David Bianculli

Terry Gross spoke with Peter Boyle in 1988.

Harry Gross spoke with Peter Boyle in 1988.

He died in 2006.

And now, another of that film's scene-stealing supporting players, Cloris Leachman, who had won an Oscar years earlier for her supporting dramatic work on The Last Picture Show.

She played Frau Blucher, a longtime resident of the Transylvania castle, a woman so scary horses would react in fear whenever they heard her name.

Terry Gross spoke with Cloris Leachman in 2009.

Hmm.

Cloris Leachman, speaking to Terry Gross in 2009.

She died in 2021.

Coming up, to complete our Halloween Day tribute, the director and co-writer of Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks.

This is Fresh Air.

By the time he directed and co-wrote Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks already had written for TV's Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, recorded hit comedy records in which Carl Reiner interviewed him as the 2,000-year-old man, co-created the TV series Get Smart, and directed such movies as The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, and Blazing Saddles.

I spoke with Mel Brooks in 2013 and offered the opinion that you couldn't create a great parody of something unless you both understood and enjoyed the thing you were lampooning.

And what about, say, Alfred Hitchcock, whom you lampooned in High Anxiety?

Those would have come a little later for you, but you clearly loved those too.

What was the joke that you couldn't use?

Now, you seem to have a great track record directing and writing for women.

I mean, not only Madeleine Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Terry Garr, getting really wonderful comic performances from these women.

What was your method?

Young Frankenstein came out the same year as Blazing Saddles.