Throughout filming, I had only one disagreement with Jerry Hirschfeld. It was over a slow move in to a close-up on Gene Wilder’s face in the laboratory.
Jerry said, “I gotta do it over again. There was a noticeable shake in the camera as we moved in for the close-up.”
I said, “I want that! That’s good!”
He looked at me like I was crazy.
Then I explained, “It’s called cinematic verisimilitude. It’s mimicking exactly the period photography in the original Frankenstein. James Whale didn’t have his camera on big rubber wheels gliding over a plywood floor. All his slow-moving shots were made on a slightly bumpy studio floor. And a lot of them had that exact little shake in them.”
It gave it that 1931 quality that I was dying to get in the film. I loved that little shake!
Jerry broke into a broad smile and said, “Okay, if that’s what you want—you got it. We have all the little shake you’ll ever need.”
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One of the problems I had on set was constantly reshooting because of laughing from the crew. So one day I went out and bought a hundred white handkerchiefs. I handed them out and said to the crew, “If you feel like laughing, don’t! Stick this handkerchief in your mouth.”
I turned around once in the middle of shooting a scene and saw a sea of white handkerchiefs in everybody’s mouths.
I thought, I’ve got a big hit here. This movie is going to be hilarious.
There’s only one true test of a comedy, and that’s outright laughter. I don’t care how beautiful the lighting is, how superlative the script is, how wonderful the performances are. If you’re making a comedy and the audience isn’t falling down, holding their bellies, screaming with laughter, you’ve probably got a failure.
First laughter and then everything else.
（Shame on me, but it’s true.）
One of the white-handkerchief-in-the-mouth scenes actually got me. I was struggling not to break into laughter. I didn’t have a white handkerchief to shove in my mouth—I’d given them all out and didn’t save one for myself…and I really needed it!
The offending scene was the one in which Gene, Teri, and Marty are at the dinner table. Dr. Frankenstein is in the depths of depression over his failure to bring the monster back to life.
Teri says, “You haven’t even touched your food.”
Gene responds by sticking his hands into his beef stew and boiled potatoes and saying, “There! Now I’ve touched it. Happy?”
Marty, trying to lighten the mood, blurts out, “You know, I’ll never forget my old dad, when these things would happen to him, the things he’d say to me.”
Gene and Teri are patiently waiting to hear what Marty’s dad used to tell him, and finally Gene asks, “What did he say?”
Marty replies, “What the hell are you doing in the baffroom day and night! Why don’t you get out of there and give someone else a chawnce!” Then he takes a big bite of his boiled potato and just chews.
Somehow, I held it together, and after I said cut, we all collapsed in a heap on the floor and exploded into nonstop laughter. That was a near miss.
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For our locations for the movie we used the back lot of MGM, which gave us two wonderful outdoor sets. One was the quaint Bavarian village, replete with authentic winding cobblestone streets, and the other the graveyard where we find and dig up the huge body that becomes Frankenstein’s monster. It was during that scene that we came up with the great line in which Gene （covered with mud and dirt from the digging） says:
Dr. Frankenstein: What a filthy job.
Igor: Could be worse.
Dr. Frankenstein: How?
Igor: Could be raining.
It immediately starts pouring, and as they are drenched with rain Dr. Frankenstein fixes Igor with a look that is unforgettable.
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I loved working with Gene. He had incredible range as an actor, especially in the scene where he goes into the dark cell where the monster is chained to a huge chair. He comes in so sure of himself; just before he goes into the monster’s cell he says, “No matter what you hear in there, no matter how cruelly I beg you, no matter how terribly I may scream, do not open this door…”
He’s so in charge. So smart. He tiptoes in and when the monster wakes up and growls at him, he goes from this commanding doctor into a terrified frightened little child. From self-assurance and perfect command to a scared kid banging on the door and screaming, “Let me out. Let me out of here. Get me the hell out of here! What’s the matter with you people! I was joking! Don’t you know a joke when you hear one? HAHAHAHA! JESUS CHRIST GET ME OUT OF HERE!”