the thing about Brooks's inside jokes is that their outsides are funny, too."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Ebert |first=Roger |date=January 1, 1976 |title=Silent Movie |work=[[Chicago Sun-Times]] |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/silent-movie-1976}}</ref>

''[[High Anxiety]]'' (1977), Brooks's parody of [[Freudian psychoanalysis]], as well as the films of [[Alfred Hitchcock]], was written by Brooks, Ron Clark, [[Rudy De Luca]], and [[Barry Levinson]], and was the first movie Brooks produced himself. Starring Brooks, Madeline Kahn, [[Cloris Leachman]], Harvey Korman, [[Ron Carey (actor)|Ron Carey]], [[Howard Morris]], and [[Dick Van Patten]], it satirizes such Hitchcock films as ''[[Vertigo (film)|Vertigo]]'', ''[[Spellbound (1945 film)|Spellbound]]'', ''[[Psycho (1960 film)|Psycho]]'', ''[[The Birds (film)|The Birds]]'', ''[[North by Northwest]]'', ''[[Dial M for Murder]]'' and ''[[Suspicion (1941 film)|Suspicion]]''. Brooks plays Professor Richard H. (Harpo) Thorndyke, a Nobel Prize–winning psychologist who suffers from "[[acrophobia|high anxiety]]".<ref name="Wakeman, John 19882"/>