Mel Brooks at the premiere of Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! in Los Angeles in January. Photograph: Richard Shotwell/AP View image in fullscreen Mel Brooks at the premiere of Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! in Los Angeles in January. Photograph: Richard Shotwell/AP Film Still blazing after all these years: Mel Brooks at 100 The director of The Producers hits his century as a uniquely beloved entertainer who embodies his conviction that ‘comedy is the opposite of death’
Prefer the Guardian on Google M el Brooks’ story is that of the US and Jews and American Jewish comedy. He was born on the kitchen table of a tenement in Brooklyn a century ago in the same month Marilyn Monroe made her own entrance on the opposite coast. The son of European immigrants, Brooks was brought up by his mother after his father died when Melvin was just two years old. He was a small, sickly child and the youngest of four brothers, perhaps an explanation for an almost pathological desire for attention. In the words of his colleague Larry Gelbart : “Mel thought when he got slapped in the ass by the doctor who delivered him that was applause, and he has not stopped performing since.”
View image in fullscreen Defiant good humour … Mel Brooks in the 1983 film To Be or Not to Be, dressed as Hitler. Photograph: Ronald Grant In his youth, Brooks’ preferred method of making a noise was playing the drums and he was actually taught the instrument by Buddy Rich. Neither could possibly have known at the time that they would both go on to have seismic effects on the two great American artforms: comedy and jazz. That youth, like so many others, was interrupted by Adolf Hitler. The teenage Brooks joined the army and participated in the Battle of the Bulge. If one is looking to understand the artist’s fearlessness or his utter commitment to mocking Nazis for the remainder of his days, those war years provide ample explanation. It may also explain his assertion that “comedy is the opposite of death”.
On returning home, Brooks took tentative steps into the world of show business by drumming at Borscht Belt resorts in the Catskills for audiences almost exclusively comprised of fellow Jews. When the regular comic was ill, he filled in and discovered the unique joy of getting laughs from an audience. It was not long before he was recruited to write on Your Show of Shows, the iconic Sid Caesar sketch show that is generally regarded to have assembled the greatest comedy writing team in television history. It was on this series that Brooks met Carl Reiner and formed a personal and professional relationship that would last until the latter’s death in 2020 at the age of 98 .
The pair began improvising comedy routines for the amusement of friends and, during one, Reiner asked what it had been like to be present at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Thus was the 2,000 Year Old Man born, perhaps the single greatest premise for a recurring sketch comedy character. The routines would appear on five albums recorded between 1960 and 1997 but performances of it began in the 1950s, just a few years after the end of the second world war. The humour and Brooks’ accent for the character were unashamedly Jewish, at the very historical moment one might expect him to keep such a thing well-hidden. The double act’s only real concern was that gentiles would be baffled – but such fears were allayed when Cary Grant told Brooks he’d played the record at Buckingham Palace to the obvious delight of the qu…