Wilder came to fame through his collaborations with Mel Brooks  appearing in The Producers (1966) and Blazing Saddles (1974) and then co-writing Young Frankenstein (1974), before going solo as a writer-director of his own material. All of Gene Wilders films consciously draw on Hollywoods past  Arthur Conan Doyle in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother (1975) and The Worlds Greatest Lover (1977), which spoofed Rudolf Valentino, while The Woman in Red (1984) consciously took on Marilyn Monroe. Even Wilders best work with Mel Brooks was parodies of old films  the Universal Frankensteins in Young Frankenstein and the Western in Blazing Saddles.