Mel Brooks
Comedian, film director and writer
Mel Brooks is an American comedian, director and writer known for film farces and parodies. He tells his own story in the memoir All About Me!
1 summary 21 min of listening
American Born 1926 in Brownsville, United States
About Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, on June 28, 1926. He started out writing for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. Together with Carl Reiner he came up with the sketch The 2000 Year Old Man, and Buck Henry was his partner in creating the spy spoof Get Smart. Brooks won an Academy Award for the screenplay of The Producers (1967). He went on to make comedies such as Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs. The stage musical version of The Producers played on Broadway between 2001 and 2007. He is one of the few entertainers to have taken home an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. In 2016 he received the National Medal of Arts. Brooks was married to Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005, and their son is the actor and author Max Brooks. His memoir All About Me! was published in 2021.