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LOS ANGELES – Peter O’Toole was famous for his directing, Oscar-nominated turn. Mark Linn-Baker was a budding actor. Richard Benjamin, who starred in “Goodbye, Columbus” and “Westworld,” had a few television directing credits.
The sum of these unexpected parts was the 1982 comedy film “My Favorite Year,” starring O’Toole and Linn-Baker, directed by Benjamin and produced by Mel Brooks. It paid a loving tribute to the early days of TV in the mid-20th century and the variety shows that were the “Saturday Night Live” of their day.
When Benjamin read the screenplay given to Norman Steinberg and Dennis Palumbo, he immediately turned to his wife, actress Paula Prentiss.
“I hope they want me for this, because it’s great,” Benjamin recalled.
The film, which marks its 40th anniversary, is set in 1954 and stars O’Toole as the late but still glam icon Alan Swann, who appears in “Comedy Cavalcade” to pay off his IRS debt. Linn-Baker plays Benjy Stone, an energetic young writer tasked with keeping Swann out of trouble (read: sober) until broadcast.
Inspiration for “My Favorite Year” includes Sid Caesar, the star who ruled the decade of television, and “Show of Shows,” a hit from 1950-54 that was followed by “Caesar’s Hour.” The film is inspired by Errol Flynn’s films such as Captain Blood, and Swann’s “Captain Tortuga” seen in a fake clip.
Brooks, who wrote “Your Show of Shows” alongside another stage and screen giant, Neil Simon, said in his 2021 memoir “All About Me!” that the movie represented “my love letter to Sid Caesar and the early days of television, and it was a great story.”
“My Favorite Year,” available on streaming services, had a respectable box office opening in October 1982, coming in third behind “Officers and Gentlemen” and “ET the Extra-Terrestrial.”
Joseph Bologna plays the talented, manic (and sexy) King Kaiser. Others in the incredible cast include Lainie Kazan (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and sequels), Jessica Harper (“They”), Bill Macy (“Maude”) and Selma Diamond.
Benjamin was a teenage fan of Caesar’s show and recalled how he and his equally devoted friends would get calls after it aired on Saturday nights to replay the highlights.
“The show changed everything. Comedians used to stand up and tell jokes, but here was something funny that was character” and stretched with extended sketches, Benjamin said. “It seemed like a miracle that this (film) came to me.”
The role of Swann had not yet been played, and it was Hollywood’s luck that it went to O’Toole, giving his seventh out of eight Oscar nominations (he lost to Ben Kingsley in “Gandhi”).
Albert Finney was offered the part but was dragging his feet. “Why don’t you get O’Toole?” Finnie helpfully suggested. “We do this all the time. I turn something, you turn something” and the other takes the role.
Linn-Baker (“TV’s Ghosts,” “Perfect Strangers”) found O’Toole a kind and generous mentor and is often amazed by his work, which includes “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Becket” and “The Lion in Winter. ” O’Toole died in 2013 at the age of 81.
“The relationship that Benjy and Swann had on film is as good as the relationship we had off screen,” Linn-Baker said. “He took me under his wing. What little I know about acting, I know from watching and listening to him.”
Kazan, who played Belle Steinberg Carroca, Benjy’s remarried widow, remembers meeting O’Toole for the first time when she and Brooks knocked on the actor’s dressing room door, heard a muffled “come in” and found O’s underwear on. The device sits on the sink and washes her hair.
“He stands up and says, ‘Miss Kazan, my greatest pleasure,'” the actor and singer gleefully recounted. “I fell in love with him. He was so amazing to me. “
Kazan, who received a Tony nomination for reprising the role of Belle in the 1992-93 musical adaptation of “My Favorite Year,” said she raised her outspoken Jewish mother from her relatives, including an aunt who was “the best person” and. Kazan’s mother, a beautiful woman who wore “all these wonderful clothes.”
An invitation to a Brooklyn dinner from Belle to Swann leads to a culture clash of epic comedy proportions. At one point, Benjy’s middle-aged aunt Sadie walks in wearing a revealing wedding gown, prompting an awkward compliment from sister Belle.
“Do you like it? I only wore it once,” replies a beaming Sadie, while Swann, amused, looks on.
For all its fun punchlines and slapstick, “My Favorite Year” is a fitting Valentine to classic TV creativity. The templates they created are still copied and popular, even amidst the great changes of the 21st century.
The movie’s plot is interesting, but “the world it’s set in is really zany, and it’s very beautiful,” Bianculli said. “I show ‘Your Show Show’ in my class (at Rowan University), and it still works.”
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