It’s good to be King: Mel the Great

    Appearing before a sold-out room, Mel took the microphone and explained that we were getting a real treat because he used to get $100 a week to perform in the Catskills. He regaled the audience with stories of how “The Producers” got made, explaining that almost every studio in town turned it down. Lew Wasserman loved the script but asked if Brooks wouldn’t consider changing Hitler to Mussolini.

    Brooks said he was first encouraged to write a screenplay by the late Mel Tolkin (who just passed away recently), who said “You can do it.” However when Brooks showed him the completed screenplay then called “Springtime for Hitler,” Tolkin thought it would be a tough sell.

    When Brooks appeared on the TCM Dick Cavett special he told another story involving Tolkin who ran the writer’s room on the Sid Ceasar “Your show of Shows”  that bears repeating (although I do so from memory).

    As Brooks recalled when he  was first working  on the  show, he was making $250  a week , more money than anyone in his family had ever made, and he felt tremendous pressure and anxiety about it. So much so that he used to get sick, vomiting between parked cars on the way to work. Finally he went to Tolkin and asked his advice.

    Tolkin was impressed. he told Brooks, “250? I started throwing up at $200.”

    Then Tolkin suggested that Brooks start seeing an psychoanalyst and gave him a referral.

    At which point, Cavett asked: “And did it help?”
   
To which Brooks replied, “Not only did it help. I asked for a raise.”