“She finishes the song.
It’s a rehearsal, so you’re able to talk,” Brooks later recalled.
“And I scream out, ‘Anne Bancroft, I love you!’
She said, ‘Who are you?’
I said, ‘I’m Mel Brooks!’
She said, ‘I got your record!’
You know, I did a record with Carl Reiner,2000 Year Old Man” (viaCBS News).
Brooks began to pursue Bancroft, knowing that she was the girl for him.
“There was nobody else.
She had looks, she had brains, she had purpose,” he said.
The pair married in 1964 and remained together for 41 years, until Bancroft’s passing in 2005.
While some might think that directing your spouse would prove challenging, Brooks raved about the experience.
“She was easy … she was fun …
I liked her so much.
I couldn’t get enough of her,” he recalled (viaDaily Mail).
Luckily, Bancroft felt similarly.
In 2000, she told theNew York Daily News,“He makes me laugh a lot.
I get excited when I hear his key in the door.
It’s like, ‘Ooh!
The party’s going to start.'”
But it appears as though these differences were what helped bring them together.
“This aggressive voice came out from the dark,” Bancroft explained.
“And I thought it must be a combination of Clark Gable and Robert Taylor, Robert Redford.
It turned out to be Mel Brooks, and he never left me from that moment on.”
“She could be the leading lady or an aide-de-camp,” he said of her work.
She was a great gift.
She was a gift from God."
