With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies. Brooks began his career as a comic and a writer for Sid Caesar 's variety show Your Show of Shows from to With Buck Henry , he created the hit television comedy series Get Smart , which starred Don Adams and ran from to He then rose to prominence becoming one of the most successful film directors of the s with The Twelve Chairs , Blazing Saddles , Young Frankenstein , Silent Movie , and High Anxiety The project was remade into a musical film in Brooks was married to actress Anne Bancroft from until her death in Three of his films are included on the American Film Institute 's list of the top comedy films of the past years β , all of which were ranked in the top Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 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 problemsβlike a punch in the face. Brooks was a small, sickly boy who often was bullied and teased by his classmates because of his size. When Brooks was 14 he gained employment as a pool-side tummler entertainer at the Butler Lodge, [ 16 ] a second-rate Borscht Belt hotel, where he met year-old Sid Caesar. 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! During his teens, he changed his name to Melvin Brooks, [ 18 ] [ 19 ] influenced by his mother's maiden name Brookman, after being confused with trumpeter Max Kaminsky.
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.
With the end of the war in Europe , Brooks joined the Special Services as a comic touring Army bases and he was made acting corporal , put in charge of entertainment at Wiesbaden , [ 6 ] [ 25 ] and performed at Fort Dix.
