Posted on 06/26/2026 7:44:55 PM PDT by Red Badger
Here are 100 reasons to love the comedy writer, director and star who’s celebrating a milestone on Sunday.
No. 1
He started a novel titled “Springtime for Hitler.”
No. 2
He turned that into a play.
No. 3
He turned that play into a flop film titled “The Producers.”
No. 4
He won a screenplay Oscar for that flop …
No. 5
… turned that flop into a Broadway hit …
No. 6
… then tried to destroy “The Producers” on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
No. 7
He never did a serious movie because to him comedy was serious.
No. 8
At 9 he saw his first Broadway show, “Anything Goes,” with the Broadway belter Ethel Merman, which explains everything.
No. 9
As a boy he saw the 1931 “Frankenstein,” which also explains so much.
No. 10
He’s the king of American absurdist comedy.
It’s good to be the king.
The History of the World, Part I
No. 11
All definitions of comedy are terrible, but his is the least bad: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into a sewer and die.”
No. 12
He didn’t luxuriate in anxiety and despair. They were motivators. No. 13
“If your enemy is laughing, how can he bludgeon you to death?” — Mel Brooks
MORE AT LINK.................
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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May you enjoy the years to come as much as we enjoyed your work.
He’s got 1900 years to go.
I forget who interviewed him about his war days. (I think it may have been ‘Fresh Air’ on NPR). He can even make trench life facing the Nazis hilarious.
Can there ever be another”Blazing Saddles?”
I doubt it
Stand Up Comicus....
.
Oh Mel
No. 28
On the battlefront, he blared a rendition of “Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goodbye)” across enemy lines.
I saw him about 8 or 9 years ago at a special screening of Young Frankenstein. He did questions and answers for about 45 minutes after the movie. He was great. Thanks for the comedy Mel.
The Producers was a movie.
Then it was a Broadway play.
Then it was a movie AGAIN!.............
WIKI
Marriages and family
Brooks met Florence Baum, a dancer in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, on Broadway. They were married from 1953 until their divorce in 1962. They had three children. After earning a salary of $5,000 a week on Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour, 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. In 1960, to escape his situation, Brooks moved in with a friend, in Los Angeles. 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 was an autobiographical script based on his marriage. By 1966, Brooks was “living in a fairly old but comfortable New York town house”.
Brooks married actress Anne Bancroft in 1964, and they remained together for 41 years until her death in 2005. 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. Their son, Max Brooks, was born in 1972. 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 his first meeting with her: “From that day, until her death ... we were glued together.” 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”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Brooks
> He can even make trench life facing the Nazis hilarious. <
Mel Brooks is a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge. Here’s Mel:
“I was a combat engineer. Isn’t that ridiculous? The two things I hate most in this world are combat and engineering.”
I remember the 2000 yr old man. Possibly my introduction to Mel Brooks.
He’s looking like Jimmy Durante these days.
He might just make it!.................
I met him at the wrap party for YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, which I crashed with some friends from film school. He was very nice to us young a-holes. I don’t care about his lefty politics, he’s a comic legend and that’s all that matters.
“Hello Girls”
I saw him jogging in 1983.
I tried to forget That.
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