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+ "page_name": "Mel Brooks ~ Mel Brooks Biographical Timeline | American Masters | PBS",
+ "page_url": "https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/mel-brooks-timeline-2000-years-of-mel-brooks/2593/",
+ "page_snippet": "The life and times of Mel Brooks: The 2000 Year Old Man.The show runs for only 15 episodes and ends in 2009. 2009 \u2013 Brooks is one of five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors presented by President Barack Obama. 2013 \u2013 The American Film Institute presents Brooks with the AFI Life Achievement Award. ... Clip | Bernadette Peters on Mel Brooks: \u201c\u2026he\u2019ll get away with things because they were truly funny.\u201d Three went to Mel personally for Best Musical, Best Original Musical Score and Best Book of a Musical. 2005 \u2013 Brooks adapts The Producers musical to big-screen adding cast members Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman. 2007 \u2013 Brooks adapts Young Frankenstein into a broadway musical. Eventually becoming Tummler (master entertainer) at Grossinger\u2019s. 1949 \u2013 Sid Caesar hires Brooks to write jokes for Admiral Broadway Revue. ... 1950-to-1954 \u2013 Worked as a writer for Sid\u2019s Your Show of Shows. 1952 \u2013 Mel writes \u201cOf Fathers and Sons\u201d sketch for hopeful Broadway revue Curtain Going Up. 2009 \u2013 Brooks is one of five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors presented by President Barack Obama. 2013 \u2013 The American Film Institute presents Brooks with the AFI Life Achievement Award. ... Clip | Bernadette Peters on Mel Brooks: \u201c\u2026he\u2019ll get away with things because they were truly funny.\u201d \u00b7 Clip | Comic Legend Sid Caesar Discovers that Beethoven and Mozart are Dead!",
+ "page_result": "\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\tMel Brooks | Mel Brooks Biographical Timeline | American Masters | PBS\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n
1926 \u2013 Born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York to Maximilian and Kate Kaminsky on June 28.
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1940s
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1940 \u2013 Mel spends his first summer working/entertaining in the Catskills. \n 1946 \u2013 Mel works for theatrical producer Benjamin Kutcher. Later inspires Max Bialystock in The Producers. \n 1946-to-1949 \u2013 Works in various capacities (drummer, pianist, performer and comic) in Borscht Belt resorts and nightclubs. Eventually becoming Tummler (master entertainer) at Grossinger\u2019s. \n 1949 \u2013 Sid Caesar hires Brooks to write jokes for Admiral Broadway Revue.
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1950s
\n
Mel Brooks
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1950-to-1954 \u2013 Worked as a writer for Sid\u2019s Your Show of Shows. \n 1952 \u2013 Mel writes \u201cOf Fathers and Sons\u201d sketch for hopeful Broadway revue Curtain Going Up. Eventually ends up airing on New Faces of 1952. \n 1954-to-1957 \u2013 Works as a writer for Imogene Coca\u2019s revue and also Caesar\u2019s Hour. \n 1957 \u2013 Writes Shinbone Alley with Joe Darion.
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1960s
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1960 \u2013 Mel arrives in Los Angeles and begins scriptwriting duties on The Ladies\u2019 Man starring Jerry Lewis \n 1960 \u2013 Brooks and Carl Reiner begin performing 2000 Year Old Man on the Steve Allen Show. \n 1961 \u2013 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks sells over a million albums. \n 1962 \u2013 Writes All American. Despite receiving two Tony Award Nominations, the script and production were chaotic and the show had a poor Broadway run. At the same time Mel began working on a novel entitled Springtime for Hitler. \n 1962 \u2013 Records series of commercials for Ballantine Beer with Dick Cavett as the \u201c2,500 Year Old Man.\u201d \n 1963 \u2013 Conceives idea and narrates short film The Critic. Wins Academy Award for Animated Short Film. \n 1963 \u2013 Mel writes 30 min TV Comedy entitled \u201cInside Danny Baker\u201d directed by Arthur Hiller. \n 1965 \u2013 Creates Get Smart with Buck Henry. Brooks uninvolved with production after pilot but series ran until 1970 and won seven Emmy Awards, including outstanding comedy series in 1968 and 1969. \n 1967 \u2013 Wins first Emmy for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Variety for a Sid Caesar special. \n 1968 \u2013 Brooks writes and directs The Producers. Wins the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
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1970s
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1970 \u2013 Brooks writes and directs Twelve Chairs based on Russian novel by Ilf and Petrov. \n 1972 \u2013 Brooks is hired by Warner Bros. along with Richard Pryor, Andrew Bergman, Norman Steinberg and Al Uger as a script doctor for unproduced western comedy calle Tex-X. Eventually hired as director for what would become\u2026 \n 1974 \u2013 Blazing Saddles released. Earns $119.5 million worldwide, despite modest budget of $2.6 million. Nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Madeline Kahn), Best Film Editing and Best Original Song. Wins WGA Award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen. \n 1974 \u2013 Directs Young Frankenstein, co-written with Gene Wilder. Earns $86 million worldwide. Receives two Academy Awards nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound. \n 1975 \u2013 Brooks creates When Things Were Rotten. A Robin Hood parody TV series that lasts only 13 episodes. \n 1976 \u2013 Silent Movie released. Directed by Brooks, co-written by Brooks and Ron Clark. Earns $36 million at the box office. \n 1977 \u2013 High Anxiety released. Directed by Brooks, co-written by Brooks, Clark, Rudy De Luca and Barry Levinson. First movie produced by Brooks himself. Earns $31 million at the box office.
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1980s
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1980 \u2013 Brooks produces Fatso written and directed by wife Anne Bancroft. First picture produced by Brooksfilms. \n 1980 \u2013 Brooks produces The Elephant Man and hires David Lynch to direct. \n 1981 \u2013 Brooks writes, produces, directs and stars in History of the World Part I. Earns $31 million at the box office. \n 1982 \u2013 Brooks produces My Favorite Year and hires Richard Benjamin to direct. \n 1982 \u2013 Brooks produces Frances. \n1983 \u2013 Brooks stars alongside Anne Bancroft in To Be or Not to Be directed by Alan Johnson. Earns only $13 million at box office. \u201cTo Be Or Not To Be\u201d (The Hitler Rap) from the film\u2019s soundtrack was performed by Brooks and peaked at #12 on the UK Singles Chart in Feb \u201984 and #3 on the Australian Singles Chart \n1986\u2013 Brooks produces\u00a0The Fly. Hires David Cronenberg to direct. \n 1987 \u2013 Brooks writes and directs Spaceballs. \n 1989 \u2013 Brooks creates The Nutt House TV series with co-executive producer Alan Spencer. Series features Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman and is originally broadcast on NBC. Eleven episodes were recorded but the network aired only six before cancelling the show.
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1990s
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1991 \u2013 Brooks writes and directs Life Stinks. Only film that Brooks directed that is neither a parody or satire on a particular work or genre. Also the last time Brooks played the leading role. \n 1993 \u2013 Brooks writes and directs Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Gene Siskel put the film in his \u201cWorst of 1993\u201d list and said Brooks had \u201cclearly lost his way\u201d in comedy. \n 1995 \u2013 Brooks writes and directs Dracula: Dead and Loving It. \n 1997-to-1999 \u2013 Wins three consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as Uncle Phil in Mad About You. \n 1999 \u2013 Awarded Grammy for Best Spoken Comedy Album with Carl Reiner for The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000.
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2000s —
\n
2001 \u2013 Adapts The Producers into a Broadway Musical. Show breaks all records by taking home twelve Tony Awards. Three went to Mel personally for Best Musical, Best Original Musical Score and Best Book of a Musical. \n 2005 \u2013 Brooks adapts The Producers musical to big-screen adding cast members Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman. \n 2007 \u2013 Brooks adapts Young Frankenstein into a broadway musical. After test runs in Seattle, it opens on Broadway on Nov. 8 to mixed reviews. Closes in Jan. 2009 after 484 performances. \n 2007 \u2013 Brooks creates Spaceballs: The Animated Series. The show runs for only 15 episodes and ends in 2009. \n2009 \u2013 Brooks is one of five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors presented by President Barack Obama. \n2013 \u2013 The American Film Institute presents Brooks with the AFI Life Achievement Award.
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+ "page_last_modified": " Wed, 20 Mar 2024 06:22:18 GMT"
+ },
+ {
+ "page_name": "Mel Brooks - Wikipedia",
+ "page_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Brooks",
+ "page_snippet": "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 his memoir titled All About Me!.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 his memoir titled All About Me!. 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 his memoir titled All About Me!. Three of his films are included on the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of the past 100 years (1900\u20132000), all of which were ranked in the top 15: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13. In a Playboy interview, he explained that one day he stood at the edge of a diving board wearing a derby and a large alpaca overcoat with two suitcases full of rocks, and then announced: \"Business is terrible! I can't go on!\" before jumping, fully clothed into the pool. 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. 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, influenced by his mother's maiden name Brookman, after being confused with trumpeter Max Kaminsky. 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. The writing staff proved widely influential. Reiner, as creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, based Morey Amsterdam's character Buddy Sorell on Brooks. 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.",
+ "page_result": "\n\n\n\nMel Brooks - Wikipedia\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nJump to content\n
Brooks was born on a tenement kitchen table,[7] on June 28, 1926, in Brownsville, Brooklyn,[7] to Kate (n\u00e9e Brookman) and Max Kaminsky,[8] and grew up in Williamsburg. His father's family were German Jewsfrom Danzig (Gda\u0144sk, Poland); his mother was 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\u2014like a punch in the face.\"[13][14]\n
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, Brooks went to a Broadway show with his maternal[17] uncle Joe\u2014a taxi driver who drove the Broadway doormen back to Brooklyn for free and was given the tickets in gratitude\u2014and 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]\n
When Brooks was 14 he gained employment as a pool-sidetummler (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, and 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 Williamsburg in January 1944[23] and intended to follow his older brother and enroll in Brooklyn College to study psychology.[24][25]\n
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]
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Stationed in Saarbr\u00fccken 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, he 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's unit conducted its last reconnaissance missions in the Harz Mountains, Germany.[27]\n
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]\n
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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]
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Brooks 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. 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] \n
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]\n
\nBrooks famously collaborated with Carl Reiner on \"The 2000 Year Old Man\" albums\n
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]\n
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]\n
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.\n
With comedy writer Buck Henry, Brooks created a TV comedy show titled Get Smart, about a bumbling James Bond\u2013inspired 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.\n
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]\n
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]\n
With the moderate financial success of the film The Producers, Glazier financed Brooks's 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]\n
\nBrooks collaborated with Gene Wilder on several films including Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles (both 1974)\n
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]\n
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.\n
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.\n
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 mimeMarcel 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]\n
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\u2014as 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.\n
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 Bu\u00f1uel's perverse dirty jokes.\"[20]\n
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.)\n
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.\n
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)[71] 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.[72]\n
Brooks is one of the few people who have received an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony, and a Grammy.[74] 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.\n
Brooks met Florence Baum,[85] a dancer in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, on Broadway.[86][87] They were married from 1953 until their divorce in 1962. They had three children: Stefanie, Nicholas, and Edward.[88] After earning a salary of $5,000 a week on Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour,[89] 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[90] was an autobiographical script based on his marriage.[43][17] By 1966, Brooks was \"living in a fairly old but comfortable New York town house\".[56]\n
Brooks married actress Anne Bancroft in 1964, and they remained together for 41 years until her death in 2005.[91] 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.[91][92] Their son, Max Brooks, was born in 1972.[91][92] 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.\"[93] 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\".[94] 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.[95]\n
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.\"[96] 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.[97]\n
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\".[98] 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\u2014and being pursued\".[99]\n
^\"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.\n
^Brooks, Mel; Kimmel, Jimmy (May 3, 2013). Jimmy Kimmel Live. Season 10. Episode 375. Los Angeles: Jackhole Productions; distributed by ABC and Chum Television.\n
\"Fantasy Mansion Becomes an Inn\". The New York Times. February 13, 1977. ...David Weisgal, the 44\u2010year\u2010old son of a wealthy philanthropist\u2014a $235,000 fantasy that he could afford. Mr. Weisgal purchased the 33\u2010room mansion, situated on 21 acres of Berkshire pine forest and with Florence Brooks\u2010Dunay, his fianc\u00e9e...
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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
Adler, Bill, and Jeffrey Feinman. Mel Brooks: The Irreverent Funnyman. Chicago: Playboy Press, 1976. OCLC3121552.
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Brooks, Mel; Keegan, Rebecca (October 18, 2016). Young Frankenstein: A Mel Brooks Book: The Story of the Making of the Film. Running Press. ISBN978-0-316-31546-3.
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Brooks, Mel. All About Me: My Remarkable Life in Show Business. New York: Ballantine, 2021.
Parish, James Robert (2007). It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ISBN978-0471752677. OCLC69331761.
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Symons, Alex. Mel Brooks in the Cultural Industries: Survival and Prolonged Adaptation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. ISBN978-0-7486-4958-7. OCLC806201078.
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Yacowar, Maurice. Method in Madness: The Comic Art of Mel Brooks. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981. ISBN978-0-312-53142-3. OCLC7556005.
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+ "page_snippet": "Mel Brooks - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up) ... Michael Barson is the author of more than a dozen books that examine various facets of American popular culture in the 20th century, about which he has been interviewed by National Public Radio on several...Mel Brooks - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up) ... Michael Barson is the author of more than a dozen books that examine various facets of American popular culture in the 20th century, about which he has been interviewed by National Public Radio on several... He won a Grammy Award for the spoken comedy album The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 (1998). In addition, he lent his voice to various TV shows and films. The latter included the animated Hotel Transylvania series (2015, 2018). In 2019 he voiced the character of Melephant Brooks in the animated feature Toy Story 4. Mel Brooks - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up) ... While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. ... Our editors will review what you\u2019ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. ... Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Mel Brooks - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up) June 28, 1926, Brooklyn, New York, U.S. (age 97) (Show more) ... Feb. 29, 2024, 2:11 AM ET (PBS) Comedian Richard Lewis, famed for his neuroses and \u2018Curb Your Enthusiasm\u2019 appearances, dies at 76 \u00b7 Mel Brooks (born June 28, 1926, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.) American film and television director, producer, writer, and actor whose motion pictures elevated outrageousness and vulgarity to high comic art.",
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\n\t\t\tWhile every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.\n\t\t\tPlease refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.\n\t\t
\n\t\t\tWhile every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.\n\t\t\tPlease refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.\n\t\t
Mel Brooks (born June 28, 1926, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.) American film and television director, producer, writer, and actor whose motion pictures elevated outrageousness and vulgarity to high comic art.
Brooks was an accomplished mimic, pianist, and drummer by the time he graduated from high school and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1944. As part of his assignment to the Army Specialized Training Program, he received instruction at the Virginia Military Institute. After serving as a combat engineer in Europe during World War II, he became a professional entertainer, working as a stand-up comic, an emcee, and a social director at resorts in the Catskill Mountains (the so-called Borscht Belt). In 1949 he joined the writing staff for The Admiral Broadway Revue, a weekly television series starring Sid Caesar. Brooks remained with Caesar until 1958, contributing material to the comedian\u2019s subsequent TV efforts, most memorably to the landmark comedy series Your Show of Shows (1950\u201354) as part of a writing staff that included Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. In 1967 he won an Emmy Award for being a cowriter of the variety show The Sid Cesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris Special. Additionally, Brooks collaborated on the librettos for the musicals Shinbone Alley (1957) and All American (1962).
As a performer, Brooks came to prominence in 1960 when he teamed with Reiner (who acted as an interviewer) to bring to life \u201cThe 2,000 Year Old Man,\u201d a mostly improvised bit that the duo performed in television appearances and on best-selling comedy record albums. Brooks entered the motion picture industry as the writer and narrator of the Academy Award-winning animated short The Critic (1963), a devastating lampoon of avant-garde films. He and Buck Henry then created Get Smart (1965\u201370), a television situation comedy spoofing the espionage genre popularized by the James Bond films.
(From left to right) Zero Mostel, Lee Meredith, and Gene Wilder in The Producers (1968).
All this was but a prelude to his auspicious feature-film directorial debut, The Producers (1968), which was not a major success at the box office, even though Brooks\u2019s screenplay won an Academy Award. In The Producers, Zero Mostel starred as a financially troubled stage producer who teams with his accountant (played by Gene Wilder) to purposefully oversell shares in their upcoming production to investors. With the pro-NazimusicalSpringtime for Hitler, they hope to create a production so obviously bad and offensive that it will quickly bomb and close, allowing them to abscond with the investors\u2019 money. To their horror, they end up with a hit. Despite its initial poor showing at the box office and a mixed response from critics, the film had some ardent champions, including actor Peter Sellers, and Brooks won an Academy Award for his screenplay.
Moreover, with the passage of time, The Producers became a cult favourite and was eventually widely lauded as one of the greatest comedies ever made. Its celebrated centrepiece, an absurdly upbeat Busby Berkeley-like musical number (\u201cSpringtime for Hitler\u201d), and Dick Shawn\u2019s bohemian portrayal of the play-within-the-movie\u2019s protagonist, Adolf Hitler, both typified Brooks\u2019s comedic approach as they shockingly defied audience expectations. Brooks, whose artistic sensibility had largely been shaped by his sense of being an outsider as a Jew in mainstream American society, boldly put the ultimate villain of Jewish history, Hitler, at the heart of his comedy and transformed him into a clown. In so doing, he embodied the approach to comedy (and, more specifically, to parody) that film historian Gerald Mast called the \u201canomalous surprise\u201d\u2014the interjection of a character, a situation, or an event that makes no sense given the context. Brooks would return to this approach again and again throughout his career as a filmmaker.
Brooks followed The Producers with another broad comedy, The Twelve Chairs (1970), that was set in newly communist Russia and concerned a trove of jewels hidden inside a dining-chair leg. A priest, an aristocrat, and a confidence man vie to be the first to discover them, to great comic effect, though the film was little seen.
Films of the 1970s
It was with his third directorial effort, Blazing Saddles (1974), that Brooks cemented his reputation as Hollywood\u2019s foremost purveyor of hilarious tastelessness. He collaborated with writer-director Andrew Bergman and stand-up comedian-actor Richard Pryor, among others, on the script for this uninhibited burlesque of the western genre, the comic targets of which ranged from racial prejudice to flatulence. Its stellar cast included Wilder, Cleavon Little, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, and Madeline Kahn, who earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress for her parody of Marlene Dietrich\u2019s saloon singer in the classic western Destry Rides Again (1939). The film reaped a fortune at the box office and earned Brooks another Academy Award nomination, this one for best original song (\u201cI\u2019m Tired\u201d).
(From left) Mel Brooks, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Gene Wilder, and Teri Garr in a promotional photograph for Young Frankenstein (1974), directed by Brooks.
Equally popular was his next film, a broad but affectionate parody of the Universal horror films of the 1930s titled Young Frankenstein (1974), which earned Brooks and the film\u2019s star and cowriter, Wilder, an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay. Young Frankenstein was more carefully structured than Blazing Saddles, and its elegant black-and-white cinematography replicated the look of the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein. Brooks reined in his more anarchic impulses (though his trademark lewd jokes are abundant), and many critics found the result more sophisticated than Blazing Saddles, which had been released less than a year previously.
Less successful was Silent Movie (1976), in which Brooks himself starred as a washed-up director who persuades the head of a motion-picture studio (played by Caesar) to make a silent picture. Without dialogue and loaded with sight gags, Silent Movie was less a spoof than an affectionate homage to the Mack Sennett-directed comedies of the silent era. High Anxiety (1977) was a more centred parody, with the films of Alfred Hitchcock as its target. Brooks again starred, this time as a psychiatrist whose life is put in jeopardy when he goes to work at the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous (the staff of which includes a sinister pair played by Cloris Leachman and Korman).
Films of the 1980s and 1990s
Despite the presence of Korman, Leachman, and several other fine actors who were members of the loose ensemble that appeared in Brooks\u2019s films, including Kahn and Caesar, History of the World\u2014Part I (1981) was poorly received by most critics and at the box office. Similarly disappointing were Spaceballs (1987), a takeoff on the Star Wars series, and Life Stinks (1991). Brooks then directed Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), a send-up of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), in which Kevin Costner had starred (and was generally maligned) as the legendary outlaw hero. Brooks\u2019s final motion picture as a director was the unremarkable Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995).
Work as producer and actor
As founder of Brooksfilms, an independent moviemaking concern, Brooks engaged in a parallel career as an executive producer of serious \u201cquality\u201d films, including The Elephant Man (1980), Frances (1982, uncredited), and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), the last of which starred his second wife, Anne Bancroft, whom he married in 1964. Brooks costarred with Bancroft in To Be or Not to Be (1983), a remake of the Ernst Lubitsch-directed film of the same name. His work as an actor included regular appearances on the popular TV sitcom Mad About You in the late 1990s, for which he won three Emmys, and a guest stint on the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm. He won a Grammy Award for the spoken comedy album The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 (1998). In addition, he lent his voice to various TV shows and films. The latter included the animated Hotel Transylvania series (2015, 2018). In 2019 he voiced the character of Melephant Brooks in the animated feature Toy Story 4.
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Brooks made a spectacular comeback in 2001 as producer, composer, and librettist of the hugely popular Broadway stage musical based on The Producers. Brooks received several Tony Awards for the production, and with these wins he became one of the few entertainers to have earned an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony). He followed this in 2007 with a Broadway musical based on Young Frankenstein. Brooks was named a Kennedy Center honoree in 2009 for his contributions to American comedy. His memoir, All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business, was published in 2021.
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+ "page_snippet": "In addition to the MLA, Chicago, ... your bibliography or works cited list. ... Nationality: American. Born: Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, 28 June 1926....Mel Brooks's central concern (with High Anxiety and To Be or Not to Be as possible exceptions) is the pragmatic, absurd union of two males, starting with the more experienced member trying to take advantage of the other, and ending in a strong friendship and paternal relationship. Mel Brooks has said that the funniest man in the world is Harry Ritz of The Ritz Brothers, the successful sibling comic act of the 1930s and 1940s. Harry and his brothers had a Catskill Mountain style of Jewish humor, the basis of which is snappy patter, quick and graceful moves, funny faces, and meticulous comic timing. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style\u2019s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. ... Nationality: American. Born: Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, 28 June 1926. It is episodic and all too often flat, with its satire much too broad and all too rarely funny. \u2014Stuart M. Kaminsky, updated by Audrey E. Kupferberg \u00b7 International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers Kaminsky, Stuart M. ... Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. ... Kaminsky, Stuart M. \"Brooks, Mel .\"",
+ "page_result": "Mel Brooks | Encyclopedia.com Skip to main content
Mel Brooks (born 1926) transformed traditional burlesque and Jewish humor into a hit-and-miss career writing and directing film parodies of traditional Hollywood genres. His biggest success came late in his career when he adapted his first film, The Producers, into a smash Broadway musical.
From Catskills to Television
Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, on June 28, 1926. He was a short and often sickly child, and his peers often ridiculed him. Reacting to this treatment, he learned how to strike back with stinging forms of abusive and satirical humor.
After serving in the U.S. Army in World War II in Europe as a combat engineer, Brooks took his talent for insults and pratfalls to the Catskills resorts, then famous for nurturing Jewish comics. For several years he performed the role of a \"toomler,\" a kind of court jester who would stage impromptu monologues or pretend to insult the resort staff and the customers. The roots of Brooks's comedy were in vaudeville and burlesque, two dying forms of entertainment that emphasized physical humor, insults, sight gags, and outrageous lampooning. Among his many gags was leaping into the swimming pool fully clothed with a suit and tie.
Brooks's style of humor was perfectly suited to early television. In 1950, desperate to get a job writing gags and skits for pioneering TV comedian Sid Caesar, Brooks auditioned by falling to his knees before Caesar and singing a comic song about himself. Caesar hired the young comic to concoct jokes for his hit series Your Show of Shows. Among the writers Brooks worked with in Caesar's stable were Woody Allen, playwright Neil Simon, and Carl Reiner. It was during these years that Brooks honed his gift for sharp, sometimes mean satire and rapid-fire wordplay. By the time Brooks parted ways with Caesar in the mid-1950s, he was earning $2,500 per show, a substantial amount in those days.
Brooks remained in television, though without regular income, as a gag writer and script doctor. He also worked on dialogue and scripts for radio and theater and occasionally appeared as a comic on television variety shows, such as 1962's Timex All-Star Comedy Show. One of his frequent skit partners was Reiner, with whom he developed a sketch called \"The 2,000-Year-Old Man,\" in which Brooks played a smart-alecky Jewish curmudgeon who has seen it all and has comments on everything in history. With variations and elaboration, this routine developed into a staple on television shows and the two comics eventually had a hit record album on their hands. \"The 2,000-Year-Old Man\" was Brooks's first big success.
In 1964 Brooks married actress Anne Bancroft, with whom he would have four children. That same year he did the voice-over on a cartoon film titled The Critic, playing the equivalent of the 2000-Year-Old Man commenting on modern art. The film won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject. In 1965 Brooks and writer Buck Henry developed the hit television show Get Smart, a comic spoof of the spy genre. Starring Don Adams as the bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart, Get Smart became one of the most popular shows of the late 1960s. After television audiences began to turn away from comedy and variety shows in favor of drama in the next decade, and as his radio work dried up, Brooks would see his income plummet.
Springtime for Hitler
Buoyed by the success of Get Smart, Brooks wrote and directed the low-budget movie The Producers, which was released in 1968. Starring Zero Mostel and including a role for Brooks, The Producers is a tall tale about a down-and-out theatrical producer named Max Bialystock (Mostel) who is persuaded by corrupt accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) to deliberately stage a money-losing play and abscond with the excess cash finagled from their naive, elderly investors. The two hire a neo-Nazi director and a drug-crazed hippie star (Dick Shawn) to stage a musical comedy called Springtime for Hitler, a light-hearted romp featuring the German Chancellor who waged war on Europe and exterminated six million Jews. When the show turns out to be a success, Bloom and Bialystock find themselves in trouble.
The Producers was an outrageous and risky venture that depended on audiences laughing at the idea of a Hitlerian musical little more than two decades after the end of the war, during a time when many older adults with firsthand experience of World War II and the Holocaust were still living. In fact, the film is the epitome of Brooks's satirical attitude, and his belief that show business knows no bounds. Despite its low budget, The Producers was hailed as something of a minor comic masterpiece. Unfortunately, it flopped at the box office and was unable to buoy Brooks's sinking income.
After getting an acting role in the black comedy Putney Swope in 1969, Brooks wrote and directed The Twelve Chairs, an adaptation of a 1928 Russian novel about a former aristocrat who has hidden his fortune in a dozen chairs. Less a satire than a straight comedy and complete with chase scenes and comic suspense\u2014and another role for Brooks\u2014 The Twelve Chairs was also a flop, both commercially and critically.
In 1974, after several dry years, Brooks signed on with Warner Brothers to do a film based on a satirical Western story called \"Tex X.\" \"Richard Zanuck and David Brown had it and didn't know what to do with it,\" Brooks told an interviewer for Entertainment Weekly years later. \"They asked me to direct. I said, I don't do things I don't write. So write it, they said. I didn't really want to. But I was broke. My wife, Anne Bancroft, was pregnant. And frankly, 'Tex X' was a really good idea.\" Tasteless, politically incorrect\u2014in the film Brooks plays an Indian chief\u2014and retitled Blazing Saddles, the film became Brooks's first big hit.
With the blockbuster success of Blazing Saddles, Brooks was off and running. Brooks was nominated for a 1974 Oscar award for Best Song for his penning of the title tune from Blazing Saddles. By the end of the same year Brooks had released a second hit, Young Frankenstein, starring Wilder. Following Brooks's formula, Young Frankenstein, shot in black and white, lampoons the granddaddy of all monster/horror movies by imagining Wilder as the great scientist's grandson who creates his own monster. Full of scatological humor, plot twists, silliness, and loving bows to monster movies of the past, Young Frankenstein managed to appeal both to critics and audiences, and it was nominated for Academy Awards for best adapted screenplay and for best sound.
Brooks cast himself in the lead role of his next film, Silent Movie, as a director who wants to return to the silent-movie era. His old boss, Sid Caesar, played the producer who approves the project. Among the stars appearing in the film was Bancroft. A very chancy project, the entire movie had no dialogue other than a single word\u2014spoken, ironically, by famous mime Marcel Marceau. Full of sight gags yet nostalgic and sweeter than most Brooks films, Silent Movie was not a big box-office hit.
In 1977 Brooks took a detour from sarcasm by directing a little-known, little-seen, schmaltzy family film titled Poco Little Dog Lost. He also released his next big project, High Anxiety, a parody of Alfred Hitchcock thrillers. Vulgar and often repetitive, High Anxiety again starred Brooks in the lead role opposite Cloris Leachman. Brooks's efforts resulted in success when he was nominated for Golden Globe awards for best musical or comedy as well as for best actor in a musical or comedy.
In 1980 Brooks tried something new. Purchasing the rights to The Elephant Man, a screenplay about the abuse suffered by a grotesquely deformed man in Victorian England, he hired virtual unknown David Lynch to direct the drama. Although Brooks produced the film he had his name removed from all publicity so audiences not confuse the film as a satirical comedy. With little fanfare, Brooks went on to produce several other serious films in the 1980s and the early 1990s, including Frances and 84 Charing Cross Road.
Winter for Mel
Brooks's style of humor had become less popular by the 1980s, and he began using some of his favorite gags repeatedly. No joke was too tawdry and no target too sacrosanct. His 1981 film The History of the World, Part I was such a box-office disaster that Part II was never attempted. Beginning with this film, during the decade his scattershot humor ranged widely to create a series of comic vignettes ranging from the Stone Age to the French Revolution and including parodies of Hollywood Biblical epics and more recent films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars. He extended the parody of George Lucas's blockbuster sci-fi adventure in the 1987 release Spaceballs. In between, he filmed a remake of Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be, a story about a Polish theater troupe during the early years of the Nazi occupation. Brooks and Bancroft star as the leading duo in the troupe.
Also in the 1980s, Brooks produced and contributed his vocal talent to an animated version of The 2000-Year-Old Man and acted in and produced several more films. In 1990 he did the voice-over of the character Mr. Toilet Man in Look Who's Talking, Too. Later in the decade he released three more feature films, playing his customary roles as writer-director-producer-actor in Life Stinks, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It, the last film in 1995. He also produced 1992's The Vagrant and acted in The Little Rascals, The Silence of the Hams (a little-seen satire), Screw Loose, and two episodes of the television hit sitcom Mad about You.
Well into his 70s by 2000, Brooks appeared to be at the conclusion of a successful if spotty career as a leading practitioner of crude and sometimes inspired satire. He was considered almost a relic of a bygone era, one of the last American comics to take the traditions of burlesque and Catskills humor into the 1960s and beyond by blending his gift for satire and insult with a knack for parodying the tradition of Hollywood. Nobody would have predicted that he was about to achieve a new pinnacle of success.
The Producers on Broadway
In the years after it first appeared, Brooks's The Producers achieved increasing popularity and appreciation. Many critics began to refer to it as a comedy classic, and it became a cult favorite. At the urging of Dream Works studio executive David Geffen and Bancroft, Brooks penned a musical\nversion of The Producers designed for the stage. Opening on April 19, 2001, and starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, the show became a mega-hit on Broadway. In fact, within a year, it had broken all Broadway box-office records, and it received a record 12 Tony awards, one for every nomination, and two of them going to Brooks as author of the show's music and lyrics. In his acceptance speeches, as quoted in Back Stage, Brooks thanked his wife \"for sticking with me through thin\" and added: \"I'd like to thank Hitler for being such a funny guy onstage.\"
In the opinion of some critics, The Producers reflects an earlier era when shows were not as afraid of lampooning sensitive subjects. A contributor to Time called it \"one of the best translations of a beloved movie to the stage ever\u2026 . The show delivers such a wealth of vaudeville exuberance that the few quibbles (a rather lumpy second act) are likely to fade away.\" Explaining the appeal of the show in the same article, Brooks said: \"You can't compete with a despot on a soapbox. The best thing is to make him ludicrous.\"
Despite its popularity, the musical also had its detractors, some of whom took issue with the way The Producers mocks gays, Jews, and Germans. Brooks reacted by defending his approach. \"There are always holier-than-thou guys,\" he told Nancy Shute of U.S. News & World Report. \"There isn't a subject that's taboo.\"
Late in 2002 a touring version of the play began making the rounds of U.S. theaters, with plans for a London production in 2004. Buoyed by the astonishing success of his stage remake, Brooks was laying plans for revamping Young Frankenstein as a musical. Meanwhile, 2002 found him busy on his memoir. \"I have always been a huge admirer of my own work,\" Brooks told John F. Baker of Publishers Weekly, adding: \"I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know. And I just can't wait to read my book.\"
Books
Sarris, Andrew, St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, Visible Ink Press, 1998.
Thomson, David, A Biographical Dictionary of Film, Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
Periodicals
Back Stage, June 8, 2001.
Daily Variety, June 19, 2002; August 15, 2002.
Entertainment Weekly, March 1, 2000; May 25, 2001; December 6, 2002.
People, December 31, 2001
Publishers Weekly, January 20, 2003.
Time, April 16, 2001.
U.S. News & World Report, August 20, 2001.
Variety, September 10, 2001.
Online
\"Mel Brooks,\" All Movie Guide,http://www.allmovie.com (February 7, 2003). \u25a1
Encyclopedia of World Biography
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Brooks, Mel
gale
views updated Jun 11 2018
BROOKS, Mel
Nationality: American. Born: Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, 28 June 1926. Education: Attended Virginia Military Institute, 1944. Family: Married 1) Florence Baum (divorced), two sons, one daughter; 2) actress Anne Bancroft, one son. Military Service: Combat engineer, U.S. Army, 1944\u201346. Career: Jazz drummer, stand-up comedian, and social director at Grossinger's resort; writer for Sid Caesar's \"Your Show of Shows,\" 1954\u201357; conceived, wrote, and narrated cartoon short The Critic, 1963; co-creator (with Buck Henry) of Get Smart TV show, 1965; directed first feature, The Producers, 1968; founder, Brooksfilms, 1981. Awards: Academy Award for Best Short Subject, for The Critic, 1964; Academy Award for Best Story and Screenplay, and Writers Guild Award for Best Written Screenplay, for The Producers, 1968; Academy Award nomination, Best Song, for Blazing Saddles, 1974; Academy Award nomination, Best Screenplay, for Young Frankenstein, 1975; American Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, 1987. Address: Brooksfilms, Ltd., Culver Studios, 9336 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, CA 90212, U.S.A.
Films as Director:
1963
The Critic (cartoon) (+ sc, narration)
1968
The Producers (+ sc, voice)
1970
The Twelve Chairs (+ co-sc, role)
1974
Blazing Saddles (+ co-sc, mus, role); Young Frankenstein (+ co-sc)
1976
Silent Movie (+ co-sc, role)
1977
High Anxiety (+ pr, co-sc, mus, role)
1981
The History of the World, Part I (+ pr, co-sc, mus, role)
The 2,000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000, The Book: Including Howto Not Die and Other Good Tips, with Carl Reiner, HarperPerennial Library, 1998.
By BROOKS: articles\u2014
\"Confessions of an Auteur,\" in Action (Los Angeles), November/December 1971.
Interview with James Atlas, in Film Comment (New York), March/April 1975.
\"Fond Salutes and Naked Hate,\" interview with Gordon Gow, in Films and Filming (London), July 1975.
Interview with A. Remond, in Ecran (Paris), November 1976.
\"Comedy Directors: Interview with Mel Brooks,\" with R. Rivlin, in Millimeter (New York), October and December 1977.
Interview with Alan Yentob, in Listener (London), 8 October 1981.
Interview in Time Out (London), 16 February 1984.
Interview in Screen International, 3 March 1984.
Interview in Hollywood Reporter, 27 October 1986.
\"The Playboy Interview,\" interview with L. Stegel in Playboy (Chicago), January 1989.
\"Mel Brooks: Of Woody, the Great Caesar, Flop Sweat and Cigar Smoke,\" People Weekly (New York), Summer 1989 (special issue).
On BROOKS: books\u2014
Adler, Bill, and Jeffrey Fineman, Mel Brooks: The IrreverentFunnyman, Chicago, 1976.
Bendazzi, G., Mel Brooks: l'ultima follia di Hollywood, Milan, 1977.
Holtzman, William, Seesaw: A Dual Biography of Anne Bancroft andMel Brooks, New York, 1979.
Allen, Steve, Funny People, New York, 1981.
Yacowar, Maurice, Method in Madness: The Comic Art of MelBrooks, New York, 1981.
Smurthwaite, Nick, and Paul Gelder, Mel Brooks and the SpoofMovie, London, 1982.
Squire, Jason, E., The Movie Business Book, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1983.
On BROOKS: articles\u2014
\"Two Thousand Year Old Man,\" in Newsweek (New York), 4 October 1965.
Diehl, D., \"Mel Brooks,\" in Action (Los Angeles), January/February 1975.
Lees, G., \"The Mel Brooks Memos,\" in American Film (Washington, D.C.), October 1977.
Carcassonne, P., \"Dossier: Hollywood 79: Mel Brooks,\" in Cin\u00e9matographe (Paris), March 1979.
Karoubi, N., \"Mel Brooks Follies,\" in Cin\u00e9ma (Paris), February 1982.
\"Mel Brooks,\" in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 26: American Screenwriters, Detroit, 1984.
Erens, Patricia, \"You Could Die Laughing: Jewish Humor and Film,\" in East-West Film Journal (Honolulu), no. 1, 1987.
Carter, E.G., \"The Cosmos according to Mel Brooks,\" in Vogue (New York), June 1987.
Dougherty, M., \"May the Farce Be with Him: Spaceballs Rockets Mel Brooks Back into the Lunatic Orbit,\" in People Weekly (New York), 20 July 1987.
Frank, A., \"Mel's Crazy Movie World,\" in Photoplay Movies &Video (London), January 1988.
Goldstein, T., \"A History of Mel Brooks: Part I,\" in Video (New York), March 1988.
Stauth, C., \"Mel and Me,\" in American Film (Los Angeles), April 1990.
Radio Times, 4 April 1992.
Segnocinema (Vicenza), March-April 1994.
Greene, R., \"Funny You Should Ask,\" in Boxoffice (Chicago), December 1995.
* * *
Mel Brooks's central concern (with High Anxiety and To Be or Not to Be as possible exceptions) is the pragmatic, absurd union of two males, starting with the more experienced member trying to take advantage of the other, and ending in a strong friendship and paternal relationship. The dominant member of the duo, confident but illfated, is Zero Mostel in The Producers, Frank Langella in The Twelve Chairs, and Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. The second member of the duo, usually physically weak and openly neurotic, represents the victim who wins, who learns from his experience and finds friendship to sustain him. These \"Jewish weakling\" characters include Wilder in The Producers, Ron Moody, and Cleavon Little. Though this character, as in the case of Little, need not literally be Jewish, he displays the stereotypical characteristics.
Women in Brooks's films are grotesque figures, sex objects ridiculed and rejected. They are either very old or sexually gross and simple. The love of a friend is obviously worth more than such an object. The secondary male characters, befitting the intentional infantilism of the films, are men-babies given to crying easily. They are set up as examples of what the weak protagonist might become without the paternal care of his reluctant friend. In particular, Brooks sees people who hide behind costumes\u2014cowboy suits, Nazi uniforms, clerical garb, homosexual affectations\u2014as silly children to be made fun of.
The plots of Brooks's films deal with the experienced and inexperienced men searching for a way to triumph in society. They seek a generic solution or are pushed into one. Yet there is no escape into generic fantasy in the Brooks films, since the films take place totally within the fantasy. There is no regard, as in Woody Allen's films, for the pathetic nature of the protagonist in reality. In fact, the Brooks films reverse the Allen films' endings as the protagonists move into a comic fantasy of friendship. (A further contrast with Allen is in the nature of the jokes and gags. Allen's humor is basically adult embarrassment; Brooks's is infantile taboo-breaking.)
In The Producers the partners try to manipulate show business and wind up in jail, planning another scheme because they enjoy it. In The Twelve Chairs they try to cheat the government; at the end Langella and Moody continue working together though they no longer have the quest for the chairs in common. In Blazing Saddles Little and Wilder try to take a town; it ends with the actors supposedly playing themselves, getting into a studio car and going off together as pals into the sunset. In these films it is two men alone against a corrupt and childish society. Though their schemes fall apart\u2014or are literally exploded as in The Producers and The Twelve Chairs\u2014they still have each other.
Young Frankenstein departs from the pattern with each of the partners, monster and doctor, sexually committed to women. While the basic pattern of male buddies continued when Brooks began to act in his own films, he also winds up with the woman when he is the hero star (High Anxiety, Silent Movie, The History of the World, To Be or Not to Be). It is interesting that Brooks always tries to distance himself from the homosexual implications of his central theme by including scenes in which overtly homosexual characters are ridiculed. It is particularly striking that these characters are, in The Producers, Blazing Saddles, and The Twelve Chairs, stage or film directors.
Brooks's late-career films have been collectively disappointing. Upon its release, Spaceballs already was embarrassingly dated. It is meant to be a spoof of Star Wars, yet it came to movie screens a decade after the sci-fi epic. Comic timing used to be Brooks's strong point, yet the story has no momentum and the film's funniest line\u2014\"May the Schwartz be with you\"\u2014is repeated so often that the joke quickly becomes stale.
The bad-taste scenes in Brooks's earlier films, most memorably Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, used to be considered provocative. Now that young filmmakers and television writers have stretched comedy to the extreme limits, Brooks has lost his ability to astound and appall the audience. His most recent feature, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, a parody of Errol Flynn-style swashbuckling adventures, is sorely lacking in laughs. The sole exception: Dom DeLuise's hilarious (but all too brief) Godfather spoof.
Life Stinks! is the most serious of all of Brooks's films. Rather than being a string of quick gags, it offers a slower-paced, more conventional narrative. As with To Be or Not to Be (which is set in Poland at the beginning of World War II), he treats a sobering theme in a comic manner as he comments on the plight of the homeless. But while To Be or Not to Be is as deeply moving as it is funny, Life Stinks! stinks. It is episodic and all too often flat, with its satire much too broad and all too rarely funny.
\u2014Stuart M. Kaminsky, updated by\nAudrey E. Kupferberg
International Dictionary of Films and FilmmakersKaminsky, Stuart M.
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Brooks, Mel
gale
views updated May 14 2018
BROOKS, Mel
Nationality: American. Born: Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, 28 June 1926. Education: Attended Virginia Military Institute, 1944, and Brooklyn College. Family: Married 1) Florence Baum (divorced), one son, two daughters; 2) the actress Anne Bancroft, one son. Career: 1944\u201346\u2014combat engineer, U.S. Army; late 1940s\u2014jazz drummer, stand-up comedian, and social director, Grossinger's resorts; 1950\u201358\u2014writer and occasional performer for Sid Caesar's TV show; 1963\u2014conceived, wrote, and narrated cartoon short The Critic; 1965\u2014co-creator (with Buck Henry) of Get Smart TV show (ran 1965\u201369); 1968\u2014directed first feature, The Producers; 1975\u2014creator and producer of TV series When Things Were Rotten; 1980\u2014founder, Brooksfilms. Awards: Academy Award for Best Short Subject, for The Critic, 1963; Academy Award for Best Story and Screenplay, and Writers Guild Award for Best Written Screenplay,\nfor The Producers, 1969; American Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, 1987. Address: 2301 La Mesa, Santa Monica, CA 90405, U.S.A.
Films as Actor:
1969
Putney Swope (Downey) (as Mr. Forget It)
1979
The Muppet Movie (Frawley) (as Professor Max Krassman)
1983
To Be or Not to Be (Alan Johnson) (as Frederick Bronski, + pr, co-sc)
1990
Look Who's Talking, Too! (Heckerling) (as voice of Mr. Toilet Man)
1994
Il silenzio dei prosciutti (The Silence of the Hams) (Greggio); The Little Rascals (Spheeris) (as Mr. Welling)
1997
I Am Your Child (Rob Reiner\u2014for TV) (as himself)
The 2000 Year Old Man, with Carl Reiner, New York, 1981.
The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000, New York, 1998.
By BROOKS: articles\u2014
\"Confessions of an Auteur,\" in Action (Los Angeles), November/December 1971.
Interview with James Atlas, in Film Comment (New York), March/April 1975.
\"Fond Salutes and Naked Hate,\" interview with Gordon Gow, in Films and Filming (London), July 1975.
Interview with A. Remond, in Ecran (Paris), November 1976.
\"Comedy Directors: Interview with Mel Brooks,\" interview with R. Rivlin, in Millimeter (New York), October and December 1977.
Interview with Alan Yentob, in Listener (London), 8 October 1981.
Interview in Time Out (London), 16 February 1984.
Interview in Screen International, 3 March 1984.
Interview in Hollywood Reporter, 27 October 1986.
Interview with L. Stegel, in Playboy (Chicago), January 1989.
\"Mel Brooks: Of Woody, the Great Caesar, Flop Sweat and Cigar Smoke,\" in People Weekly (New York), Summer 1989 (special issue).
On BROOKS: books\u2014
Adler, Bill, and Jeffrey Fineman, Mel Brooks: The Irreverent Funnyman, Chicago, 1976.
Bendazzi, G., Mel Brooks: l'ultima follia di Hollywood, Milan, 1977.
Holtzman, William, Seesaw: A Dual Biography of Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks, New York, 1979.
Allen, Steve, Funny People, New York, 1981.
Yacowar, Maurice, Method in Madness: The Comic Art of Mel Brooks, New York, 1981.
Smurthwaite, Nick, and Paul Gelder, Mel Brooks and the Spoof Movie, London, 1982.
Squire, Jason E., The Movie Business Book, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1983.
On BROOKS: articles\u2014
\"Two Thousand Year Old Man,\" in Newsweek (New York), 4 October 1965.
Current Biography 1974, New York, 1974.
Diehl, D., \"Mel Brooks,\" in Action (Los Angeles), January/February 1975.
Lees, G., \"The Mel Brooks Memos,\" in American Film (Washington, D.C.), October 1977.
Carcassonne, P., \"Dossier: Hollywood 79: Mel Brooks,\" in Cin\u00e9matographe (Paris), March 1979.
Karoubi, N., \"Mel Brooks Follies,\" in Cin\u00e9ma (Paris), February 1982.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 26: American Screenwriters, Detroit, 1984.
Erens, Patricia, \"You Could Die Laughing: Jewish Humor and Film,\" in East-West Film Journal (Honolulu), no.1, 1987.
Frank, A., \"Mel's Crazy Movie World,\" in Photoplay Movies & Video (London), January 1988.
Goldstein, T., \"A History of Mel Brooks: Part I,\" in Video (New York), March 1988.
Stauth, C., \"Mel and Me,\" in American Film (Los Angeles), April 1990.
Radio Times (London), 4 April 1992.
* * *
Mel Brooks has said that the funniest man in the world is Harry Ritz of The Ritz Brothers, the successful sibling comic act of the 1930s and 1940s. Harry and his brothers had a Catskill Mountain style of Jewish humor, the basis of which is snappy patter, quick and graceful moves, funny faces, and meticulous comic timing. For the past 25 years, Brooks has been trying to fit Harry Ritz's comedy style into his own film acting roles. As a young man in the 1940s he worked as a stand-up comic in the Borscht Belt, and it was there that he finetuned his comic delivery.
Brooks's first major film role came in his production of the Russian story The Twelve Chairs. He plays Tikon, an elderly janitor at an old-age home which used to be the wealthy mansion of a nobleman for whom he was manservant. Tikon appears only at the start of the film, and is on screen for a relatively short time. But Tikon becomes a star turn for Brooks, as he is given the chance to play a wildly funny drunk.
Brooks's next acting job came in Blazing Saddles, in which he cast himself in two roles: Governor Lepetomane and an Indian Chief, both of which are parodies rather than full-fledged characterizations. One of the biggest laughs in a film crammed with belly laughs comes when the Chief suddenly starts talking Yiddish. It is not so much Brooks's acting ability as it is his comic timing and the surprise gag that leave audiences teary-eyed with delight. In later endeavors, perhaps because many in his audience did not understand the source of the humor, Brooks stopped emphasizing comedy that relies on a Jewish ethnic identity and pursued more mainstream themes.
In Silent Movie he plays a has-been director. Since the movie actually is almost completely without dialog, Brooks gives a more physically expressive performance than usual, but the part is more silly than artful. High Anxiety, a spoof of Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers, saw him as a Harvard professor/psychiatrist, suffering from a fear of heights, who is invited to be Director of The Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous. As in his previous roles, Brooks presents a skillful, polished\u2014though at times manic\u2014comic performance.
Two performances stand out for Brooks, the screen actor. The first is his starring part as famed Polish stage star Frederick Bronski in his remake of Ernst Lubitsch's black comedy To Be or Not To Be. In this satire about a group of Warsaw thespians facing Nazi extermination at the beginning of World War II, Brooks plays the first full-bodied role of his career. Bronski first appears singing and dancing a hilarious Polish-language version of \"Sweet Georgia Brown\" with Anne Bancroft, playing his wife and partner Anna Bronski. The duet is a milestone in movie comedy, the sort of clip one might choose to take to a desert island. But the character of Bronski does more than sing and dance. Brooks is called upon to show Bronski as a man who tries to be brave and funny while in danger of losing his house, his theater, the lives of his colleagues and wife, and his own life. Brooks also spends much of the film as Bronski posing as other characters, particularly a bearded Nazi-scientist who has an eye for his wife. Brooks has scenes where he expresses fear and sadness very convincingly, although the script is structured so that each of these emotional moments is followed by a comical line. A final note about Brooks in To Be or Not to Be: He is the first and only comedy actor to play Hamlet and Hitler in the same film!
The second fully developed Brooks character appears in Life Stinks!, an otherwise disappointing attempt at a comedy involving the lives of homeless people. In what might be deemed Brooks's least funny film, he gives his most serious, naturalistic performance to date. He is Goddard Bolt, a heartless billionaire who agrees to live without money (or wig) for 30 days in a Los Angeles slum area in order to win a lucrative bet. On the streets for a couple of days, lacking food and shelter, he adopts more humane values and concerns. The film is slower-paced than his previous works, allowing Brooks to offer a more thoughtful and sensitive portrayal.
Many comedians\u2014Jerry Lewis, Charlie Chaplin, Milton Berle, Bert Lahr, and Danny Kaye are just a few\u2014have given outstanding dramatic performances on stage, screen and television. Now that Mel Brooks, master of comedy, has disclosed a talent for portraying man's serious side, perhaps he will execute a straight dramatic characterization in the future.
\u2014Audrey E. Kupferberg
International Dictionary of Films and FilmmakersKupferberg, Audrey E.
Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.
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Brooks, Mel
gale
views updated May 23 2018
BROOKS, MEL
BROOKS, MEL (Melvin Kaminsky ; 1926\u2013 ), U.S. comedian, actor, director. Born in New York, Brooks began working as a stand-up comedian in a string of resorts in the Catskill Mountains. He was known for his odd antics, including performing impromptu monologues and routines, pretending to insult both his co-workers and the guests. After years of stand-up, he began writing jokes for Sid Caesar's tv program Your Show of Shows until the mid-1950s. Turning to Broadway, Brooks wrote the material for All American (1962), Shinbone Alley (1957), and Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952 (1953). In the 1960s he teamed up with fellow writer Carl Reiner on a number of comedy albums based on Brooks' character The 2,000 Year Old Man, which led to a best-selling album, a Grammy award, and numerous television appearances. He then teamed up with Buck Henry to develop Get Smart, a successful satirical spy sitcom (1965\u201370).
Turning to yet another medium, Brooks wrote and played the title role in the four-minute animated short The Critic (1963). It won an Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Cartoon. Brooks broke into feature films by writing and directing the critical success (but commercial failure) The Producers (1968), for which he won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Brooks' second film, The Twelve Chairs (1970), met a similar fate. But his third effort, Blazing Saddles, (1974), was a box-office hit. It was followed by many other films, including Young Frankenstein (1974); Silent Movie (1976); High Anxiety (1977); History of the World, Part I (1981); a remake of the 1942 wartime comedy/drama To Be or Not To Be (1983) in which Brooks co-starred with his wife, Anne Bancroft; Spaceballs (1987); Life Stinks (1991); Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993); and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995).
Mel Brooks' production company, Brooksfilms, has produced a wide variety of formidable films. In addition to Brooks' films, the company produced the movies of other filmmakers, such as David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980); David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986); Graeme Clifford's Frances (1982); Richard Benjamin's My Favorite Year (1982); and David Hugh Jones' 84 Charing Cross Road (1986), for which Anne Bancroft received the bafta Film Award for Best Actress.
In 2001 Brooks parlayed The Producers into a Broadway show. He produced it and wrote the music, lyrics, and book for the musical version. It won three Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score. After more than 1,500 performances, it was still going strong in 2004.
He also won three successive Emmys as Outstanding Guest Actor for his role of Uncle Phil on the tv sitcom Mad about You (1997, 1998, and 1999). In addition, Brooks received three Grammy awards, for Best Musical Show Album (The Producers); Best Long Form Music Video for Recording (The Producers: A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks); and Best Spoken Word Album (Comedy for The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000). Thus Mel Brooks was one of a select few to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony.
Brooks was named one of People magazine's 25 Most Intriguing People of 2001 and was listed as one of E!'s Top 20 Entertainers of 2001. Brooks also wrote a number of books: Get Smart (with Buck Henry 1967); Mel Brooks History of the World (1981); The 2000 Year Old Man (1984); The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000: The Book (with Carl Reiner, 1998); and The Producers: The Book, Lyrics, and Story Behind the Biggest Hit in Broadway History (with Tom Meehan, 2001)
add. bibliography:
B. Adler and J. Feinman, Mel Brooks the Irreverent Funnyman (1976); W. Holtzman, Seesaw, a Dual Biography of Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks (1979); M. Yacowar, Method in Madness: The Art of Mel Brooks (1981); idem, The Comic Art of Mel Brooks (1982); N. Smurthwaite and P. Gelder, Mel Brooks and the Spoof Movie (1982); and R.A. Crick, The Big Screen Comedies of Mel Brooks (2002)
Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA).
Within the \u201cCite this article\u201d tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.
Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Therefore, it\u2019s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication\u2019s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites:
Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style\u2019s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates.
In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list.
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+ "page_last_modified": " Tue, 19 Mar 2024 14:55:22 GMT"
+ },
+ {
+ "page_name": "Mel Brooks ~ Mel Brooks Biographical Timeline | American Masters | PBS",
+ "page_url": "https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/mel-brooks-timeline-2000-years-of-mel-brooks/2593/",
+ "page_snippet": "The life and times of Mel Brooks: The 2000 Year Old Man.The show runs for only 15 episodes and ends in 2009. 2009 \u2013 Brooks is one of five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors presented by President Barack Obama. 2013 \u2013 The American Film Institute presents Brooks with the AFI Life Achievement Award. ... Clip | Bernadette Peters on Mel Brooks: \u201c\u2026he\u2019ll get away with things because they were truly funny.\u201d Three went to Mel personally for Best Musical, Best Original Musical Score and Best Book of a Musical. 2005 \u2013 Brooks adapts The Producers musical to big-screen adding cast members Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman. 2007 \u2013 Brooks adapts Young Frankenstein into a broadway musical. Eventually becoming Tummler (master entertainer) at Grossinger\u2019s. 1949 \u2013 Sid Caesar hires Brooks to write jokes for Admiral Broadway Revue. ... 1950-to-1954 \u2013 Worked as a writer for Sid\u2019s Your Show of Shows. 1952 \u2013 Mel writes \u201cOf Fathers and Sons\u201d sketch for hopeful Broadway revue Curtain Going Up. 2009 \u2013 Brooks is one of five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors presented by President Barack Obama. 2013 \u2013 The American Film Institute presents Brooks with the AFI Life Achievement Award. ... Clip | Bernadette Peters on Mel Brooks: \u201c\u2026he\u2019ll get away with things because they were truly funny.\u201d \u00b7 Clip | Comic Legend Sid Caesar Discovers that Beethoven and Mozart are Dead!",
+ "page_result": "\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\tMel Brooks | Mel Brooks Biographical Timeline | American Masters | PBS\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n
1926 \u2013 Born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York to Maximilian and Kate Kaminsky on June 28.
\n
1940s
\n
1940 \u2013 Mel spends his first summer working/entertaining in the Catskills. \n 1946 \u2013 Mel works for theatrical producer Benjamin Kutcher. Later inspires Max Bialystock in The Producers. \n 1946-to-1949 \u2013 Works in various capacities (drummer, pianist, performer and comic) in Borscht Belt resorts and nightclubs. Eventually becoming Tummler (master entertainer) at Grossinger\u2019s. \n 1949 \u2013 Sid Caesar hires Brooks to write jokes for Admiral Broadway Revue.
\n
1950s
\n
Mel Brooks
\n
1950-to-1954 \u2013 Worked as a writer for Sid\u2019s Your Show of Shows. \n 1952 \u2013 Mel writes \u201cOf Fathers and Sons\u201d sketch for hopeful Broadway revue Curtain Going Up. Eventually ends up airing on New Faces of 1952. \n 1954-to-1957 \u2013 Works as a writer for Imogene Coca\u2019s revue and also Caesar\u2019s Hour. \n 1957 \u2013 Writes Shinbone Alley with Joe Darion.
\n
1960s
\n
1960 \u2013 Mel arrives in Los Angeles and begins scriptwriting duties on The Ladies\u2019 Man starring Jerry Lewis \n 1960 \u2013 Brooks and Carl Reiner begin performing 2000 Year Old Man on the Steve Allen Show. \n 1961 \u2013 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks sells over a million albums. \n 1962 \u2013 Writes All American. Despite receiving two Tony Award Nominations, the script and production were chaotic and the show had a poor Broadway run. At the same time Mel began working on a novel entitled Springtime for Hitler. \n 1962 \u2013 Records series of commercials for Ballantine Beer with Dick Cavett as the \u201c2,500 Year Old Man.\u201d \n 1963 \u2013 Conceives idea and narrates short film The Critic. Wins Academy Award for Animated Short Film. \n 1963 \u2013 Mel writes 30 min TV Comedy entitled \u201cInside Danny Baker\u201d directed by Arthur Hiller. \n 1965 \u2013 Creates Get Smart with Buck Henry. Brooks uninvolved with production after pilot but series ran until 1970 and won seven Emmy Awards, including outstanding comedy series in 1968 and 1969. \n 1967 \u2013 Wins first Emmy for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Variety for a Sid Caesar special. \n 1968 \u2013 Brooks writes and directs The Producers. Wins the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
\n
1970s
\n
1970 \u2013 Brooks writes and directs Twelve Chairs based on Russian novel by Ilf and Petrov. \n 1972 \u2013 Brooks is hired by Warner Bros. along with Richard Pryor, Andrew Bergman, Norman Steinberg and Al Uger as a script doctor for unproduced western comedy calle Tex-X. Eventually hired as director for what would become\u2026 \n 1974 \u2013 Blazing Saddles released. Earns $119.5 million worldwide, despite modest budget of $2.6 million. Nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Madeline Kahn), Best Film Editing and Best Original Song. Wins WGA Award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen. \n 1974 \u2013 Directs Young Frankenstein, co-written with Gene Wilder. Earns $86 million worldwide. Receives two Academy Awards nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound. \n 1975 \u2013 Brooks creates When Things Were Rotten. A Robin Hood parody TV series that lasts only 13 episodes. \n 1976 \u2013 Silent Movie released. Directed by Brooks, co-written by Brooks and Ron Clark. Earns $36 million at the box office. \n 1977 \u2013 High Anxiety released. Directed by Brooks, co-written by Brooks, Clark, Rudy De Luca and Barry Levinson. First movie produced by Brooks himself. Earns $31 million at the box office.
\n
1980s
\n
1980 \u2013 Brooks produces Fatso written and directed by wife Anne Bancroft. First picture produced by Brooksfilms. \n 1980 \u2013 Brooks produces The Elephant Man and hires David Lynch to direct. \n 1981 \u2013 Brooks writes, produces, directs and stars in History of the World Part I. Earns $31 million at the box office. \n 1982 \u2013 Brooks produces My Favorite Year and hires Richard Benjamin to direct. \n 1982 \u2013 Brooks produces Frances. \n1983 \u2013 Brooks stars alongside Anne Bancroft in To Be or Not to Be directed by Alan Johnson. Earns only $13 million at box office. \u201cTo Be Or Not To Be\u201d (The Hitler Rap) from the film\u2019s soundtrack was performed by Brooks and peaked at #12 on the UK Singles Chart in Feb \u201984 and #3 on the Australian Singles Chart \n1986\u2013 Brooks produces\u00a0The Fly. Hires David Cronenberg to direct. \n 1987 \u2013 Brooks writes and directs Spaceballs. \n 1989 \u2013 Brooks creates The Nutt House TV series with co-executive producer Alan Spencer. Series features Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman and is originally broadcast on NBC. Eleven episodes were recorded but the network aired only six before cancelling the show.
\n
1990s
\n
1991 \u2013 Brooks writes and directs Life Stinks. Only film that Brooks directed that is neither a parody or satire on a particular work or genre. Also the last time Brooks played the leading role. \n 1993 \u2013 Brooks writes and directs Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Gene Siskel put the film in his \u201cWorst of 1993\u201d list and said Brooks had \u201cclearly lost his way\u201d in comedy. \n 1995 \u2013 Brooks writes and directs Dracula: Dead and Loving It. \n 1997-to-1999 \u2013 Wins three consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as Uncle Phil in Mad About You. \n 1999 \u2013 Awarded Grammy for Best Spoken Comedy Album with Carl Reiner for The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000.
\n
2000s —
\n
2001 \u2013 Adapts The Producers into a Broadway Musical. Show breaks all records by taking home twelve Tony Awards. Three went to Mel personally for Best Musical, Best Original Musical Score and Best Book of a Musical. \n 2005 \u2013 Brooks adapts The Producers musical to big-screen adding cast members Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman. \n 2007 \u2013 Brooks adapts Young Frankenstein into a broadway musical. After test runs in Seattle, it opens on Broadway on Nov. 8 to mixed reviews. Closes in Jan. 2009 after 484 performances. \n 2007 \u2013 Brooks creates Spaceballs: The Animated Series. The show runs for only 15 episodes and ends in 2009. \n2009 \u2013 Brooks is one of five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors presented by President Barack Obama. \n2013 \u2013 The American Film Institute presents Brooks with the AFI Life Achievement Award.
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