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Mel Brooks

April 10, 2023

Mel Brooks (born Melvin James Kaminsky;[1] June 28, 1926) is an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies.[2] A recipient of numerous accolades he is one of 18 entertainers to win the EGOT, which includes an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award ("Oscar"), and a Tony Award. He has also received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013, a British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015, a National Medal of Arts in 2016, and a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017.

Mel Brooks
Brooks in 2010
Born
Melvin James Kaminsky

(1926-06-28) June 28, 1926 (age 96)
New York City, U.S.
Alma materVirginia Military Institute
Occupations
  • Actor
  • comedian
  • filmmaker
Years active1947–present
WorksFull list
Spouses
  • Florence Baum
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1953; div. 1962)​
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 1964; died 2005)​
Children4, including Max
AwardsFull list

He began his career as a comic and a writer for Sid Caesar's variety show Your Show of Shows from 1950 to 1954 alongside Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Larry Gelbart.[3] With Carl Reiner, he created the comic character The 2000 Year Old Man and together they released several comedy albums starting with 2000 Year Old Man in 1960. He wrote, with Buck Henry, the hit television comedy series Get Smart from 1965 to 1970.

Brooks rose to prominence becoming one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s. His best-known films include The Producers (1967), The Twelve Chairs (1970), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), High Anxiety (1977), History of the World, Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).[4] A musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers, ran on Broadway from 2001 to 2007 and was itself remade into a musical film in 2005. He wrote and produced the Hulu series History of the World, Part II (2023).

Brooks was married to actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005. Their son Max Brooks is an actor and author, known for his novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006). In 2021, Mel Brooks published a memoir titled All About Me![5] Three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of the past 100 years (1900–2000), all of which ranked in the top 15 of the list: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13.[6]

Early life and education

Brooks was born on a tenement kitchen table,[7] on June 28, 1926, in Brownsville, Brooklyn,[7] New York City, to Kate (née Brookman) and Max Kaminsky,[8] and grew up in Williamsburg. His father's family were German Jews from Danzig (Gdańsk, Poland); his mother's family were Jews from Kyiv, in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine).[9][10][11][12] He had three older brothers: Irving, Lenny, and Bernie.[13][14] His father died of tuberculosis of the kidney[9] at 34 when Brooks was two years old.[15] He has said of his father's death, "There's an outrage there. I may be angry at God, or at the world, for that. And I'm sure a lot of my comedy is based on anger and hostility. Growing up in Williamsburg, I learned to clothe it in comedy to spare myself problems—like a punch in the face."[13][14]

Brooks was a small, sickly boy who often was bullied and teased by his classmates because of his size.[16] He grew up in tenement housing. At age nine, he went to a Broadway show with his maternal[17] uncle Joe—a taxi driver who drove the Broadway doormen back to Brooklyn for free and was given the tickets in gratitude—and saw Anything Goes with William Gaxton, Ethel Merman and Victor Moore at the Alvin Theater. After the show, he told his uncle that he was not going to work in the garment district like everyone else but was absolutely going into show business.[18]

When Brooks was 14 he gained employment as a pool-side tummler (entertainer) at the Butler Lodge,[19] a second-rate Borscht Belt hotel, where he met 18-year-old Sid Caesar.[7] Brooks kept his guests amused with his crazy antics. In a Playboy interview, he explained that one day he stood at the edge of a diving board wearing a derby[7] and a large alpaca[7] overcoat with two suitcases full of rocks, who then announced: "Business is terrible! I can't go on!" before jumping, fully clothed into the pool.[9] He was taught by Buddy Rich (who had also grown up in Williamsburg) how to play the drums, and started to earn money as a musician when he was 14.[20] During his time as a drummer, he was given his first opportunity as a comedian at the age of 16, filling in for an ill MC. During his teens, he changed his name to Melvin Brooks,[21][22] influenced by his mother's maiden name Brookman, after being confused with trumpeter Max Kaminsky.[20]

Brooks graduated from Eastern District High School in January 1944[23] and intended to follow his older brother and enroll in Brooklyn College to study psychology.[24][25]

World War II service

In early 1944, in his senior year at Eastern District High School, Brooks was recruited to take the Army General Classification Test, a Stanford–Binet-type IQ test.[26] After scoring highly, Brooks was sent to the Army Specialized Training Program at the Virginia Military Institute to be taught electrical engineering, horse riding, and saber fighting.[26][27][28] In 1944, Brooks was drafted into the Army.[27] Twelve weeks later, when he turned 18, he officially joined the United States Army[20] at the Fort Dix,[26] New Jersey, induction center, and was sent to the Field Artillery Replacement Training Center at Fort Sill, Oklahoma for basic training and radio operator training.[26][29][30][28] Brooks was then sent back to Fort Dix for overseas assignment.[26] Brooks says he boarded the SS Sea Owl at the Brooklyn Navy Yard around February 15, 1945.[26] A reporter for the United States Department of Defense writes that Brooks arrived in France in November 1944, and later to Belgium, serving with the 78th Infantry Division as a forward artillery observer.[27] In February 1945, a short while later, Brooks was transferred to the 1104th Engineer Combat Battalion as a combat engineer, participating in the Battle of the Bulge.[28][27][31][32]

"Along the roadside, you'd see bodies wrapped up in mattress covers and stacked in a ditch, and those would be Americans, that could be me. I sang all the time ... I never wanted to think about it ... Death is the enemy of everyone, and even though you hate Nazis, death is more of an enemy than a German soldier."[33]

Stationed in Saarbrücken and Baumholder, the battalion was responsible for clearing booby-trapped buildings and defusing land mines as the Allies advanced into Nazi Germany.[34][35][28] Brooks was tasked with land mine location; defusing was done by a specialist.[26] Brooks has stated that when he heard Germans singing over loudspeakers, Brooks responded by singing into a bullhorn, Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo' Bye!) by Jewish Al Jolson.[36][37][38] Brooks spent time in the stockade after taking an anti-Semitic heckler's helmet off and smashing him in the head with his mess kit.[39] His unit constructed the first Bailey bridge over the Roer River,[26] later building bridges over the Rhine River.[27] In April 1945, Brooks' unit conducted reconnaissance missions in the Harz Mountains, Germany, when the war ended.[27]

With the end of the war in Europe, Brooks joined the Special Services as a comic touring Army bases and he was made acting corporal and put in charge of entertainment at Wiesbaden.[9][28] and performed at Fort Dix.[9] In June 1946, Brooks was honorably discharged from the Army as a corporal.[28][27]

Career

Main article: Mel Brooks on screen and stage

Early career

After the war, Brooks' mother had secured him a job as a clerk at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but Brooks "got into a taxi and ordered the driver to take him to the Catskills",[40] where he started working in various Borscht Belt resorts and nightclubs in the Catskill Mountains as a drummer and pianist. When a regular comic at one of the clubs was too sick to perform, Brooks started working as a stand-up comic, telling jokes and doing movie-star impressions. He also began acting in summer stock in Red Bank, New Jersey, and did some radio work.[20] He eventually worked his way up to the comically aggressive job of tummler at Grossinger's, one of the Borscht Belt's most famous resorts.[20][41]

"In the years after the war, Brooks’ hero was comedian Sid Caesar. Back in New York, Brooks would slink[42] around trying to catch Caesar in between meetings to pitch him joke ideas. Eventually Caesar cracked and paid Brooks a little cash to throw him gags....At 24, Brooks got his break as a full-time writer."[43]

He found more rewarding work behind the scenes, becoming a comedy writer for television. In 1949, his friend Sid Caesar hired him to write jokes for the DuMont/NBC series The Admiral Broadway Revue,[44] paying him, off-the-books, $50 a week.

1950s: Your Show of Shows

In 1950, Caesar created the innovative variety comedy series Your Show of Shows and hired Brooks as a writer along with Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, and head writer Mel Tolkin.[20] The writing staff proved widely influential.[45] Reiner, as creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, based Morey Amsterdam's character Buddy Sorell on Brooks.[46] Likewise, the film My Favorite Year (1982) is loosely based on Brooks' experiences as a writer on the show including an encounter with the actor Errol Flynn.[47] Neil Simon's play Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993) is also loosely based on the production of the show, and the character Ira Stone is based on Brooks.[48][49] Your Show of Shows ended in 1954 when performer Imogene Coca left to host her own show.[50] Caesar then created Caesar's Hour with most of the same cast and writers (including Brooks and adding Woody Allen and Larry Gelbart). It ran from 1954 until 1957.[51][52] Brooks told The New York Times, "When I was a fledgling comedy writer working for Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows, our head writer was Mel Tolkin... I really looked up to him. (By the way, I was 5-foot-7 and he was six feet tall.) He was a bona fide intellectual, thoroughly steeped in the traditions of great Russian literature. One day he handed me a book. He said to me, 'Mel, you're an animal from Brooklyn, but I think you have the beginnings of something called a mind.' The book was Dead Souls by the magnificent genius Nikolai Gogol. It was a revelation. I'd never read anything like it. It was hysterically funny and incredibly moving at the same time... It was a life-changing gift, and I still read it once a year to remind myself of what great comic writing can be."[53]

1960s: The 2000 Year Old Man and Get Smart

Brooks and co-writer Reiner had become close friends and began to casually improvise comedy routines when they were not working. In October 1959, for a Random House book launch of Moss Hart's autobiography, Act One, at Mamma Leone’s, Mel Tolkin (standing in for Carl Reiner) and Mel Brooks performed, and it was later recalled by Kenneth Tynan.[54] Reiner played the straight-man interviewer and set Brooks up as anything from a Tibetan monk to an astronaut. As Reiner explained: "In the evening, we'd go to a party and I'd pick a character for him to play. I never told him what it was going to be."[20] On one of these occasions, Reiner's suggestion concerned a 2000-year-old man who had witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (who "came in the store but never bought anything"), had been married several hundred times and had "over forty-two thousand children, and not one comes to visit me". At first Brooks and Reiner only performed the routine for friends but, by the late 1950s, it gained a reputation in New York City. Kenneth Tynan saw the comedy duo perform at a party in 1959 and wrote that Brooks "was the most original comic improvisor I had ever seen".[20]

In 1960, Brooks, without his family, moved from New York to Hollywood, returning in 1961.[55] He and Reiner began performing the "2000 Year Old Man" act on The Steve Allen Show. Their performances led to the release of the comedy album 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks that sold over a million copies in 1961.[20] They eventually expanded their routine with two more albums in 1961 and 1962, a revival in 1973, a 1975 animated TV special, and a reunion album in 1998. At one point, when Brooks had financial and career struggles, the record sales from the 2000 Year Old Man were his chief source of income.[9]

Brooks adapted the 2000 Year Old Man character to create the 2500-Year-Old Brewmaster for Ballantine Beer in the 1960s. Interviewed by Dick Cavett in a series of ads, the Brewmaster (in a German accent, as opposed to the 2000 Year Old Man's Yiddish accent) said he was inside the original Trojan horse and "could've used a six-pack of fresh air".[56]

Brooks was involved in the creation of the Broadway musical All American which debuted on Broadway in 1962. He wrote the play with lyrics by Lee Adams and music by Charles Strouse. It starred Ray Bolger as a southern science professor at a large university who uses the principles of engineering on the college's football team and the team begins to win games. It was directed by Joshua Logan, who script-doctored the second act and added a gay subtext to the plot. It ran for 80 performances and received two Tony Award nominations.

The animated short film The Critic (1963), a satire of arty, esoteric cinema, was conceived by Brooks and directed by Ernest Pintoff. Brooks supplied running commentary as the baffled moviegoer trying to make sense of the obscure visuals. It won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film.

With comedy writer Buck Henry, Brooks created a TV comedy show titled Get Smart, about a bumbling James Bond-inspired spy. Brooks said, "I was sick of looking at all those nice sensible situation comedies. They were such distortions of life... I wanted to do a crazy, unreal comic-strip kind of thing about something besides a family. No one had ever done a show about an idiot before. I decided to be the first."[57] Starring Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, the series ran from 1965 until 1970, although Brooks had little involvement after the first season. It was highly rated for most of its production and won seven Emmy Awards,[58] including Outstanding Comedy Series in 1968 and 1969.

Early work as a director

During a press conference for All American, a reporter asked, "What are you going to do next?" and Brooks replied, "Springtime for Hitler," perhaps riffing on Springtime for Henry.[59] For several years, Brooks toyed with a bizarre and unconventional idea about a musical comedy of Adolf Hitler.[60] He explored the idea as a novel and a play before finally writing a script.[20] He eventually found two producers to fund it, Joseph E. Levine and Sidney Glazier, and made his first feature film, The Producers (1968).[61]

The Producers was so brazen in its satire that major studios would not touch it, nor would many exhibitors. Brooks finally found an independent distributor who released it as an art film, a specialized attraction. At the 41st Academy Awards, Brooks won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film over fellow writers Stanley Kubrick and John Cassavetes.[62] The Producers became a smash underground hit, first on the nationwide college circuit, then in revivals and on home video. It premiered to a limited audience in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on November 22, 1967, before achieving a wide release in 1968. Peter Sellers personally championed the film, paying out of pocket to take out full page ads in Variety and The New York Times.[63] Brooks later adapted it into a musical along with his collaborator Thomas Meehan, which was hugely successful on Broadway and received an unprecedented 12 Tony awards. In 2000, Roger Ebert included The Producers in his canon of Great Movies, and remembered being in an elevator with Brooks and Anne Bancroft shortly after the movie was released: "A woman got on the elevator, recognized him and said, 'I have to tell you, Mr. Brooks, that your movie is vulgar.' Brooks smiled benevolently. 'Lady', he said, 'it rose below vulgarity.'"[64]

With the moderate financial success of the film The Producers, Glazier financed Brooks' next film, The Twelve Chairs (1970). Loosely based on Ilf and Petrov's 1928 Russian novel of the same name about greedy materialism in post-revolutionary Russia, it stars Ron Moody, Frank Langella and Dom DeLuise as three men individually searching for a fortune in diamonds hidden in a set of 12 antique chairs. Brooks makes a cameo appearance as an alcoholic ex-serf who "yearns for the regular beatings of yesteryear". The film was shot in Yugoslavia with a budget of $1.5 million. It received poor reviews and was not financially successful.[20]

1970s: Success as a Hollywood director

Brooks then wrote an adaptation of Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, but was unable to sell the idea to any studio and believed that his career was over. In 1972, he met agent David Begelman, who helped him set up a deal with Warner Brothers to hire Brooks (as well as Richard Pryor, Andrew Bergman, Norman Steinberg, and Alan Uger) as a script doctor for an unproduced script called Tex-X. Eventually, Brooks was hired as director for what became Blazing Saddles (1974), his third film.[20]

Blazing Saddles starred Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, Madeline Kahn, Alex Karras, and Brooks himself, with cameos by Dom DeLuise and Count Basie. It had music by Brooks and John Morris, and a modest budget of $2.6 million. A satire on the Western film genre, it references older films such as Destry Rides Again (1939), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), High Noon (1952) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). In a surreal sequence towards the end, it references the extravagant musicals of Busby Berkeley.

Despite mixed reviews, Blazing Saddles was a success with younger audiences. It became the second-highest US grossing film of 1974, grossing $119.5 million in the United States and Canada. It was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Madeline Kahn, Best Film Editing, and Best Music, Original Song. It won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen; and in 2006 it was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Brooks has said that the film "has to do with love more than anything else. I mean when that black guy rides into that Old Western town and even a little old lady says 'Up yours, nigger!', you know that his heart is broken. So it's really the story of that heart being mended."[20] Brooks described the film as "a Jewish western with a black hero."[65]

When Gene Wilder replaced Gig Young as the Waco Kid, he did so only when Brooks agreed that his next film would be a script[66] that Wilder had been working on: a spoof of the Universal series of Frankenstein films from several decades earlier. After the filming of Blazing Saddles was completed, Wilder and Brooks began writing the script for Young Frankenstein and shot it in the spring of 1974. It starred Wilder, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman and Kenneth Mars, with Gene Hackman in a cameo role. Brooks' voice can be heard three times: as the wolf howl when the characters are on their way to the castle; as the voice of Victor Frankenstein, when the characters discover the laboratory; and as the sound of a cat when Gene Wilder accidentally throws a dart out of the window in a scene with Kenneth Mars. Composer John Morris again provided the score, and Universal monsters special effects veteran Kenneth Strickfaden worked on the film.

Young Frankenstein was the third-highest-grossing film domestically of 1974, just behind Blazing Saddles with a gross of $86 million. It also received two Academy Award nominations for Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound. It received some of the best reviews of Brooks' career. Even notoriously hard-to-please critic Pauline Kael liked it, saying: "Brooks makes a leap up as a director because, although the comedy doesn't build, he carries the story through ... [He] even has a satisfying windup, which makes this just about the only comedy of recent years that doesn't collapse."[20]

In 1975, at the height of his movie career, Brooks tried TV again with When Things Were Rotten, a Robin Hood parody that lasted only 13 episodes. Nearly 20 years later, in response to the 1991 hit film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Brooks mounted another Robin Hood parody, Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). It resurrected several pieces of dialogue from his TV series, and from earlier Brooks films.

Brooks followed up his two hit films with an audacious idea: the first feature-length silent comedy in four decades. Silent Movie (1976) was written by Brooks and Ron Clark, and starred Brooks in his first leading role, with Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Sid Caesar, Bernadette Peters, and in cameo roles playing themselves: Paul Newman, Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Anne Bancroft, and the mime Marcel Marceau, who uttered the film's only word of audible dialogue: "Non!" It is an homage to silent comedians Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, among others. It was not as successful as Brooks' previous two films but did gross $36 million. Later that year, he was named fifth on the Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll.[20] Reviews were generally favorable; Roger Ebert praised it as "not only funny, but fun. It's clear at almost every moment that the filmmakers had a ball making it." Regarding the film's inside jokes, Ebert wrote that "the thing about Brooks's inside jokes is that their outsides are funny, too."[67]

High Anxiety (1977), Brooks' parody of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, was written by Brooks, Ron Clark, Rudy De Luca, and Barry Levinson, and was the first movie Brooks produced himself. Starring Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, Ron Carey, Howard Morris, and Dick Van Patten, it satirizes such Hitchcock films as Vertigo, Spellbound, Psycho, The Birds, North by Northwest, Dial M for Murder and Suspicion. Brooks plays Professor Richard H. (Harpo) Thorndyke, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist who suffers from "high anxiety".[20]

1980s–1990s: Later film career

 
Brooks in 1984

By 1980, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert had referred to Mel Brooks and Woody Allen as "the two most successful comedy directors in the world today ... America's two funniest filmmakers".[68] Released that year was the dramatic film The Elephant Man directed by David Lynch and produced by Brooks. Knowing that anyone seeing a poster reading "Mel Brooks presents The Elephant Man" would expect a comedy, he set up the company Brooksfilms. It has since produced a number of non-comedy films, including Frances (1982), The Fly (1986), and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) starring Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft—as well as comedies, including Richard Benjamin's My Favorite Year (1982), partially based on Mel Brooks' real life. Brooks sought to purchase the rights to 84 Charing Cross Road for his wife, Anne Bancroft, for many years. He also produced the comedy Fatso (1980) that Bancroft directed.

In 1981, Brooks joked that the only genres that he hadn't spoofed were historical epics and Biblical spectacles.[20] History of the World Part I was a tongue-in-cheek look at human culture from the Dawn of Man to the French Revolution. Written, produced and directed by Brooks, with narration by Orson Welles, it was another modest financial hit, earning $31 million. It received mixed critical reviews. Critic Pauline Kael, who for years had been critical of Brooks, said, "Either you get stuck thinking about the bad taste or you let yourself laugh at the obscenity in the humor as you do Buñuel's perverse dirty jokes."[20]

Brooks produced and starred in (but did not write or direct) a remake of Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 film To Be or Not to Be. His 1983 version was directed by Alan Johnson and starred Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning, Tim Matheson, Jose Ferrer and Christopher Lloyd. It generated international publicity by featuring a controversial song on its soundtrack—"To Be or Not to Be (The Hitler Rap)"—satirizing German society in the 1940s, with Brooks playing Hitler.

The second movie Brooks directed in the 1980s was Spaceballs (1987), a parody of science fiction, mainly Star Wars. It starred Bill Pullman, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Daphne Zuniga, Dick Van Patten, Joan Rivers, Dom DeLuise, and Brooks.

In 1989, Brooks (with co-executive producer Alan Spencer) made another attempt at television success with the sitcom The Nutt House, featuring Brooks regulars Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman. It was originally broadcast on NBC, but the network aired only five of the eleven produced episodes before canceling the series. During the next decade, Brooks directed Life Stinks (1991), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995). People magazine wrote, "Anyone in a mood for a hearty laugh couldn't do better than Robin Hood: Men in Tights, which gave fans a parody of Robin Hood, especially Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves."[69] Like Brooks' other films, it is filled with one-liners and the occasional breaking of the fourth wall. Robin Hood: Men in Tights was Brooks' second time exploring the life of Robin Hood (the first, as mentioned above, being his 1975 TV show When Things Were Rotten). Life Stinks was a financial and critical failure, but is notable as the only film Brooks directed that is neither a parody nor a film about other films or theater. (The Twelve Chairs was a parody of the original novel.)

2000s: Musicals and television

 
The Producers at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

Brooks' musical adaptation of his film The Producers on the Broadway stage broke the Tony Award record with 12 wins, a record previously held for 37 years by Hello, Dolly! with 10 wins. It led to a 2005 big-screen version of the Broadway adaptation/remake with Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Gary Beach, and Roger Bart reprising their stage roles, and new cast members Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell. In early April 2006, Brooks began composing the score to a Broadway musical adaptation of Young Frankenstein, which he says is "perhaps the best movie [he] ever made". The world premiere was at Seattle's Paramount Theater, between August 7, 2007, and September 1, 2007, after which it opened on Broadway at the former Lyric Theater (then the Hilton Theatre), New York, on October 11, 2007. It earned mixed reviews from the critics. In the 2000s, Brooks worked on an animated series sequel to Spaceballs called Spaceballs: The Animated Series, which premiered on September 21, 2008, on G4 TV.

Brooks has also supplied vocal roles for animation. He voiced Bigweld, the master inventor, in the animated film Robots (2005), and in the later animated film Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014) he had a cameo appearance as Albert Einstein. He returned, to voice Dracula's father, Vlad, in Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)[70] and Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018).

Brooks joked about the concept of a musical adaptation of Blazing Saddles in the final number in Young Frankenstein, in which the full company sings, "next year, Blazing Saddles!" In 2010, Brooks confirmed this, saying that the musical could be finished within a year; however, no creative team or plan has been announced.[71]

On October 18, 2021, it was announced that Brooks would write and produce History of the World, Part II, a follow-up TV series on Hulu to his 1981 movie.[72] In 2021, at age 95, Brooks published a memoir titled All About Me![5]

Personal life

 
Brooks with wife Anne Bancroft at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival
 
Brooks with son Max in 2010

Brooks met Florence Baum,[73] a dancer in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, on Broadway.[74][75] They were married from 1953 until their divorce in 1962. They had three children: Stephanie, Nicky, and Eddie.[76]

According to David DeLuise on Wizards of Waverley Pod, Mel Brooks is his godfather. DeLuise's father Dom DeLuise was a frequent costar of Brooks in his earlier career.[77]

After earning a salary of $5,000 a week on Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour,[78] his salary dropped to $85 a week as a freelance writer. For five years he had few gigs, and was living in Greenwich Village on Perry Street in a fourth-floor walk-up.[59] In 1960, to escape his situation, Brooks moved in with a friend, in Los Angeles.[55] In 1961, after his return to New York, he found that Baum had begun suing him for legal separation. Marriage Is A Dirty Rotten Fraud[79] was an autobiographical script based on his marriage.[43][17] The Zero Mostel Show pilot's situation was a Building superintendent/janitor of Greenwich Village apartments.[66] By 1966, Brooks was "living in a fairly old but comfortable New York town house".[56]

Brooks married actress Anne Bancroft in 1964, and they remained together until her death in 2005.[80] They met at a rehearsal for the Perry Como Variety Show in 1961, and were married three years later on August 5, 1964, at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau.[80][81] Their son, Max Brooks, was born in 1972.[80][81]

In 2010, Brooks credited Bancroft as "the guiding force" behind his involvement in developing The Producers and Young Frankenstein for the musical theater, saying of an early meeting with her: "From that day, until her death ... we were glued together."[82] He has remained single since she died, stating in 2023 that "Once you are married to Anne Bancroft, others don't seem to be appealing".[83]

Brooks is a voracious reader; in a profile for The New Yorker, Kenneth Tynan describes "Brooks the secret connoisseur, worshiper of good writing, and expert on the Russian classics, with special reference to Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoy."[84] In The Producers, Bialystock refers to Bloom as "Prince Myshkin", a character from Dostoevsky's The Idiot. And the name Leo Bloom is a reference to Leopold Bloom, hero of Joyce's Ulysses.[85]

Regarding religion, Brooks stated:

"I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all. I think it's the relationship with the people and the pride I have. The tribe surviving so many misfortunes, and being so brave and contributing so much knowledge to the world and showing courage."[86]

On Jewish cinema, Brooks said:

"They can be anything and anywhere … if there's a tribal thing, like, the 'please God, protect us' feeling … we don't know where and how it's gonna come out. Avatar was a Jewish movie … these people on the run, chasing—and being pursued."[87]

Brooks endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, in his first-ever public endorsement of a political candidate.[88]

Discography

Comedy specials

Soundtracks

Honors and legacy

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Mel Brooks
 
Brooks at his Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony in 2010

Brooks is one of the few people who have received an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony, and a Grammy.[92] He won his first Grammy for Best Spoken Comedy Album in 1999 for his recording of The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 with Carl Reiner. His two other Grammys came in 2002 for Best Musical Show Album for the cast album of The Producers and for Best Long Form Music Video for the DVD "Recording the Producers – A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks". He won his first of four Emmy awards in 1967 for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Variety for a Sid Caesar special, and won Emmys in 1997, 1998, and 1999 for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his role of Uncle Phil on Mad About You. He won his Academy Award for Original Screenplay (Oscar) in 1968 for The Producers. He won his three Tony awards in 2001 for his work on the musical The Producers, for Best Musical, Best Original Musical Score, and Best Book of a Musical.

Brooks also won a Hugo Award and Nebula Award for Young Frankenstein.[93] In a 2005 poll by Channel 4 to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted No. 50 of the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.[94]

The American Film Institute (AFI) lists three of Brooks' films on its AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs list: Blazing Saddles (#6), The Producers (#11), and Young Frankenstein (#13).

On December 5, 2009, Brooks was one of five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.[95] He was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 23, 2010, with a motion pictures star located at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard.[96][97] American Masters produced a biography on Brooks which premiered May 20, 2013, on PBS.[98] The AFI presented Brooks with its highest tribute, the AFI Life Achievement Award, in June 2013.[99][100] In 2014 Brooks was honored in a handprint and footprint ceremony at TCL Chinese Theatre. His concrete handprints include a six-fingered left hand as he wore a prosthetic finger when making his prints.[101] On March 20, 2015, he received a British Film Institute Fellowship from the British Film Institute.[102]

References

  1. ^ Pringle, Gill (December 4, 2015). "Mel Brooks the comic genius says 'retirement is not an option'". The Independent. Retrieved September 29, 2022.
  2. ^ "History of the World Part II Series". Variety. October 18, 2021. Retrieved December 20, 2021. Brooks' comedy films are consistently ranked among the best of all time.
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Further reading

  • Adler, Bill, and Jeffrey Feinman. Mel Brooks: The Irreverent Funnyman. Chicago: Playboy Press, 1976. OCLC 3121552.
  • Brooks, Mel; Keegan, Rebecca (October 18, 2016). Young Frankenstein: A Mel Brooks Book: The Story of the Making of the Film. Running Press. ISBN 978-0-316-31546-3.
  • Brooks, Mel All About Me: My Remarkable Life in Show Business. New York: Ballantine, 2021.
  • Crick, Robert A. The Big Screen Comedies of Mel Brooks. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002. ISBN 978-0-7864-1033-0. OCLC 49991416.
  • Holtzman, William. Seesaw, a Dual Biography of Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979. ISBN 978-0-385-13076-9.
  • McGilligan, Patrick. Funny Man: Mel Brooks. Harper, 2019, ISBN 978-0062560995.
  • Parish, James Robert (2007). It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ISBN 978-0471752677. OCLC 69331761.
  • Symons, Alex. Mel Brooks in the Cultural Industries: Survival and Prolonged Adaptation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-7486-4958-7. OCLC 806201078.
  • Yacowar, Maurice. Method in Madness: The Comic Art of Mel Brooks. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981. ISBN 978-0-312-53142-3. OCLC 7556005.

Interviews

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mel Brooks.
 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Mel Brooks.
  • Official website[dead link]
  • Mel Brooks at the TCM Movie Database  
  • Mel Brooks at the Internet Broadway Database  
  • Mel Brooks at Emmys.com
  • Mel Brooks at AllMusic
  • Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks discography at Discogs
  • Mel Brooks – Box Office Data Movie Director at The Numbers
  • Mel Brooks – Box Office Data Movie Star at The Numbers
  • Mel Brooks at IMDb  
  • Mel Brooks Virtual-History.com (Photographs and Books)
  • Topic: Mel Brooks's channel on YouTube (2000 Year Old Man)
  • The Official MEL BROOKS's channel on YouTube

April 10, 2023
brooks, born, melvin, james, kaminsky, june, 1926, american, actor, comedian, filmmaker, with, career, spanning, over, seven, decades, known, writer, director, variety, successful, broad, farces, parodies, recipient, numerous, accolades, entertainers, egot, wh. Mel Brooks born Melvin James Kaminsky 1 June 28 1926 is an American actor comedian and filmmaker With a career spanning over seven decades he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies 2 A recipient of numerous accolades he is one of 18 entertainers to win the EGOT which includes an Emmy Award a Grammy Award an Academy Award Oscar and a Tony Award He has also received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009 a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010 the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013 a British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015 a National Medal of Arts in 2016 and a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017 Mel BrooksBrooks in 2010BornMelvin James Kaminsky 1926 06 28 June 28 1926 age 96 New York City U S Alma materVirginia Military InstituteOccupationsActorcomedianfilmmakerYears active1947 presentWorksFull listSpousesFlorence Baum m 1953 div 1962 wbr Anne Bancroft m 1964 died 2005 wbr Children4 including MaxAwardsFull listHe began his career as a comic and a writer for Sid Caesar s variety show Your Show of Shows from 1950 to 1954 alongside Woody Allen Neil Simon and Larry Gelbart 3 With Carl Reiner he created the comic character The 2000 Year Old Man and together they released several comedy albums starting with 2000 Year Old Man in 1960 He wrote with Buck Henry the hit television comedy series Get Smart from 1965 to 1970 Brooks rose to prominence becoming one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s His best known films include The Producers 1967 The Twelve Chairs 1970 Blazing Saddles 1974 Young Frankenstein 1974 Silent Movie 1976 High Anxiety 1977 History of the World Part I 1981 Spaceballs 1987 and Robin Hood Men in Tights 1993 4 A musical adaptation of his first film The Producers ran on Broadway from 2001 to 2007 and was itself remade into a musical film in 2005 He wrote and produced the Hulu series History of the World Part II 2023 Brooks was married to actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005 Their son Max Brooks is an actor and author known for his novel World War Z An Oral History of the Zombie War 2006 In 2021 Mel Brooks published a memoir titled All About Me 5 Three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute s list of the top 100 comedy films of the past 100 years 1900 2000 all of which ranked in the top 15 of the list Blazing Saddles at number 6 The Producers at number 11 and Young Frankenstein at number 13 6 Contents 1 Early life and education 1 1 World War II service 2 Career 2 1 Early career 2 2 1950s Your Show of Shows 2 3 1960s The 2000 Year Old Man and Get Smart 2 3 1 Early work as a director 2 4 1970s Success as a Hollywood director 2 5 1980s 1990s Later film career 2 6 2000s Musicals and television 3 Personal life 4 Discography 4 1 Comedy specials 4 2 Soundtracks 5 Honors and legacy 6 References 7 Further reading 8 Interviews 9 External linksEarly life and education EditBrooks was born on a tenement kitchen table 7 on June 28 1926 in Brownsville Brooklyn 7 New York City to Kate nee Brookman and Max Kaminsky 8 and grew up in Williamsburg His father s family were German Jews from Danzig Gdansk Poland his mother s family were Jews from Kyiv in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire present day Ukraine 9 10 11 12 He had three older brothers Irving Lenny and Bernie 13 14 His father died of tuberculosis of the kidney 9 at 34 when Brooks was two years old 15 He has said of his father s death There s an outrage there I may be angry at God or at the world for that And I m sure a lot of my comedy is based on anger and hostility Growing up in Williamsburg I learned to clothe it in comedy to spare myself problems like a punch in the face 13 14 Brooks was a small sickly boy who often was bullied and teased by his classmates because of his size 16 He grew up in tenement housing At age nine he went to a Broadway show with his maternal 17 uncle Joe a taxi driver who drove the Broadway doormen back to Brooklyn for free and was given the tickets in gratitude and saw Anything Goes with William Gaxton Ethel Merman and Victor Moore at the Alvin Theater After the show he told his uncle that he was not going to work in the garment district like everyone else but was absolutely going into show business 18 When Brooks was 14 he gained employment as a pool side tummler entertainer at the Butler Lodge 19 a second rate Borscht Belt hotel where he met 18 year old Sid Caesar 7 Brooks kept his guests amused with his crazy antics In a Playboy interview he explained that one day he stood at the edge of a diving board wearing a derby 7 and a large alpaca 7 overcoat with two suitcases full of rocks who then announced Business is terrible I can t go on before jumping fully clothed into the pool 9 He was taught by Buddy Rich who had also grown up in Williamsburg how to play the drums and started to earn money as a musician when he was 14 20 During his time as a drummer he was given his first opportunity as a comedian at the age of 16 filling in for an ill MC During his teens he changed his name to Melvin Brooks 21 22 influenced by his mother s maiden name Brookman after being confused with trumpeter Max Kaminsky 20 Brooks graduated from Eastern District High School in January 1944 23 and intended to follow his older brother and enroll in Brooklyn College to study psychology 24 25 World War II service Edit In early 1944 in his senior year at Eastern District High School Brooks was recruited to take the Army General Classification Test a Stanford Binet type IQ test 26 After scoring highly Brooks was sent to the Army Specialized Training Program at the Virginia Military Institute to be taught electrical engineering horse riding and saber fighting 26 27 28 In 1944 Brooks was drafted into the Army 27 Twelve weeks later when he turned 18 he officially joined the United States Army 20 at the Fort Dix 26 New Jersey induction center and was sent to the Field Artillery Replacement Training Center at Fort Sill Oklahoma for basic training and radio operator training 26 29 30 28 Brooks was then sent back to Fort Dix for overseas assignment 26 Brooks says he boarded the SS Sea Owl at the Brooklyn Navy Yard around February 15 1945 26 A reporter for the United States Department of Defense writes that Brooks arrived in France in November 1944 and later to Belgium serving with the 78th Infantry Division as a forward artillery observer 27 In February 1945 a short while later Brooks was transferred to the 1104th Engineer Combat Battalion as a combat engineer participating in the Battle of the Bulge 28 27 31 32 Along the roadside you d see bodies wrapped up in mattress covers and stacked in a ditch and those would be Americans that could be me I sang all the time I never wanted to think about it Death is the enemy of everyone and even though you hate Nazis death is more of an enemy than a German soldier 33 Stationed in Saarbrucken and Baumholder the battalion was responsible for clearing booby trapped buildings and defusing land mines as the Allies advanced into Nazi Germany 34 35 28 Brooks was tasked with land mine location defusing was done by a specialist 26 Brooks has stated that when he heard Germans singing over loudspeakers Brooks responded by singing into a bullhorn Toot Toot Tootsie Goo Bye by Jewish Al Jolson 36 37 38 Brooks spent time in the stockade after taking an anti Semitic heckler s helmet off and smashing him in the head with his mess kit 39 His unit constructed the first Bailey bridge over the Roer River 26 later building bridges over the Rhine River 27 In April 1945 Brooks unit conducted reconnaissance missions in the Harz Mountains Germany when the war ended 27 With the end of the war in Europe Brooks joined the Special Services as a comic touring Army bases and he was made acting corporal and put in charge of entertainment at Wiesbaden 9 28 and performed at Fort Dix 9 In June 1946 Brooks was honorably discharged from the Army as a corporal 28 27 Career EditMain article Mel Brooks on screen and stage Early career Edit After the war Brooks mother had secured him a job as a clerk at the Brooklyn Navy Yard but Brooks got into a taxi and ordered the driver to take him to the Catskills 40 where he started working in various Borscht Belt resorts and nightclubs in the Catskill Mountains as a drummer and pianist When a regular comic at one of the clubs was too sick to perform Brooks started working as a stand up comic telling jokes and doing movie star impressions He also began acting in summer stock in Red Bank New Jersey and did some radio work 20 He eventually worked his way up to the comically aggressive job of tummler at Grossinger s one of the Borscht Belt s most famous resorts 20 41 In the years after the war Brooks hero was comedian Sid Caesar Back in New York Brooks would slink 42 around trying to catch Caesar in between meetings to pitch him joke ideas Eventually Caesar cracked and paid Brooks a little cash to throw him gags At 24 Brooks got his break as a full time writer 43 He found more rewarding work behind the scenes becoming a comedy writer for television In 1949 his friend Sid Caesar hired him to write jokes for the DuMont NBC series The Admiral Broadway Revue 44 paying him off the books 50 a week 1950s Your Show of Shows Edit In 1950 Caesar created the innovative variety comedy series Your Show of Shows and hired Brooks as a writer along with Carl Reiner Neil Simon Danny Simon and head writer Mel Tolkin 20 The writing staff proved widely influential 45 Reiner as creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show based Morey Amsterdam s character Buddy Sorell on Brooks 46 Likewise the film My Favorite Year 1982 is loosely based on Brooks experiences as a writer on the show including an encounter with the actor Errol Flynn 47 Neil Simon s play Laughter on the 23rd Floor 1993 is also loosely based on the production of the show and the character Ira Stone is based on Brooks 48 49 Your Show of Shows ended in 1954 when performer Imogene Coca left to host her own show 50 Caesar then created Caesar s Hour with most of the same cast and writers including Brooks and adding Woody Allen and Larry Gelbart It ran from 1954 until 1957 51 52 Brooks told The New York Times When I was a fledgling comedy writer working for Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows our head writer was Mel Tolkin I really looked up to him By the way I was 5 foot 7 and he was six feet tall He was a bona fide intellectual thoroughly steeped in the traditions of great Russian literature One day he handed me a book He said to me Mel you re an animal from Brooklyn but I think you have the beginnings of something called a mind The book was Dead Souls by the magnificent genius Nikolai Gogol It was a revelation I d never read anything like it It was hysterically funny and incredibly moving at the same time It was a life changing gift and I still read it once a year to remind myself of what great comic writing can be 53 1960s The 2000 Year Old Man and Get Smart Edit Brooks and co writer Reiner had become close friends and began to casually improvise comedy routines when they were not working In October 1959 for a Random House book launch of Moss Hart s autobiography Act One at Mamma Leone s Mel Tolkin standing in for Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks performed and it was later recalled by Kenneth Tynan 54 Reiner played the straight man interviewer and set Brooks up as anything from a Tibetan monk to an astronaut As Reiner explained In the evening we d go to a party and I d pick a character for him to play I never told him what it was going to be 20 On one of these occasions Reiner s suggestion concerned a 2000 year old man who had witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ who came in the store but never bought anything had been married several hundred times and had over forty two thousand children and not one comes to visit me At first Brooks and Reiner only performed the routine for friends but by the late 1950s it gained a reputation in New York City Kenneth Tynan saw the comedy duo perform at a party in 1959 and wrote that Brooks was the most original comic improvisor I had ever seen 20 In 1960 Brooks without his family moved from New York to Hollywood returning in 1961 55 He and Reiner began performing the 2000 Year Old Man act on The Steve Allen Show Their performances led to the release of the comedy album 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks that sold over a million copies in 1961 20 They eventually expanded their routine with two more albums in 1961 and 1962 a revival in 1973 a 1975 animated TV special and a reunion album in 1998 At one point when Brooks had financial and career struggles the record sales from the 2000 Year Old Man were his chief source of income 9 Brooks adapted the 2000 Year Old Man character to create the 2500 Year Old Brewmaster for Ballantine Beer in the 1960s Interviewed by Dick Cavett in a series of ads the Brewmaster in a German accent as opposed to the 2000 Year Old Man s Yiddish accent said he was inside the original Trojan horse and could ve used a six pack of fresh air 56 Brooks was involved in the creation of the Broadway musical All American which debuted on Broadway in 1962 He wrote the play with lyrics by Lee Adams and music by Charles Strouse It starred Ray Bolger as a southern science professor at a large university who uses the principles of engineering on the college s football team and the team begins to win games It was directed by Joshua Logan who script doctored the second act and added a gay subtext to the plot It ran for 80 performances and received two Tony Award nominations The animated short film The Critic 1963 a satire of arty esoteric cinema was conceived by Brooks and directed by Ernest Pintoff Brooks supplied running commentary as the baffled moviegoer trying to make sense of the obscure visuals It won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film With comedy writer Buck Henry Brooks created a TV comedy show titled Get Smart about a bumbling James Bond inspired spy Brooks said I was sick of looking at all those nice sensible situation comedies They were such distortions of life I wanted to do a crazy unreal comic strip kind of thing about something besides a family No one had ever done a show about an idiot before I decided to be the first 57 Starring Don Adams as Maxwell Smart Agent 86 the series ran from 1965 until 1970 although Brooks had little involvement after the first season It was highly rated for most of its production and won seven Emmy Awards 58 including Outstanding Comedy Series in 1968 and 1969 Early work as a director Edit During a press conference for All American a reporter asked What are you going to do next and Brooks replied Springtime for Hitler perhaps riffing on Springtime for Henry 59 For several years Brooks toyed with a bizarre and unconventional idea about a musical comedy of Adolf Hitler 60 He explored the idea as a novel and a play before finally writing a script 20 He eventually found two producers to fund it Joseph E Levine and Sidney Glazier and made his first feature film The Producers 1968 61 The Producers was so brazen in its satire that major studios would not touch it nor would many exhibitors Brooks finally found an independent distributor who released it as an art film a specialized attraction At the 41st Academy Awards Brooks won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film over fellow writers Stanley Kubrick and John Cassavetes 62 The Producers became a smash underground hit first on the nationwide college circuit then in revivals and on home video It premiered to a limited audience in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania on November 22 1967 before achieving a wide release in 1968 Peter Sellers personally championed the film paying out of pocket to take out full page ads in Variety and The New York Times 63 Brooks later adapted it into a musical along with his collaborator Thomas Meehan which was hugely successful on Broadway and received an unprecedented 12 Tony awards In 2000 Roger Ebert included The Producers in his canon of Great Movies and remembered being in an elevator with Brooks and Anne Bancroft shortly after the movie was released A woman got on the elevator recognized him and said I have to tell you Mr Brooks that your movie is vulgar Brooks smiled benevolently Lady he said it rose below vulgarity 64 With the moderate financial success of the film The Producers Glazier financed Brooks next film The Twelve Chairs 1970 Loosely based on Ilf and Petrov s 1928 Russian novel of the same name about greedy materialism in post revolutionary Russia it stars Ron Moody Frank Langella and Dom DeLuise as three men individually searching for a fortune in diamonds hidden in a set of 12 antique chairs Brooks makes a cameo appearance as an alcoholic ex serf who yearns for the regular beatings of yesteryear The film was shot in Yugoslavia with a budget of 1 5 million It received poor reviews and was not financially successful 20 1970s Success as a Hollywood director Edit Brooks then wrote an adaptation of Oliver Goldsmith s She Stoops to Conquer but was unable to sell the idea to any studio and believed that his career was over In 1972 he met agent David Begelman who helped him set up a deal with Warner Brothers to hire Brooks as well as Richard Pryor Andrew Bergman Norman Steinberg and Alan Uger as a script doctor for an unproduced script called Tex X Eventually Brooks was hired as director for what became Blazing Saddles 1974 his third film 20 Blazing Saddles starred Cleavon Little Gene Wilder Harvey Korman Slim Pickens Madeline Kahn Alex Karras and Brooks himself with cameos by Dom DeLuise and Count Basie It had music by Brooks and John Morris and a modest budget of 2 6 million A satire on the Western film genre it references older films such as Destry Rides Again 1939 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948 High Noon 1952 and Once Upon a Time in the West 1968 In a surreal sequence towards the end it references the extravagant musicals of Busby Berkeley Despite mixed reviews Blazing Saddles was a success with younger audiences It became the second highest US grossing film of 1974 grossing 119 5 million in the United States and Canada It was nominated for three Academy Awards Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Madeline Kahn Best Film Editing and Best Music Original Song It won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen and in 2006 it was deemed culturally historically or aesthetically significant by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry Brooks has said that the film has to do with love more than anything else I mean when that black guy rides into that Old Western town and even a little old lady says Up yours nigger you know that his heart is broken So it s really the story of that heart being mended 20 Brooks described the film as a Jewish western with a black hero 65 When Gene Wilder replaced Gig Young as the Waco Kid he did so only when Brooks agreed that his next film would be a script 66 that Wilder had been working on a spoof of the Universal series of Frankenstein films from several decades earlier After the filming of Blazing Saddles was completed Wilder and Brooks began writing the script for Young Frankenstein and shot it in the spring of 1974 It starred Wilder Marty Feldman Peter Boyle Teri Garr Madeline Kahn Cloris Leachman and Kenneth Mars with Gene Hackman in a cameo role Brooks voice can be heard three times as the wolf howl when the characters are on their way to the castle as the voice of Victor Frankenstein when the characters discover the laboratory and as the sound of a cat when Gene Wilder accidentally throws a dart out of the window in a scene with Kenneth Mars Composer John Morris again provided the score and Universal monsters special effects veteran Kenneth Strickfaden worked on the film Young Frankenstein was the third highest grossing film domestically of 1974 just behind Blazing Saddles with a gross of 86 million It also received two Academy Award nominations for Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound It received some of the best reviews of Brooks career Even notoriously hard to please critic Pauline Kael liked it saying Brooks makes a leap up as a director because although the comedy doesn t build he carries the story through He even has a satisfying windup which makes this just about the only comedy of recent years that doesn t collapse 20 In 1975 at the height of his movie career Brooks tried TV again with When Things Were Rotten a Robin Hood parody that lasted only 13 episodes Nearly 20 years later in response to the 1991 hit film Robin Hood Prince of Thieves Brooks mounted another Robin Hood parody Robin Hood Men in Tights 1993 It resurrected several pieces of dialogue from his TV series and from earlier Brooks films Brooks followed up his two hit films with an audacious idea the first feature length silent comedy in four decades Silent Movie 1976 was written by Brooks and Ron Clark and starred Brooks in his first leading role with Dom DeLuise Marty Feldman Sid Caesar Bernadette Peters and in cameo roles playing themselves Paul Newman Burt Reynolds James Caan Liza Minnelli Anne Bancroft and the mime Marcel Marceau who uttered the film s only word of audible dialogue Non It is an homage to silent comedians Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton among others It was not as successful as Brooks previous two films but did gross 36 million Later that year he was named fifth on the Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll 20 Reviews were generally favorable Roger Ebert praised it as not only funny but fun It s clear at almost every moment that the filmmakers had a ball making it Regarding the film s inside jokes Ebert wrote that the thing about Brooks s inside jokes is that their outsides are funny too 67 High Anxiety 1977 Brooks parody of the films of Alfred Hitchcock was written by Brooks Ron Clark Rudy De Luca and Barry Levinson and was the first movie Brooks produced himself Starring Brooks Madeline Kahn Cloris Leachman Harvey Korman Ron Carey Howard Morris and Dick Van Patten it satirizes such Hitchcock films as Vertigo Spellbound Psycho The Birds North by Northwest Dial M for Murder and Suspicion Brooks plays Professor Richard H Harpo Thorndyke a Nobel Prize winning psychologist who suffers from high anxiety 20 1980s 1990s Later film career Edit Brooks in 1984 By 1980 Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert had referred to Mel Brooks and Woody Allen as the two most successful comedy directors in the world today America s two funniest filmmakers 68 Released that year was the dramatic film The Elephant Man directed by David Lynch and produced by Brooks Knowing that anyone seeing a poster reading Mel Brooks presents The Elephant Man would expect a comedy he set up the company Brooksfilms It has since produced a number of non comedy films including Frances 1982 The Fly 1986 and 84 Charing Cross Road 1987 starring Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft as well as comedies including Richard Benjamin s My Favorite Year 1982 partially based on Mel Brooks real life Brooks sought to purchase the rights to 84 Charing Cross Road for his wife Anne Bancroft for many years He also produced the comedy Fatso 1980 that Bancroft directed In 1981 Brooks joked that the only genres that he hadn t spoofed were historical epics and Biblical spectacles 20 History of the World Part I was a tongue in cheek look at human culture from the Dawn of Man to the French Revolution Written produced and directed by Brooks with narration by Orson Welles it was another modest financial hit earning 31 million It received mixed critical reviews Critic Pauline Kael who for years had been critical of Brooks said Either you get stuck thinking about the bad taste or you let yourself laugh at the obscenity in the humor as you do Bunuel s perverse dirty jokes 20 Brooks produced and starred in but did not write or direct a remake of Ernst Lubitsch s 1942 film To Be or Not to Be His 1983 version was directed by Alan Johnson and starred Brooks Anne Bancroft Charles Durning Tim Matheson Jose Ferrer and Christopher Lloyd It generated international publicity by featuring a controversial song on its soundtrack To Be or Not to Be The Hitler Rap satirizing German society in the 1940s with Brooks playing Hitler The second movie Brooks directed in the 1980s was Spaceballs 1987 a parody of science fiction mainly Star Wars It starred Bill Pullman John Candy Rick Moranis Daphne Zuniga Dick Van Patten Joan Rivers Dom DeLuise and Brooks In 1989 Brooks with co executive producer Alan Spencer made another attempt at television success with the sitcom The Nutt House featuring Brooks regulars Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman It was originally broadcast on NBC but the network aired only five of the eleven produced episodes before canceling the series During the next decade Brooks directed Life Stinks 1991 Robin Hood Men in Tights 1993 and Dracula Dead and Loving It 1995 People magazine wrote Anyone in a mood for a hearty laugh couldn t do better than Robin Hood Men in Tights which gave fans a parody of Robin Hood especially Robin Hood Prince of Thieves 69 Like Brooks other films it is filled with one liners and the occasional breaking of the fourth wall Robin Hood Men in Tights was Brooks second time exploring the life of Robin Hood the first as mentioned above being his 1975 TV show When Things Were Rotten Life Stinks was a financial and critical failure but is notable as the only film Brooks directed that is neither a parody nor a film about other films or theater The Twelve Chairs was a parody of the original novel 2000s Musicals and television Edit The Producers at Theatre Royal Drury Lane Brooks musical adaptation of his film The Producers on the Broadway stage broke the Tony Award record with 12 wins a record previously held for 37 years by Hello Dolly with 10 wins It led to a 2005 big screen version of the Broadway adaptation remake with Matthew Broderick Nathan Lane Gary Beach and Roger Bart reprising their stage roles and new cast members Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell In early April 2006 Brooks began composing the score to a Broadway musical adaptation of Young Frankenstein which he says is perhaps the best movie he ever made The world premiere was at Seattle s Paramount Theater between August 7 2007 and September 1 2007 after which it opened on Broadway at the former Lyric Theater then the Hilton Theatre New York on October 11 2007 It earned mixed reviews from the critics In the 2000s Brooks worked on an animated series sequel to Spaceballs called Spaceballs The Animated Series which premiered on September 21 2008 on G4 TV Brooks has also supplied vocal roles for animation He voiced Bigweld the master inventor in the animated film Robots 2005 and in the later animated film Mr Peabody amp Sherman 2014 he had a cameo appearance as Albert Einstein He returned to voice Dracula s father Vlad in Hotel Transylvania 2 2015 70 and Hotel Transylvania 3 Summer Vacation 2018 Brooks joked about the concept of a musical adaptation of Blazing Saddles in the final number in Young Frankenstein in which the full company sings next year Blazing Saddles In 2010 Brooks confirmed this saying that the musical could be finished within a year however no creative team or plan has been announced 71 On October 18 2021 it was announced that Brooks would write and produce History of the World Part II a follow up TV series on Hulu to his 1981 movie 72 In 2021 at age 95 Brooks published a memoir titled All About Me 5 Personal life Edit Brooks with wife Anne Bancroft at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival Brooks with son Max in 2010 Brooks met Florence Baum 73 a dancer in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes on Broadway 74 75 They were married from 1953 until their divorce in 1962 They had three children Stephanie Nicky and Eddie 76 According to David DeLuise on Wizards of Waverley Pod Mel Brooks is his godfather DeLuise s father Dom DeLuise was a frequent costar of Brooks in his earlier career 77 After earning a salary of 5 000 a week on Your Show of Shows and Caesar s Hour 78 his salary dropped to 85 a week as a freelance writer For five years he had few gigs and was living in Greenwich Village on Perry Street in a fourth floor walk up 59 In 1960 to escape his situation Brooks moved in with a friend in Los Angeles 55 In 1961 after his return to New York he found that Baum had begun suing him for legal separation Marriage Is A Dirty Rotten Fraud 79 was an autobiographical script based on his marriage 43 17 The Zero Mostel Show pilot s situation was a Building superintendent janitor of Greenwich Village apartments 66 By 1966 Brooks was living in a fairly old but comfortable New York town house 56 Brooks married actress Anne Bancroft in 1964 and they remained together until her death in 2005 80 They met at a rehearsal for the Perry Como Variety Show in 1961 and were married three years later on August 5 1964 at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau 80 81 Their son Max Brooks was born in 1972 80 81 In 2010 Brooks credited Bancroft as the guiding force behind his involvement in developing The Producers and Young Frankenstein for the musical theater saying of an early meeting with her From that day until her death we were glued together 82 He has remained single since she died stating in 2023 that Once you are married to Anne Bancroft others don t seem to be appealing 83 Brooks is a voracious reader in a profile for The New Yorker Kenneth Tynan describes Brooks the secret connoisseur worshiper of good writing and expert on the Russian classics with special reference to Gogol Turgenev Dostoevski and Tolstoy 84 In The Producers Bialystock refers to Bloom as Prince Myshkin a character from Dostoevsky s The Idiot And the name Leo Bloom is a reference to Leopold Bloom hero of Joyce s Ulysses 85 Regarding religion Brooks stated I m rather secular I m basically Jewish But I think I m Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all I think it s the relationship with the people and the pride I have The tribe surviving so many misfortunes and being so brave and contributing so much knowledge to the world and showing courage 86 On Jewish cinema Brooks said They can be anything and anywhere if there s a tribal thing like the please God protect us feeling we don t know where and how it s gonna come out Avatar was a Jewish movie these people on the run chasing and being pursued 87 Brooks endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election in his first ever public endorsement of a political candidate 88 Discography EditComedy specials Edit 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks World Pacific Records 1960 89 2001 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks Capitol Records 1961 Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks at the Cannes Film Festival Capitol Records 1962 2000 and Thirteen with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks Warner Bros Records 1973 90 The Incomplete Works Of Carl Reiner amp Mel Brooks Warner Bros Records 1973 Excerpts from The Complete 2000 Year Old Man Rhino Records 1994 91 The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 Rhino Records 1997 Soundtracks Edit The Producers RCA Victor 1968 High Anxiety Original Soundtrack Asylum Records 1978 History of the World Part I Warner Bros Records 1981 To Be or Not To Be Island Records 1984 The Producers Original Broadway Recording Sony Classical 2001 Honors and legacy EditMain article List of awards and nominations received by Mel Brooks Brooks at his Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony in 2010 Brooks is one of the few people who have received an Oscar an Emmy a Tony and a Grammy 92 He won his first Grammy for Best Spoken Comedy Album in 1999 for his recording of The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 with Carl Reiner His two other Grammys came in 2002 for Best Musical Show Album for the cast album of The Producers and for Best Long Form Music Video for the DVD Recording the Producers A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks He won his first of four Emmy awards in 1967 for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Variety for a Sid Caesar special and won Emmys in 1997 1998 and 1999 for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his role of Uncle Phil on Mad About You He won his Academy Award for Original Screenplay Oscar in 1968 for The Producers He won his three Tony awards in 2001 for his work on the musical The Producers for Best Musical Best Original Musical Score and Best Book of a Musical Brooks also won a Hugo Award and Nebula Award for Young Frankenstein 93 In a 2005 poll by Channel 4 to find The Comedian s Comedian he was voted No 50 of the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders 94 The American Film Institute AFI lists three of Brooks films on its AFI s 100 Years 100 Laughs list Blazing Saddles 6 The Producers 11 and Young Frankenstein 13 On December 5 2009 Brooks was one of five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC 95 He was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 23 2010 with a motion pictures star located at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard 96 97 American Masters produced a biography on Brooks which premiered May 20 2013 on PBS 98 The AFI presented Brooks with its highest tribute the AFI Life Achievement Award in June 2013 99 100 In 2014 Brooks was honored in a handprint and footprint ceremony at TCL Chinese Theatre His concrete handprints include a six fingered left hand as he wore a prosthetic finger when making his prints 101 On March 20 2015 he received a British Film Institute Fellowship from the British Film Institute 102 References Edit Pringle Gill December 4 2015 Mel Brooks the comic genius says retirement is not an option The Independent Retrieved September 29 2022 History of the World Part II Series Variety October 18 2021 Retrieved December 20 2021 Brooks comedy films are consistently ranked among the best of all time Sid Caesar Mel Brooks and Woody Allen pay tribute BBC News February 13 2014 Retrieved April 6 2020 Rottenberg Josh October 21 2016 Just give me the premise and get out of the way Los Angeles Times via Toronto Star and PressReader com a b Mel Brooks December 7 2021 Mel Brooks says his only regret as a comedian is the jokes he didn t tell Fresh Air Interview Interviewed by Terry Gross WHYY NPR Retrieved December 9 2021 AFI s 100 Years 100 Laughs Press release AFI June 14 2000 Retrieved September 5 2013 a b c d e Cutler Jacqueline March 31 2019 Mel Brooks leaves audiences laughing but not always the people he works with New York Daily News Retrieved September 29 2022 How to be a Jewish Son or My Son the Success David Susskind Show Season 12 Episode 7 1970 Retrieved January 26 2014 a b c d e f Darrach Brad February 1975 Mel Brooks The Playboy Interview The Stacks Reader Playboy Archived from the original on December 31 2021 Retrieved September 27 2022 The cinematic Zionism of Mel Brooks The Jerusalem Post August 12 2012 Retrieved January 31 2017 Berrin Danielle January 29 2015 Shmoozing with Mel Brooks the 88 year old man The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles Retrieved June 26 2019 Weitzmann Deborah June 28 2011 On this day Mel Brooks is born The Jewish Chronicle Retrieved June 26 2019 a b Brooks Mel January 31 2015 Mel Brooks Live at the Geffen Television production Los Angeles Brooksfilms distributed by Home Box Office a b Samuel Wynn Mel Brooks Stand Up Mel Brooks Live at the Geffen Stand Up Show retrieved December 6 2018 Brooks M 2021 All about Me My Remarkable Life in Show Business Random House Publishing Group p 5 ISBN 978 0 593 15911 8 Retrieved March 1 2022 Bauer Jerry February 1980 Interview Mel Brooks Adelina Magazine Rome Archived from the original on July 22 2013 Retrieved September 28 2022 via Brookslyn a b Zemler Emily May 20 2013 Mel Brooks A comedic torch to light the way CNN Retrieved September 29 2022 Is Jerrod Carmichael the Funniest In His Family The Late Late Show with James Corden CBS September 25 2015 Archived from the original on December 11 2021 Retrieved May 12 2017 Tichnor Brothers Postcard Collection Butler Lodge Hurleyville N Y Digital Commonwealth Boston Public Library Retrieved September 29 2022 Cohen Pincus The Butler Lodge Luzon Station Hurleyville N Y The Catskills Institute Northeastern University Retrieved September 29 2022 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Wakeman John 1988 World Film Directors 1945 1985 Vol 2 The H W Wilson Company pp 162 7 ISBN 978 0 824 20763 2 Freeman Hadley December 4 2021 Mel Brooks on losing the loves of his life People know how good Carl Reiner was but not how great the Guardian Retrieved September 27 2022 Brooks Mel Kimmel Jimmy May 3 2013 Jimmy Kimmel Live Season 10 Episode 375 Los Angeles Jackhole Productions distributed by ABC and Chum Television 25 fun and fascinating facts about Mel Brooks American Film American Film Institute June 2013 Retrieved September 28 2022 Robbins Michael W Palitz Wendy 2001 Brooklyn A State of Mind Workman Publishing Company p 114 ISBN 978 0761116356 Retrieved February 17 2013 Bianculli David 2016 The Platinum Age of Television From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead How TV Became Terrific ISBN 978 0385540285 a b c d e f g h Brooks Mel April 28 2022 When Mel Brooks Learned Not to Shortcut the Jam HistoryNet Retrieved September 26 2022 a b c d e f g Vergun David December 29 2021 Actor Comedian Mel Brooks Served in Army in World War II U S Department of Defense Retrieved September 26 2022 a b c d e f Brooks Mel 2021 All About Me Century pp 58 73 ISBN 978 1 529 13507 7 Mel Brooks Blazes Wacky Trail Weekend Edition Saturday NPR May 24 2008 Retrieved May 4 2012 Edwards Jeff December 24 2015 One of the Funniest Men Alive Mel Brooks Spent WWII Clearing Land Mines War History Online Retrieved December 10 2018 Elhassan Khalid July 4 2019 Many Don t Know Mel Brooks was a WWII Warrior History Collection Retrieved September 26 2022 Brooks Mel Cpl army togetherweserved com Retrieved September 26 2022 Christon Lawrence September 10 2001 Producers pic gains stature as time goes by Variety Retrieved September 29 2022 via Free Online Library Enk Bryan Real Life Tough Guys Yahoo Retrieved July 27 2013 Historical Vignette 109 Mel Brooks Was a Combat Engineer in World War II US Army Corps of Engineers Retrieved September 26 2022 Brooks Mel 2021 All about Me My Remarkable Life in Show Business Random House Publishing Group p 65 ISBN 978 0 593 15911 8 Famous Veterans Mel Brooks Military com November 1 2017 Retrieved September 26 2022 Crow David January 5 2022 Mel Brooks and His WW2 Sing Off with German Soldiers Den of Geek Retrieved September 26 2022 Mel Brooks On Anti Semitism CBS News April 12 2001 Retrieved September 29 2022 Jacob Kornbluh August 23 2021 The advice comedian Mel Brooks gave to his great nephew Todd Kaminsky now running for Nassau County DA The Forward Retrieved August 24 2021 8 15 01 Lost Issue Mel Brooks Interview 1997 Filmscoremonthly com Archived from the original on September 18 2009 Retrieved May 4 2012 Breslin Mark July 18 2019 Mel Brooks The other Jewish comedy legend The Canadian Jewish News Retrieved September 29 2022 a b Yogerst Chris June 12 2019 Review Funny Man by Patrick McGilligan Los Angeles Review of Books Retrieved September 29 2022 Mel Brooks Timeline 2000 Years of Mel Brooks American Masters PBS February 1 2013 Retrieved March 15 2018 The Amazing Writing Team of Your Show of Shows Brothers Ink Productions Retrieved March 15 2018 13 Things You Didn t Know About The Dick Van Dyke Show Neatorama Retrieved March 15 2018 My Favorite Year A Mirror for Errol Flynn amp Peter O Toole s Hellraising Den of Geek Retrieved March 15 2018 Gerard Jeremy November 23 1993 Laughter on the 23rd Floor Variety Retrieved March 15 2018 Review ACT 1 delivers plenty of Laughter on the 23rd Floor The Tennessean Retrieved March 15 2018 McFadden Robert D June 3 2001 Imogene Coca 92 Is Dead a Partner in One of TV s Most Successful Comedy Teams The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved March 15 2018 Caesar s Hour 1954 57 Eyes Of A Generation Television s Living History eyesofageneration com Retrieved March 15 2018 Carl Reiner American actor and filmmaker Encyclopedia Britannica Retrieved March 15 2018 How Dead Souls Taught Mel Brooks What Comedy Writing Could Be The New York Times November 13 2022 Tynan Kenneth October 23 1978 Mel Brooks Indestructible Comedy The New Yorker Retrieved September 29 2022 a b Collins Elizabeth March 23 2021 The Tragic Real Life Story Of Mel Brooks Grunge com Retrieved September 29 2022 a b Siegel Larry October 1966 Mel Brooks The Playboy Interview Ysos sammigirl com Playboy Archived from the original on May 12 2013 Retrieved November 1 2012 Smart Money Time October 15 1965 Archived from the original on July 30 2013 Retrieved August 30 2009 Mel Brooks Emmy Nominated Emmys com Retrieved November 1 2012 a b Kashner Sam January 6 2004 The Making of The Producers Vanity Fair Retrieved September 29 2022 Let There Be Laughter Jewish Humor Around the World Beit Hatfutsot March 20 2017 Archived from the original on October 25 2019 Retrieved October 2 2019 The Producers www tcm com Turner Classic Movies Retrieved December 17 2020 The 41st Academy Awards 1969 Nominees and Winners Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 2019 Retrieved July 3 2020 Mancini Mark May 19 2016 12 Outrageous Facts About The Producers Mental Floss Retrieved January 20 2023 Ebert Roger July 23 2000 The Producers Chicago Sun Times Tynan Kenneth October 22 1978 Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man The New Yorker a b Boone Brian March 19 2019 Highlights From Mel Brooks Biography Funny Man Vulture com New York Retrieved September 29 2022 Ebert Roger January 1 1976 Silent Movie Chicago Sun Times Siskel Gene Ebert Roger May 1 1980 Take 2 Who s Funnier Mel Brooks or Woody Allen Sneak Previews Season 4 Chicago PBS Novak Ralph Gliatto Tom Rozen Leah August 9 1993 Picks and Pans Review Robin Hood Men in Tights People Archived from the original on July 13 2015 Retrieved July 11 2015 Truitt Brian November 25 2014 Mel Brooks checks in for Hotel Transylvania 2 USA Today Retrieved July 12 2015 Back on the Horse Mel Brooks Penning Songs for Blazing Saddles Musical Playbill March 16 2010 Archived from the original on September 6 2012 Retrieved November 1 2012 Walsh Michael October 18 2021 Hulu Orders Mel Brooks HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART II Series Nerdist Fantasy Mansion Becomes an Inn The New York Times February 13 1977 David Weisgal the 44 year old son of a wealthy philanthropist a 235 000 fantasy that he could afford Mr Weisgal purchased the 33 room mansion situated on 21 acres of Berkshire pine forest and with Florence Brooks Dunay his fiancee Huberdeau Jennifer September 22 2016 The Cottager Wheatleigh Where the Berkshires ends and Italian country begins The Berkshire Eagle Retrieved September 28 2022 In 1976 Wheatleigh was sold to David Weisgal and his fiancee Florence Brooks Dunay a professional dancer for 235 000 They ran Wheatleigh as a country inn until 1982 when current owners Linfield and Susan Simon fell in love with the property and purchased it Baum Brooks Dunay Weisgal Florence January February 2011 ELEGANT NEVER TACKY PDF Equity News Actors Equity Association 96 1 8 Retrieved September 28 2022 CBS SUNDAY MORNING Features Segment on Broadway Gypsy Robe Today 6 10 BroadwayWorld June 10 2012 Retrieved September 28 2022 Fierberg Ruthie August 29 2019 The History of Broadway s Legacy Robe Tradition Backstage Retrieved September 29 2022 Florence Baum Internet Broadway Database Retrieved September 28 2022 Florence Baum Playbill Retrieved September 28 2022 The Gypsy Project Florence Brooks Dunay Baum Playbill com Retrieved December 20 2021 Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks Marriage about com Archived from the original on May 11 2013 Retrieved May 16 2013 Wizards of Waverly Pod YouTube YouTube About Caesar s Writers Retrieved September 29 2022 Brooks Mel Typescript screenplay Marriage is a Dirty Rotten Fraud undated 126 Terry Southern papers New York Public Library Retrieved September 29 2022 a b c Silverman Stephen M Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft Shared Love and Laughs People May 19 2013 a b Carter Maria How Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks Kept the Spark Alive for 41 Years Country Living August 9 2017 Carucci John February 3 2010 Mel Brooks Remembers Love Anne Bancroft We Were Glued Together HuffPost Associated Press Retrieved September 5 2013 Dowd Maureen March 11 2023 Mel Brooks Isn t Done Punching Up the History of the World The New York Times Retrieved March 12 2023 Tynan Kenneth October 22 1978 Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man The New Yorker Karam Edward June 18 2001 Breaking the Code An Insiders Guide to the Parodies Homages and Allusions in the Producers Playbill com Woods Sean June 2013 Mel Brooks Interview on Money Women Jokes and Regret Men s Journal Archived from the original on June 24 2013 Retrieved September 5 2013 Tablet Magazine Tablet Magazine June 28 2016 Retrieved April 5 2020 Moreau Jordan October 21 2020 Mel Brooks Endorses Biden for President in First Ever Political Video Variety Bernstein Adam July 1 2020 Carl Reiner TV comedy pioneer and probing straight man to Mel Brooks dies at 98 The Washington Post Retrieved July 2 2020 Carl Reiner amp Mel Brooks 2000 And Thirteen Discogs com Retrieved July 2 2020 Carl Reiner amp Mel Brooks Excerpts From The Complete 2000 Year Old Man Discogs com Retrieved July 2 2020 Simonson Robert June 4 2001 With Producers Mel Brooks Has Won Tony Oscar Grammy and Emmy Playbill Archived from the original on February 19 2017 Retrieved January 1 2010 Reginald Robert 1981 Science Fiction amp Fantasy Awards Borgo Press p 46 ISBN 978 0893709068 Retrieved August 13 2018 via Google Books Cook is voted comedians comedian Evening Standard January 4 2005 Retrieved October 4 2019 Mel Brooks laughs his way to Kennedy Center honor The Washington Post December 6 2009 Retrieved November 1 2012 Hollywood Walk of Fame Mel Brooks Hollywood Walk of Fame Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Retrieved November 30 2017 Mel Brooks gets Hollywood Walk of Fame star Today com Associated Press April 21 2010 Archived from the original on March 8 2016 Retrieved January 14 2016 Trachtenberg Robert April 4 2013 Mel Brooks Make a Noise American Masters Season 27 PBS Lemire Christy October 5 2012 Mel Brooks to receive AFI life achievement honor Associated Press Archived from the original on September 5 2013 Retrieved September 5 2013 American Film Institute 2013 AFI Life Achievement Award Tribute to Mel Brooks YouTube Retrieved September 26 2022 Vulpo Mike September 9 2014 Mel Brooks Has 11 Fingers Beloved Actor Makes an Impression During Hollywood Cement Ceremony E Retrieved September 10 2014 Mel Brooks gets BFI fellowship for comedy career BBC News March 20 2015 Retrieved July 11 2015 Further reading EditAdler Bill and Jeffrey Feinman Mel Brooks The Irreverent Funnyman Chicago Playboy Press 1976 OCLC 3121552 Brooks Mel Keegan Rebecca October 18 2016 Young Frankenstein A Mel Brooks Book The Story of the Making of the Film Running Press ISBN 978 0 316 31546 3 Brooks Mel All About Me My Remarkable Life in Show Business New York Ballantine 2021 Crick Robert A The Big Screen Comedies of Mel Brooks Jefferson NC McFarland 2002 ISBN 978 0 7864 1033 0 OCLC 49991416 Holtzman William Seesaw a Dual Biography of Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks Garden City NY Doubleday 1979 ISBN 978 0 385 13076 9 McGilligan Patrick Funny Man Mel Brooks Harper 2019 ISBN 978 0062560995 Parish James Robert 2007 It s Good to Be the King The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks Hoboken NJ Wiley ISBN 978 0471752677 OCLC 69331761 Symons Alex Mel Brooks in the Cultural Industries Survival and Prolonged Adaptation Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2012 ISBN 978 0 7486 4958 7 OCLC 806201078 Yacowar Maurice Method in Madness The Comic Art of Mel Brooks New York St Martin s Press 1981 ISBN 978 0 312 53142 3 OCLC 7556005 Interviews EditMel Brooks interview with Studs Terkel on WFMT July 2 1968 Mel Brooks interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs July 4 1978 Mel Brooks Interview 2001 dead link Tony Awards Mel Brooks interview on NPR Fresh Air March 16 2005 biographer James Robert Parish interview 2007 Alt Film Guide Mel Brooks interview on NPR Fresh Air December 7 2021 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mel Brooks Wikiquote has quotations related to Mel Brooks Official website dead link Mel Brooks at the TCM Movie Database Mel Brooks at the Internet Broadway Database Mel Brooks at Emmys com Mel Brooks at AllMusic Carl Reiner amp Mel Brooks discography at Discogs Mel Brooks Box Office Data Movie Director at The Numbers Mel Brooks Box Office Data Movie Star at The Numbers Mel Brooks at IMDb Mel Brooks Virtual History com Photographs and Books Topic Mel Brooks s channel on YouTube 2000 Year Old Man The Official MEL BROOKS s channel on YouTube Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Mel Brooks amp oldid 1148105743, wikipedia, wiki, book, 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