We lost Madeline Kahn, a farceur extraordinaire, far too soon. And her list of film appearances, especially ones that fully showcase her unique comedic talents, is tragically short. But thank goodness for that marvelously mad Mel Brooks for letting her loose in a quartet of some of the most gut-bustingly funny female performances in cinematic history.
Kahn, who passed away at age 57 in 1999, would have celebrated her birthday on September 29. What better way to salute her legacy on the big screen than to recall the two-time Oscar nominee’s 12 greatest movies, ranked from worst to best. Our photo gallery includes “Blazing Saddles,” “What’s Up, Doc?” and “Young Frankenstein.”
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12. HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART 1 (1981)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Mel Brooks Starring: Brooks, Gregory Hines, Dom DeLuise.
There is a reason that there never was a “Part 2.” This slapdash episodic burlesque of eras past ranging from the Stone Age to the Spanish Inquisition finds Kahn as Empress Nympho in the Roman Empire segment. Her lascivious ruler spews various double-entendres for male appendages and such while eyeing up male candidates for her orgies. Says Shecky Greene’s Marcus Vindictus: “Oh Nympho, I would do anything to gain your favor. How can I catch you? How can ensnare you? What bait must I use to catch your love? I am your servant! “ Her reply? “Ah, but the servant waits, while the ‘master’ baits!”
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11. CLUE (1985)
Image Credit: Moviestore Collection/REX/Shutterstock Director: Jonathan Lynn. Writer: Lynn, John Landis. Starring: Tim Curry, Eileen Brennan, Christopher Lloyd.
This ensemble comedy wrapped in a mystery plot and based on the board game was a flop, despite releasing three versions with different whodunit endings. But it has since garnered a cult following, partly because of Kahn’s insane take on Mrs. White (dressed up like a black widow, including a helmet-like wig). Many have noted that her ad-libbed meltdown when she admits to killing her husband’s lover, Yvette the maid, is nuttier than Cracker Jack, as a spasm of words pour out of her mouth: “I hated her, so much … it, it the flam-flames. Flames, on the side of my face, breathing … heaving breaths. … Heathing.” But I prefer her statement when she is queried about the suspicious disappearance ofher five spouses: “Husbands should be like Kleenex: soft, strong and disposable.”
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10. AT LONG LAST LOVE (1975)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Peter Bogdanovich. Starring: Cybill Shepherd, Burt Reynolds, Eileen Brennan.
“The Last Picture Show” filmmaker tried to capture the song-and-dance magic of 1930s MGM musicals, but the result fell flatter than a 2-ton pancake. But while Reynolds and Shepherd were far from the second coming of Fred and Ginger, Kahn as stage star Kitty O’Kelly was in her element as a trained singer with experience in Broadway musicals. Her rendering of an obscure Cole Porter song, “Find Me a Primitive Man,” with a chorus line of clumsy cavemen and a faux Tarzan isn’t great art, but she can move and carry a tune — and her tipsy trilling of the torch song, “Down in the Depths,” is quite a treat.
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9. THE ADVENTURE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES’ SMARTER BROTHER (1975)
Image Credit: John Jay/Jouer Prods/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director and writer: Gene Wilder. Starring: Wilder, Marty Feldman, Dom Deluise.
Wilder made his directorial and script-writing debut while starring in this spoof as Sigerson Holmes, the younger and, apparently, brighter brother of Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective. He was smart enough to borrow some of Mel Brooks’ favorite players, including Feldman and Kahn, who gets to utter this immortal line tied to a letter that her stage performer, Jenny Hill, penned: “It said I wanted to touch his winkle.” But the scene that has gone down in infamy is when Kahn, Wilder and Feldman all start bouncing crazily about in Sigerson’s chambers, their hands imitating paws, to “The Kangaroo Hop.”
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8. THE MUPPET MOVIE (1979)
Image Credit: Moviestore Collection/REX/Shutterstock Director: Jack Frawley. Writers: Jack Burns, Jerry Juhl. Starring: Charles Durning, Austin Pendleton, Kermit, Miss Piggy.
Kahn is part of a passel of actors doing cameo duty in the first of eight films featuring the Muppets, as Kermit decides to travel to Los Angeles to pursue a career in show business. She makes the most of her 31-second role as the so-called El Sleezo Patron who is encased in a sparkly red dress while she enjoys a beverage at the bar. Kermit sidles up next to her and, in her Lily Von Shtupp voice from “Blazing Saddles,” she looks at him and says, “Hello, sailor. Buy me a drink?” Kermit , ever the innocent, replies, “I’m not a sailor. I’m a frog.” Getting frustrated, she answers back, “Cut the small talk and buy me a drink.” At this point, Telly Salvalas comes over and tells Kermit to leave her alone. Kahn says, “It’s twue, he touched me.” Salvalas suggests she go wash because she will get warts – and off she goes.
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7. THE CHEAP DETECTIVE (1978)
Image Credit: Moviestore Collection/REX/Shutterstock Director: Robert Moore. Writers: Neil Simon. Starring: Peter Falk, Dom DeLuise, Eileen Brennan.
Consider this a cheap knock-off of a Mel Brooks-ian lampoon of such Humphrey Bogart classics as “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Big Sleep” and “Casablanca.” Peter Falk is tough-talking Lou Peckinpaugh, the 1940s gumshoe in question, who is charged with the murder of his partner while he assists a barrel full of characters with uncovering a lost treasure. Kahn is a deceptive Mary Astor stand-in who breaks into Lou’s office and uses a series of 16 aliases, including Norma Shearer and Barbara Stanwyck, before revealing she is actually Mrs. Montenegro. As for Simon, he’ll always have 1976’s “Murder by Death.”
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6. JUDY BERLIN (1999)
Image Credit: Courtesy Shooting Gallery Film Series Director and writer: Eric Mendelsohn. Starring: Barbara Barrie, Bob Dishy, Edie Falco.
As fall descends upon a middle-class Long Island town during a solar eclipse, Kahn’s final film finds her in an amusing yet meditative state as high-strung housewife Alice Gold, whose elementary school principal husband (Dishy) is dissatisfied with their relationship. Her chatty character copes with an unspecified mental problem, which gives Kahn license to express more serious emotions than usual — fear, confusion and sadness. Her depressed deadbeat son (of which she says, “I always wanted children and I gave birth to a viper”) becomes re-acquainted with an old classmate, Judy (Falco), while her spouse flirts with Judy’s mom, a teacher (Barrie ), at work. While slow-moving at times, this black-and-white drama with a comedic lining, which allows Kahn to dominate the last shot, is a perfect swan song for an irreplaceable talent that left us too soon.
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5. HIGH ANXIETY (1977)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Mel Brooks. Writers: Brooks, Ron Clark, Rudy De Luca, Barry Levinson. Starring: Brooks, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman.
Brooks does a take-off on Hitchcock thrillers such as “Psycho,” “Vertigo” and “The Birds,” and also plays Dr. Richard Thorndyke, a shrink who suffers from a mix of acrophobia and vertigo. He is the new overseer of a psychiatric institute where the S&M enthusiast Nurse Diesel (Leachman, sporting a faint mustache) is extorting money from rich patients. Kahn is Victoria Brisbane, a typically chilly Hitchcock blonde who convinces Brooks to help her get her father out of the facility. She does get to wear a Louis Vuitton-patterned jumpsuit and drive a matching Cadillac. But the funny lady knocks it out of the park when she mistakes Thorndyke’s groans while being strangled for an obscene phone caller (“What are you wearing? Jeans? Bet they’re tight.”) while fondling a Louis Vuitton-clothed teddy bear. But no one should put Kahn in a stereotypical corner like Brooks does here.
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4. WHAT’S UP, DOC? (1972)
Image Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Peter Bogdanovich. Writer: Buck Henry, David Newman, Robert Benton. Starring: Barbra Streisand, Ryan O’Neal, Austin Pendleton.
Kahn’s feature film debut was a doozy – a rapid-fire screwball comedy in the mode of “Bring Up Baby” crossed with a Bugs Bunny cartoon involving four identical plaid overnight bags that get mixed up at a hotel. The one with igneous rocks belongs to a dweeby musicologist, Howard (O’Neal), who is in town to apply for a research grant. With him is his uptight fiancée Eunice (Kahn), a fan of power-blue attire who is as stiff as her perfectly coiffed flip. Coming between them is Judy (Streisand), a free spirit who is calamity-prone. Poor Eunice gets pushed aside by the determined Judy, but Kahn never turns her into a victim while allowing us to laugh at her stick-in-the-mud antics relatively guilt-free. Little wonder she won a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year.
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3. PAPER MOON (1973)
Image Credit: Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Peter Bogdanovich. Writer: Alvin . Starring: Ryan O’Neal, Tatum O’Neal, John Hillerman.
Kahn scored her first supporting Oscar nomination as Trixie Delight, an “exotic dancer” at a Midwest carnival during the Depression who decides to hitch her wagon to O’Neal’s con man, Moses, and his fancy car. Unfortunately, his 9-year-old traveling companion, Addie (O’Neal’s real-life daughter, Tatum), an orphan who might be his own child, takes exception to Trixie’s intrusive presence and won’t sit in the backseat. Kahn then launches into a marvel of a three-minute monologue and comes clean with the scowling Addie, telling her, “If you wait it out a little, it’ll be over, you know. I mean, even if I want a fella, somehow I manage to get it screwed. … So how ’bout it, honey? Just for a little while. Let ole Trixie sit up front with her big tits.” An smile soon appears on Addie’s face and anyone within ear shot.
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2. BLAZING SADDLES (1974)
Image Credit: Warner Bros/Crossbow Prods./Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Mel Brooks. Writers: Brooks, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg, Al Uger. Starring: Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Slim Pickens.
“He treats me like an uncle. A dirty uncle.” That is how Kahn described her relationship with Brooks, who put her in four of his Hollywood parodies including this Western with racially charged laughs. He unleashed her bawdy side and gave her free rein as leggy Lili von Shtupp , the Teutonic Titwillow, who was highly influenced by Marlene Dietrich’s saloon siren Frenchy in “Destry Rides Again.“ It is hard to pinpoint just one highlight that led to her second supporting Oscar nomination. Let’s try two. First up is her in-the-dark seduction of Bart, Cleavon Little’s black sheriff. “Tell me, schatze, is it twue what they say about the way you people are … gifted?” After the sound of a zipper,“ she exclaims, “Oh, it’s twue. It’s twue. It’s twue, it’s twue!“ Then there is the ditty, “I’m Tired,” with these lyrics: “I’ve been with thousands of men/ again and again/they promise the moon/ they’re always coming and going and going and coming … and always too soon.”
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1. YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Mel Brooks. Writers: Brooks, Gene Wilder. Starring: Wilder, Peter Boyle, Teri Garr.
The “Citizen Kane” of Brooks’ film parodies is a pitch-perfect skewering of a string of Universal Frankenstein-related fright flicks from the 1930s and ‘40s. And while everyone is magnificently on their game, as Wilder’s Frederick, the heritage-denying grandson of mad scientist Victor Frankenstein, is beckoned to his ancestor’s estate and takes up where he left off, Kahn as his out-of-the-loop fiancée , Elizabeth, drives the last half-hour or so to new heights. She goes from prissy, warning her amorous intended “No tongues” before a smooch to insatiably hissy after Boyle’s well-endowed monster (“Woof!”) has his way with her. When opera-trained Kahn launches into “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” as her hair acquires “Bride of Frankenstein” streaks after their first encounter, the movie hits one comedic high note after another. I have to give a shout-out to how she tells her now-domesticated creature that she has put a special hamper in the bathroom “just for socks and poo-poo undies.”
