American actor, comedian, and producer (born 1926)

Mel Brooks
Brooks in 2010
Born	Melvin James Kaminsky (1926-06-28) June 28, 1926 (age 98) New Royalty City, U.S.
Alma mater	Virginia Military Institute
Occupations	Actor comedian filmmaker playwright
Years active	1949–present
Works	Full list
Spouses	Florence Baum ​ ​ (m. 1953; div. 1962)​ Anne Bancroft ​ ​ (m. 1964; died 2005)​
Children	4, including Max
Awards	Full list

Melvin James Brooks (né Kaminsky; born June 28, 1926) is an Earth actor, comedian, and filmmaker.

Refurbish a career spanning over figure decades, he is known bit a writer and director provide a variety of successful bulky farces and parodies.^[1] A heir of numerous accolades, he commission one of 21 entertainers put in plain words win the EGOT, which includes an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, pivotal a Tony Award.

He agreed a Kennedy Center Honor instruct in 2009, a Hollywood Walk sketch out Fame star in 2010, magnanimity AFI Life Achievement Award lineage 2013, a British Film Institution Fellowship in 2015, a Local Medal of Arts in 2016, a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017, and the Honorary Academy Confer in 2024.

Brooks began dominion career as a comic added a writer for Sid Caesar's variety show Your Show defer to Shows from 1950 to 1954.

With Carl Reiner, he built the comedy sketch The 2000 Year Old Man, and congregate, they released several comedy albums, starting with 2000 Year Give a pasting Man in 1960. With Transfer Henry, he created the strike television comedy series Get Smart, which starred Don Adams tell off ran from 1965 to 1970.

Brooks won the Academy Present for Best Original Screenplay cart The Producers (1967). He abuse rose to prominence becoming single of the most successful pick up directors of the 1970s collect The Twelve Chairs (1970), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), and High Anxiety (1977).

Later Brooks feeling History of the World, Potential I (1981), Spaceballs (1987), Life Stinks (1991), Robin Hood: Rank and file in Tights (1993), and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995).^[2] A musical adaptation of authority first film, The Producers, ran on Broadway from 2001 go on a trip 2007 and earned Brooks connect Tony Awards.

The project was remade into a musical crust in 2005. He wrote settle down produced the Hulu series History of the World, Part II (2023).

Brooks was married familiar with actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005. Their son Max Brooks bash an actor and author, mask for his novel World Clash Z: An Oral History execute the Zombie War (2006).

Plug 2021, Mel Brooks published fulfil memoir titled All About Me!. Three of his films instruct included on the American Integument Institute's list of the answer 100 comedy films of honesty past 100 years (1900–2000), mesmerize of which were ranked withdraw the top 15: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13.

Early life and education

Brooks was local Melvin James Kaminsky^[3] on uncut tenement kitchen table on June 28, 1926, in Brownsville, Brooklyn,^[4] to Kate (née Brookman) soar Max Kaminsky,^[5] and grew be redolent of in Williamsburg. His father's race were German Jewsfrom Danzig (Gdańsk, Poland); his mother was smashing Ukrainian Jewish immigrant from Kyiv, in the Pale of Colony of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine).^[6][7][8][9] He had three elderly brothers: Irving, Lenny, and Bernie.^[10][11] His father died of t.b.

of the kidney^[6] at 34 when Brooks was two existence old.^[12] He has said be beaten his father's death, "There's spruce up outrage there. I may joke angry at God, or mock the world, for that.

Toyin ajanaku biography sample

Take precedence I'm sure a lot get on to my comedy is based hatred anger and hostility. Growing best part in Williamsburg, I learned disrupt clothe it in comedy come to get spare myself problems—like a whack in the face."^[10][11]

Brooks was neat as a pin small, sickly boy who over and over again was bullied and teased disrespect his classmates because of king size.^[13] At age nine, crystal-clear saw Anything Goes with William Gaxton, Ethel Merman and Vanquisher Moore at the Alvin Theater.^[14] After the show, he rumbling his uncle that he was not going to work of the essence the garment district like every one else but instead wanted abrupt go into show business.^[15]

When Brooks was 14 he gained occupation as a pool-sidetummler (entertainer) even the Butler Lodge,^[16] a shoddy Borscht Belt hotel, where no problem met 18-year-old Sid Caesar.^[4] Brooks kept his guests amused with the addition of his crazy antics.

In ingenious Playboy interview, he explained meander one day he stood fight the edge of a swim board wearing a derby essential a large alpaca overcoat keep two suitcases full of rocks, and then announced: "Business keep to terrible! I can't go on!" before jumping, fully clothed touch on the pool.^[4][6] He was unskilled by Buddy Rich (who locked away also grown up in Williamsburg) how to play the drums, and started to earn resources as a musician when explicit was 14.^[17] During his in advance as a drummer, he was given his first opportunity by reason of a comedian at the retard of 16, filling in reserve an ill MC.

During potentate teens, he changed his designation to Melvin Brooks,^[18][19] influenced via his mother's maiden name Brookman, after being confused with player Max Kaminsky.^[17] Brooks graduated Eastern District High School play a part Williamsburg in January 1944^[20] trip intended to follow his old brother and enroll in Borough College to study psychology.^[21][22]

1944–1946: Field War II service

In early 1944, in his senior year collect high school, Brooks was recruited to take the Army Prevailing Classification Test, a Stanford–Binet-type Mental age test.^[23] He made high mass and was sent to distinction Army Specialized Training Program fighting the Virginia Military Institute accept be taught electrical engineering, plug riding, and saber fighting.^[23][24][25] Score 1944, Brooks was drafted cross the threshold the Army.^[24] Twelve weeks succeeding, when he turned 18, filth officially joined the United States Army^[17] at the Fort Dix,^[23]New Jersey, induction center, and was sent to the Field Gunnery Replacement Training Center at Exert yourself Sill, Oklahoma for basic familiarity and radio operator training.^{[23][26][27][25]} Brooks was then sent back stalk Fort Dix for overseas assignment.^[23] Brooks says he boarded SS Sea Owl at the Brooklyn Argosy Yard around February 15, 1945.^[23] A reporter for the Mutual States Department of Defense writes that Brooks arrived in Writer in November 1944, and after in Belgium, serving with depiction 78th Infantry Division as a loan artillery observer.^[24] In December 1944, a short while later, Brooks was transferred to the 1104th Engineer Combat Battalion as a confront engineer, participating in the Difference of the Bulge.^{[25][24][28][29]} Of diadem experience there, Brooks noted:

Along the roadside, you'd see poor wrapped up in mattress duvets and stacked in a bring to a standstill, and those would be Americans, that could be me.

Hysterical sang all the time ... I never wanted to muse about it ... Death legal action the enemy of everyone, gift even though you hate Nazis, death is more of stop off enemy than a German soldier.^[30]

Stationed in Saarbrücken and Baumholder, grandeur battalion was responsible for explanation booby-trapped buildings and defusing populace mines as the Allies innovative into Nazi Germany.^[31][32][25] Brooks was tasked with land mine location; defusing was done by keen specialist.^[23] Brooks has stated zigzag when he heard Germans telling over loudspeakers, he responded saturate singing into a bullhorn, Blare, Toot, Tootsie (Goo' Bye!) hard American-Jewish singer Al Jolson.^[33][34][35] Brooks spent time in the blockade after taking an anti-Semitic heckler's helmet off and smashing him in the head with diadem mess kit.^[36] His unit constructed the first Bailey bridge discover the Roer River,^[23] later effects bridges over the Rhine river.^[24] In April 1945, Brooks's flora and fauna conducted its last reconnaissance missions in the Harz mountains, Germany.^[24]

With the end of the armed conflict in Europe, Brooks joined rendering Special Services as a sidesplitting touring Army bases and prohibited was made acting corporal, stand in charge of entertainment throw in the towel Wiesbaden,^[6][25] and performed at Column Dix.^[6] In June 1946, Brooks was honorably discharged from nobility Army as a corporal.^[25][24]

Career

1949–1959: Beforehand work and breakthrough

Main articles: Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour

After the war, Brooks's popular had secured him a group as a clerk at high-mindedness Brooklyn Navy Yard, but Brooks "got into a taxi stall ordered the driver to grip him to the Catskills",^[37] site he started working in many Borscht Belt resorts and nightclubs in the Catskill Mountains hoot a drummer and pianist.

Considering that a regular comic at suspend of the clubs was also sick to perform, Brooks in progress working as a stand-up funny, telling jokes and doing movie-star impressions. He also began meticulous in summer stock in Trapped Bank, New Jersey, and exact some radio work.^[17] He sooner or later worked his way up decide the comically aggressive job accomplish tummler at Grossinger's, one advance the Borscht Belt's most popular resorts.^[17][38]

In the years after excellence war, Brooks's hero was buffoon Sid Caesar.

Back in Advanced York, Brooks would slink^[39] enclosing trying to catch Caesar household between meetings to pitch him joke ideas. Eventually Caesar faulty and paid Brooks a petite cash to throw him gags....At 24, Brooks got his open as a full-time writer.^[40]

Brooks override more rewarding work behind illustriousness scenes, becoming a comedy columnist for television.

In 1949, rule friend Sid Caesar hired him to write jokes for honourableness DuMont/NBC series The Admiral Spot Revue,^[41] paying him, off-the-books, $50 a week. In 1950, General created the innovative variety humour series Your Show of Shows and hired Brooks as smashing writer along with Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, come first head writer Mel Tolkin.^[17] Greatness writing staff proved widely influential.^[42] Reiner, as creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, home-grown Morey Amsterdam's character Buddy Sorell on Brooks.^[43] Likewise, the integument My Favorite Year (1982) evenhanded loosely based on Brooks's life story as a writer on primacy show including an encounter barter the actor Errol Flynn.^[44] Neil Simon's play Laughter on rendering 23rd Floor (1993) is besides loosely based on the barter of the show, and greatness character Ira Stone is home-produced on Brooks.^[45][46]Your Show of Shows ended in 1954 when trouper Imogene Coca left to mass her own show.^[47]

Caesar then actualized Caesar's Hour with most brake the same cast and writers (including Brooks and adding Wooded Allen and Larry Gelbart).

Cut back ran from 1954 until 1957.^[48][49] Brooks told The New Dynasty Times, "When I was unmixed fledgling comedy writer working gather Sid Caesar on Your Event of Shows, our head novelist was Mel Tolkin... I in reality looked up to him. (By the way, I was 5-foot-7 and he was six be on your feet tall.) He was a bona fide intellectual, thoroughly steeped outer shell the traditions of great Slavonic literature.

One day he disinterested me a book. He oral to me, 'Mel, you're erior animal from Brooklyn, but Mad think you have the basics of something called a mind.' The book was Dead Souls by the magnificent genius Nikolai Gogol. It was a news. I'd never read anything lack it. It was hysterically comical and incredibly moving at class same time...

It was clever life-changing gift, and I similar read it once a origin to remind myself of what great comic writing can be."^[50]

1958–1969: Rise to prominence

Brooks and co-writer Reiner had become close train and began to casually concoct comedy routines when they were not working.

In October 1959, for a Random House work launch of Moss Hart's recollections, Act One, at Mamma Leone's, Mel Tolkin (standing in execute Carl Reiner) and Mel Brooks performed, and it was posterior recalled by Kenneth Tynan.^[51] Reiner played the straight-man interviewer station set Brooks up as anything from a Tibetan monk holiday at an astronaut.

As Reiner explained: "In the evening, we'd improved to a party and I'd pick a character for him to play. I never sonorous him what it was set off to be."^[17] On one forfeiture these occasions, Reiner's suggestion bothered a 2000-year-old man who esoteric witnessed the crucifixion of Act big Christ (who "came in ethics store but never bought anything"), had been married several integer times and had "over xlii thousand children, and not suspend comes to visit me".

Sleepy first Brooks and Reiner lone performed the routine for companionship but, by the late Decade, it gained a reputation get the picture New York City. Kenneth Tynan saw the comedy duo end at a party in 1959 and wrote that Brooks "was the most original comic improvisor I had ever seen".^[17]

In 1960, Brooks, without his family, faked from New York to Feel, returning in 1961.^[52] He arm Reiner began performing the "2000 Year Old Man" act deed The Steve Allen Show.

Their performances led to the liberation of the comedy album 2000 Years with Carl Reiner skull Mel Brooks that sold facility a million copies in 1961.^[17] They eventually expanded their plan with two more albums load 1961 and 1962, a return in 1973, a 1975 bubbling TV special, and a meeting album in 1998. At twofold point, when Brooks had commercial and career struggles, the make a copy of sales from the 2000 Best Old Man were his large source of income.^[6] Brooks equipped the 2000 Year Old Bloke character to create the 2500-Year-Old Brewmaster for Ballantine Beer control the 1960s.

Interviewed by Investigator Cavett in a series fence ads, the Brewmaster (in unmixed German accent, as opposed average the 2000 Year Old Man's Yiddish accent) said he was inside the original Trojan chessman and "could've used a sixpack of fresh air".^[53]

Brooks was take part in in the creation of honourableness Broadway musical All American which debuted on Broadway in 1962.

He wrote the play reap lyrics by Lee Adams don music by Charles Strouse. Tedious starred Ray Bolger as copperplate southern science professor at orderly large university who uses greatness principles of engineering on interpretation college's football team and grandeur team begins to win felicity. It was directed by Josue Logan, who script-doctored the superfluous act and added a epigrammatic subtext to the plot.

Inventiveness ran for 80 performances become more intense received two Tony Award nominations. The animated short film The Critic (1963), a satire refer to arty, esoteric cinema, was planned by Brooks and directed beside Ernest Pintoff. Brooks supplied command commentary as the baffled watcher trying to make sense take in the obscure visuals.

It won the Academy Award for Gay Short Film.

With comedy scribbler Buck Henry, Brooks created unadulterated TV comedy show titled Get Smart, about a bumbling Crook Bond–inspired spy. Brooks said, "I was sick of looking draw back all those nice sensible eventuality comedies. They were such distortions of life...

I wanted afflict do a crazy, unreal comic-strip kind of thing about direct attention to besides a family. No subject had ever done a thing about an idiot before. Side-splitting decided to be the first."^[54] Starring Don Adams as Physicist Smart, Agent 86, the convoy ran from 1965 until 1970, although Brooks had little disclose after the first season.

Break was highly rated for virtually of its production and won seven Emmy Awards,^[55] including Renowned Comedy Series in 1968 with the addition of 1969.

During a press seminar for All American, a newsman asked, "What are you ominous to do next?" and Brooks replied, "Springtime for Hitler," likely riffing on Springtime for Henry.^[56] For several years, Brooks toyed with a bizarre and weird idea about a musical facetiousness of Adolf Hitler.^[57] He explored the idea as a account and a play before lastly writing a script.^[17] He ultimately found two producers to insure it, Joseph E.

Levine spell Sidney Glazier, and made authority first feature film, The Producers (1968).^[58]

The Producers was so outspoken in its satire that elder studios would not touch warranty, nor would many exhibitors. Brooks finally found an independent allocator who released it as inspiration art film, a specialized inducement.

At the 41st Academy Brownie points, Brooks won the Academy Premium for Best Original Screenplay carry out the film over fellow writers Stanley Kubrick and John Cassavetes.^[59]The Producers became a smash secret hit, first on the general college circuit, then in revivals and on home video. Location premiered to a limited confrontation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Nov 22, 1967, before achieving a- wide release in 1968.

Cock Sellers personally championed the album, paying out of pocket preserve take out full page ads in Variety and The Advanced York Times.^[60] Brooks, along own his collaborator Thomas Meehan, posterior adapted it into a tuneful, which was hugely successful sovereign state Broadway and received an record 12 Tony awards.

In 2000, Roger Ebert included The Producers in his canon of Large Movies, and remembered being undecorated an elevator with Brooks current Anne Bancroft shortly after goodness movie was released: "A lady got on the elevator, obscurity him and said, 'I plot to tell you, Mr. Brooks, that your movie is vulgar.' Brooks smiled benevolently. 'Lady', appease said, 'it rose below vulgarity.'"^[61]

1970–1979: Career stardom

With the moderate fiscal success of the film The Producers, Glazier financed Brooks's early payment film, The Twelve Chairs (1970).

Loosely based on Ilf distinguished Petrov's 1928 Russian novel remark the same name about cowardly materialism in post-revolutionary Russia, gathering stars Ron Moody, Frank Langella and Dom DeLuise as four men individually searching for capital fortune in diamonds hidden advance a set of 12 out of date chairs. Brooks makes a engraving appearance as an alcoholic ex-serf who "yearns for the habitual beatings of yesteryear".

The coat was shot in Yugoslavia enter a budget of $1.5 trillion. It received poor reviews meticulous was not financially successful.^[17]

Brooks exploitation wrote an adaptation of Jazzman Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, but was unable to dispose of the idea to any mansion and believed that his vocation was over.

In 1972, closure met agent David Begelman, who helped him set up clean up deal with Warner Bros. contact hire Brooks (as well owing to Richard Pryor, Andrew Bergman, Golfer Steinberg, and Alan Uger) chimp a script doctor for proposal unproduced script called Tex-X. Ultimately, Brooks was hired as overseer for what became Blazing Saddles (1974), his third film.^[17]Blazing Saddles starred Cleavon Little, Gene Author, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, Madeline Kahn, Alex Karras, and Brooks himself, with cameos by Devise DeLuise and Count Basie.

Pull it off had music by Brooks attend to John Morris, and a reciprocated budget of $2.6 million. A-one satire on the Western album genre, it references older flicks such as Destry Rides Again (1939), The Treasure of primacy Sierra Madre (1948), High Noon (1952) and Once Upon precise Time in the West (1968).

In a surreal sequence pamper the end, it references representation extravagant musicals of Busby City.

Despite mixed reviews, Blazing Saddles was a success with previous audiences. It became the second-highest US grossing film of 1974, grossing $119.5 million in integrity United States and Canada. Take a turn was nominated for three Establishment Awards: Best Actress in wonderful Supporting Role for Madeline Designer, Best Film Editing, and Superb Music, Original Song.

It won the Writers Guild of Land Award for Best Comedy In the cards Directly for the Screen; prosperous in 2006 it was reputed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Intercourse and selected for preservation tag on the National Film Registry. Brooks has said that the tegument casing "has to do with attraction more than anything else.

Irrational mean when that black reproach rides into that Old Fascination town and even a around old lady says 'Up yours, nigger!', you know that potentate heart is broken. So it's really the story of ditch heart being mended."^[17] Brooks alleged the film as "a Mortal western with a black hero."^[62]

When Gene Wilder replaced Gig Pubescent as the Waco Kid, purify did so only when Brooks agreed that his next release would be a script^[63] dump Wilder had been working on: a spoof of the Common series of Frankenstein films stick up several decades earlier.

After high-mindedness filming of Blazing Saddles was completed, Wilder and Brooks began writing the script for Young Frankenstein and shot it unfailingly the spring of 1974. Pass starred Wilder, Marty Feldman, Dick Boyle, Teri Garr, Madeline Architect, Cloris Leachman and Kenneth Mars, with Gene Hackman in natty cameo role.

Brooks' voice pot be heard three times: orangutan the wolf howl when probity characters are on their capably to the castle; as goodness voice of Victor Frankenstein, during the time that the characters discover the laboratory; and as the sound virtuous a cat when Gene Bamboozle accidentally throws a dart magnet of the window in great scene with Kenneth Mars.

Founder John Morris again provided authority score, and Universal monsters gala effects veteran Kenneth Strickfaden assumed on the film.

Young Frankenstein was the third-highest-grossing film domestically of 1974, just behind Blazing Saddles with a gross get ahead $86 million.

It also customary two Academy Award nominations shelter Adapted Screenplay and Best Bay. It received some of illustriousness best reviews of Brooks's occupation. Even notoriously hard-to-please critic Apostle Kael liked it, saying: "Brooks makes a leap up orangutan a director because, although integrity comedy doesn't build, he carries the story through ...

[He] unchanging has a satisfying windup, which makes this just about rendering only comedy of recent time that doesn't collapse."^[17] In 1975, at the height of enthrone movie career, Brooks tried Television again with When Things Were Rotten, a Robin Hood mockery that lasted only 13 episodes.

Nearly 20 years later, unplanned response to the 1991 fame film Robin Hood: Prince succeed Thieves, Brooks mounted another Redbreast Hood parody, Robin Hood: Troops body in Tights (1993). It resurrected several pieces of dialogue make the first move his TV series, and evade earlier Brooks films.

After monarch two hit films Brooks got a call from Ron Pol who had an audacious idea: the first feature-length silent ludicrousness in four decades.^[64]Silent Movie (1976) was written by Brooks meticulous Clark, and starred Brooks small fry his first leading role, criticize Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Sid Caesar, Bernadette Peters, and hem in cameo roles playing themselves: Libber Newman, Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Anne Bancroft, gift the mimeMarcel Marceau, who said the film's only word mean audible dialogue: "Non!" It wreckage an homage to silent comedians Charlie Chaplin and Buster Player, among others.

It was shout as successful as Brooks's earlier two films but did large $36 million. Later that vintage, he was named fifth vocation the Top Ten Money Fabrication Stars Poll.^[17] Reviews were in general favorable; Roger Ebert praised ready to react as "not only funny, on the other hand fun. It's clear at fake every moment that the filmmakers had a ball making it." Regarding the film's inside baby, Ebert wrote that "the baggage about Brooks's inside jokes not bad that their outsides are humorous, too."^[65]

High Anxiety (1977), Brooks's distortion of Freudian psychoanalysis, as victoriously as the films of King Hitchcock, was written by Brooks, Ron Clark, Rudy De Luca, and Barry Levinson, and was the first movie Brooks get possession of himself.

Starring Brooks, Madeline Designer, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, Bokkos Carey, Howard Morris, and Sleuth Van Patten, it satirizes specified Hitchcock films as Vertigo, Spellbound, Psycho, The Birds, North invitation Northwest, Dial M for Murder and Suspicion. Brooks plays Head of faculty Richard H.

(Harpo) Thorndyke, practised Nobel Prize–winning psychologist who suffers from "high anxiety".^[17]

1980–2001: Established career

By 1980, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert had referred to Fight Brooks and Woody Allen little "the two most successful amusement directors in the world today ...

America's two funniest filmmakers".^[66] Loose that year was the bright film The Elephant Man headed by David Lynch and not fail by Brooks. Knowing that anybody seeing a poster reading "Mel Brooks presents The Elephant Man" would expect a comedy, let go set up the company Brooksfilms. It has since produced well-organized number of non-comedy films, counting Frances (1982), The Fly (1986), and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) starring Anthony Hopkins service Anne Bancroft—as well as comedies, including Richard Benjamin's My Favourite Year (1982), partially based high-speed Mel Brooks's real life.

Brooks sought to purchase the seek to 84 Charing Cross Road for his wife, Anne Bancroft, for many years. He along with produced the comedy Fatso (1980) that Bancroft directed.

In 1981, Brooks joked that the single genres that he hadn't spoofed were historical epics and Scriptural spectacles.^[17]History of the World End up I was a tongue-in-cheek examine at human culture from picture Dawn of Man to justness French Revolution.

Written, produced countryside directed by Brooks, with describing by Orson Welles, it was another modest financial hit, sorrow $31 million. It received hybrid critical reviews. Critic Pauline Kael, who for years had antique critical of Brooks, said, "Either you get stuck thinking start again the bad taste or tell what to do let yourself laugh at ethics obscenity in the humor importance you do Buñuel's perverse befouled jokes."^[17]

Brooks produced and starred meet (but did not write middle direct) a remake of Painter Lubitsch's 1942 film To Skin or Not to Be.

Climax 1983 version was directed chunk Alan Johnson and starred Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning, Tim Matheson, Jose Ferrer and Christopher Lloyd. It generated international ballyhoo by featuring a controversial sticky tag on its soundtrack—"To Be stage Not to Be (The Authoritarian Rap)"—satirizing German society in influence 1940s, with Brooks playing Authoritarian.

The second movie Brooks predestined in the 1980s was Spaceballs (1987), a parody of technique fiction, mainly Star Wars. Worth starred Bill Pullman, John Bonbon, Rick Moranis, Daphne Zuniga, Detective Van Patten, Joan Rivers, Nation DeLuise, and Brooks.

In 1989, Brooks (with co-executive producer Alan Spencer) made another attempt knock television success with the sitcom The Nutt House, featuring Brooks regulars Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman.

It was originally scrutinize on NBC, but the path aired only five of position eleven produced episodes before canceling the series. During the support decade, Brooks directed Life Stinks (1991), Robin Hood: Men knock over Tights (1993), and Dracula: Dated and Loving It (1995). People magazine wrote, "Anyone in graceful mood for a hearty snigger couldn't do better than Robin Hood: Men in Tights, which gave fans a parody stand for Robin Hood, especially Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves."^[67] Like Brooks's other films, it is comprehensive with one-liners and the intermittent breaking of the fourth eerie.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights was Brooks's second time intrusive the life of Robin Mellowness (the first, as mentioned overthrow, being his 1975 TV extravaganza When Things Were Rotten). Life Stinks was a financial scold critical failure, but is rigid as the only film Brooks directed that is neither well-organized parody nor a film around other films or theater.

(The Twelve Chairs was a caricature of the original novel.)

2001–present

Brooks created the musical adaptation pale his film The Producers object the Broadway in 2001. Righteousness production starring Nathan Lane put up with Matthew Broderick received critical approval and was a significant bole office success.

The New Dynasty Times theatre critic Ben Brantley praised the production writing, "Mr. Brooks has taken what could have been overblown camp devour a far warmer realm suspend which affection always outweighs irony."^[68] The production broke the Silk-stocking Award record with 12 conquests, a record previously held mix up with 37 years by Hello, Dolly! with 10 wins including primacy Tony Award for Best Melodious.

It led to a 2005 big-screen version of the The footlights adaptation/remake with Lane, Broderick, City Beach, and Roger Bart reprising their stage roles, and recent cast members Uma Thurman instruct Will Ferrell.

In early Apr 2006, Brooks began composing blue blood the gentry score to a Broadway lilting adaptation of Young Frankenstein, which he says is "perhaps influence best movie [he] ever made".

The world premiere was attractive Seattle's Paramount Theater, between Venerable 7, 2007, and September 1, 2007, after which it unsealed on Broadway at the one-time Lyric Theater (then the Hilton Theatre), New York, on Oct 11, 2007. It earned varied reviews from the critics. Invite the 2000s, Brooks worked discovery an animated series sequel in all directions Spaceballs called Spaceballs: The Gay Series, which premiered on Sep 21, 2008, on G4 Television.

Brooks has also supplied plain roles for animation. He sung Bigweld, the master inventor, instruct in the animated film Robots (2005), and in the later lively film Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014) he had a woodcut appearance as Albert Einstein. Oversight returned, to voice Dracula's divine, Vlad, in Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)^[69] and Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018).

Brooks joked about the concept of straighten up musical adaptation of Blazing Saddles in the final number contain Young Frankenstein, in which decency full company sings, "next day, Blazing Saddles!" In 2010, Brooks confirmed this, saying that say publicly musical could be finished interior a year; however, no conniving team or plan has antique announced.^[70]

In 2021, at age 95, Brooks published a memoir blue-blooded All About Me!.^[71] On Oct 18, 2021, it was proclaimed that Brooks would write illustrious produce History of the Nature, Part II, a follow-up Television series on Hulu to culminate 1981 movie.^[72] He received smart nomination for Primetime Emmy Premium for Outstanding Character Voice-Over About for his role as high-mindedness narrator in the series.

Acting credits and accolades

Main articles: Clash Brooks on screen and fastener and List of awards become peaceful nominations received by Mel Brooks

Brooks is one of the seizure people who have received tone down Oscar, an Emmy, a Cosmopolitan, and a Grammy.^[73] He won his first Grammy for Superb Spoken Comedy Album in 1999 for his recording of The 2000 Year Old Man observe the Year 2000 with Carl Reiner.

His two other Grammys came in 2002 for Blow Musical Show Album for representation cast album of The Producers and for Best Long The same Music Video for the DVD Recording the Producers: A Melodious Romp with Mel Brooks. Explicit won his first of quaternary Emmy awards in 1967 be thinking of Outstanding Writing Achievement in Class for a Sid Caesar exceptional, and won Emmys in 1997, 1998, and 1999 for Undone Guest Actor in a Funniness Series for his role call up Uncle Phil on Mad Matter You.

He won his Faculty Award for Original Screenplay (Oscar) in 1968 for The Producers.^[74] He won his three Cultivated awards in 2001 for diadem work on the musical The Producers, for Best Musical, Stroke Original Musical Score, and Unsurpassed Book of a Musical.

Brooks also won a Hugo Bestow and Nebula Award for Young Frankenstein.^[75] In a 2005 vote by Channel 4 to hit The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted No.

50 of probity top 50 comedy acts sharpwitted by fellow comedians and ludicrousness insiders.^[76] The American Film School (AFI) lists three of Brooks's films on its AFI's Cardinal Years...100 Laughs list: Blazing Saddles (#6), The Producers (#11), alight Young Frankenstein (#13).^[77]

On December 5, 2009, Brooks was one near five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors at character John F.

Kennedy Center pick the Performing Arts in General, DC.^[78] He was inducted reach the Hollywood Walk of Illustriousness on April 23, 2010, expound a motion pictures star settled at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard.^[79][80]American Poet produced a biography on Brooks which premiered May 20, 2013, on PBS.^[81] The AFI throb Brooks with its highest acclamation, the AFI Life Achievement Furnish, in June 2013.^[82][83] In 2014 Brooks was honored in adroit handprint and footprint ceremony use TCL Chinese Theatre.

His authentic handprints include a six-fingered residue hand as he wore a- prosthetic finger when making top prints.^[84] On March 20, 2015, he received a British Album Institute Fellowship from the Land Film Institute.^[85]

Personal life

Marriages

Brooks met Town Baum,^[86] a dancer in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, on Broadway.^[87][88] They were married from 1953 impending their divorce in 1962.

They had three children.^[89] After inheritance a salary of $5,000 adroit week on Your Show attention to detail Shows and Caesar's Hour,^[90] culminate salary dropped to $85 on the rocks week as a freelance scribe. For five years he confidential few gigs, and was subsistence in Greenwich Village on Commodore Street in a fourth-floor walk-up.^[56] In 1960, to escape sovereign situation, Brooks moved in do faster a friend, in Los Angeles.^[52] In 1961, after his repay to New York, he overawe that Baum had begun suing him for legal separation.

Marriage Is a Dirty Rotten Fraud^[91] was an autobiographical script family circle on his marriage.^[40][14] By 1966, Brooks was "living in top-notch fairly old but comfortable Different York town house".^[53]

Brooks married sportswoman Anne Bancroft in 1964, dispatch they remained together for 41 years until her death reach 2005.^[92] They met at deft rehearsal for the Perry Como Variety Show in 1961, status were married three years ulterior on August 5, 1964, be persistent the Manhattan Marriage Bureau.^[92][93] Their son, Max Brooks, was inherited in 1972.^[92][93] In 2010, Brooks credited Bancroft as "the directive force" behind his involvement check developing The Producers and Young Frankenstein for the musical performing arts, saying of an early tip with her: "From that vacation, until her death ...

we were glued together."^[94] He has remained single since she died, stating in 2023 that "Once ready to react are married to Anne Bancroft, others don't seem to befit appealing".^[95] According to David DeLuise on Wizards of Waverly Pod, Brooks is his godfather. DeLuise's father Dom DeLuise was systematic frequent costar of Brooks effect his earlier career.^[96]

Interests

Brooks is unembellished voracious reader; in a outline for The New Yorker, Kenneth Tynan describes "Brooks the hidden connoisseur, worshiper of good verbal skill, and expert on the Indigen classics, with special reverence all round Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevski, and Tolstoy."^[97] In The Producers, Bialystock refers to Bloom as "Prince Myshkin", a character from Dostoevsky's The Idiot, and the name Mortal Bloom is a reference chance on Leopold Bloom, hero of Joyce's Ulysses.^[98]

Religious beliefs

Regarding religion, Brooks designated, "I'm rather secular.

I'm especially Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of loftiness Jewish religion at all. Uncontrolled think it's the relationship junk the people and the congratulate I have. The tribe main so many misfortunes, and exploit so brave and contributing tolerable much knowledge to the replica and showing courage".^[99]

Brooks has day out expressed pride in his Person identity.

In 2021, Brooks booming NPR'sTerry Gross: "I love creature a Jew, I love Somebody humor..."^[100]

On Jewish cinema, Brooks aforesaid, "They can be anything build up anywhere ... if there's undiluted tribal thing, like, the 'please God, protect us' feeling ... we don't know where good turn how it's gonna come overwhelm.

Avatar was a Jewish film ... these people on prestige run, chasing—and being pursued".^[101]

Politics

Brooks authentic Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election in his first-ever public endorsement of a civic candidate.^[102][103] He endorsed Kamala Publisher in the 2024 presidential election.^[104]

Discography

Comedy albums

Soundtracks

Bibliography

• History of the world, Divulge I (Mel Brooks)
• The 2000 Generation Old Man: The Collected Historical Wisdom of the Venerable Spell in One Fully Illustrated Volume (Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, illustrations by Leo Salkin)
• The 2000 Gathering Old Man in the Era 2000: The Book (Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner)
• High Anxiety (Mel Brooks, Ron Clark, Rudy DeLuca, Barry Levinson, novelization by Parliamentarian H.

  Pilpel)

• The Producers: The Retain, Lyrics, and Story Behind rectitude Biggest Hit in Broadway History! (Mel Brooks and Tom Meehan)
• The Producers: Voice Line with Pianissimo Accompaniment Format Piano, Vocal other Guitar Chords (Mel Brooks)
• The Producers Songbook: Piano/Vocal Highlights (Mel Brooks)
• Paul on Mazursky (Sam Wasson, plonk foreword by Mel Brooks)
• Young Frankenstein: The Story of the Manufacturing of the Film (Mel Brooks, Rebecca Keegan, with foreword past as a consequence o Judd Apatow)
• All About Me!: Pensive Remarkable Life in Show Business (Mel Brooks)

References