The Original 'Spaceballs' Was Based on This Oscar-Winning Movie, Not 'Star Wars'
When Mel Brooks made movie parodies, his inspirations were obvious. For Blazing Saddles, he borrowed from old Westerns like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. For Young Frankenstein, the original Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein were the road maps. High Anxiety found its inspiration in pretty much everything Alfred Hitchcock ever made. So when Brooks decided to appease his son Max, a Star Wars nut, with sci-fi parody Spaceballs, the logical inspiration was Star Wars, right?
Nope. While Brooks parodied Star Wars characters like Yoda with his own Yogurt, he turned to an unlikely inspiration for the film’s plot. “The plot of Spaceballs was inspired by Frank Capra’s 1934 classic It Happened One Night,” Brooks revealed in his memoir, All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business.
On the one hand, it’s hard to argue with a film that was the first to sweep all the major Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress. (The feat has only been pulled off twice since, by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975 and Silence of the Lambs in 1991.)
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On the other hand, what the heck did a screwball romcom starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert have to do with science fiction? It Happened One Night is the story of a runaway heiress who escapes her marriage by fleeing on her wedding day from her wealthy but dull fiancé before falling for a good-looking, not-so-rich wise guy. For the record, it all takes place on Earth.
“We took that same basic plot and shoved it into space!” said Brooks. The runaway heiress became Princess Vespa from the planet Druidia; the wise guy was now Lone Starr, a cross between Gable and Han Solo. It was a sturdy storyline upon which Brooks could hang his space opera.
Spaceballs isn’t the only comedy to borrow from It Happened One Night. Friz Freling said in his unpublished memoir that Bugs Bunny lifted several elements from the film, including the way Gable’s character, Peter Warne, munched carrots while he spat out fast-paced dialogue. An episode of Sex and the City features Carrie and Mr. Big watching the film, then Carrie showing some leg to stop a taxi, just like Colbert. Stan Laurel stopped a stagecoach using the same method in Way Out West.
The 1987 space spoof didn’t come close to winning five Oscars, although “Spaceballs went on to become one of the biggest hits in the Mel Brooks cinematic universe,” Brooks said. “I think I’ve autographed more Spaceballs posters than for any other Mel Brooks film. I’ve even gotten some letters from young fans that saw Spaceballs before they saw Star Wars. They would often ask me why Star Wars wasn’t so funny.”
