The Twelve Chairs

Dimwit servant Tikon (writer and director Mel Brooks), con artist Bender (Frank Langella) and greedy heir Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody) considering how to get back his mother-in-law's hidden jewels, and meeting Father Fyodor (Dom DeLuise), in post-revolutionary Russia, in The Twelve Chairs, 1970.

Opening by writer, director and co-star Mel Brooks, Branka Veselinovic as a post-revolutionary Russian aristocrat on her death bed, sending for her foppish son-in-law (Ron Moody) and her nutty orthodox priest (Dom DeLuise), shooting on location in then-Yugoslavia, in The Twelve Chairs, 1970.

Russia, 1927, Bender (Frank Langella), just introduced as a kindly con-man, meets the writer and director Mel Brooks, playing the wistful ex-servant Tikon, in The Twelve Chairs, 1970, co-starring Ron Moody and Dom DeLuise.