Mel Brooks

Mel is a comedy legend. An old (1968!) movie of his, The Producers, was turned into a Broadway musical and won 12 Tonys in one year-- no other play or musical has ever won that many. And now Mel re-remade The Producers, turning it into a new movie, this time based on the Broadway musical version!

Mel just made a musical out of another old classic of his, Young Frankenstein. And another movie created from an old Mel Brooks TV show, Get Smart, (a seriously funny comedy about secret agents) came out in 2008; look for the sequel soon.

Mel's career began when he was hired as a writer on TV for a pre-SNL sketch show called Your Show of Shows. The star was Sid Caesar, and Woody Allen and Neil Simon also wrote for that show, as did Larry Gelbart, who would later create M*A*S*H (ask your parents). All these guys are Jewish!

After that, Mel wrote, directed, and acted in many famous parody movies: Dracula: Dead and Loving It and Young Frankenstein laughed at classic horror films. Blazing Saddles satirized Westerns, Robin Hood: Men in Tights mocked action films, and History of the World made fun of historical epics. And now he's putting out an animated TV version of his sci-fi spoof Spaceballs!

Another one of Mel's parodies was Silent Movie. In that one, the only person who speaks is the late Jewish performer Marcel Marceau, the world's most famous mime!

Mel is also known for casting great Jewish comics and comedic actors in his movies like Mathew Broderick, Sid Caesar, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Richard Lewis, Rick Moranis, Joan Rivers and Gene Wilder. Mel is very proud of being Jewish and always sneaks Jewish jokes into his movies. For instance, in Spaceballs, instead of The Force, the characters use "The Schwartz!"

As an actor, he has been in shows for kids, like The Prince of Egypt, The Muppet Movie, Robots, Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks, and Free to Be… You and Me. He has also acted on TV, and was a regular character on Mad About You and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Mel is one of the few people ever to win all the major entertainment awards: Oscar (movies), Emmy (TV), Tony (stage) and Grammy (music)!

Although his career has had one or two bombs, Mel can take those in stride, as he knows something about real bombs… before he got into showbiz, Mel served as corporal in WWII.

His job? Removing landmines before the troops advanced! Yikes!

Bonus:

Most people remember Harvey Korman as the scheming Hedly Lamarr who tried to get rich by destroying Rock Ridge to put a railroad through it in Mel's movie Blazing Saddles. Harvey also played the villain in Mel's High Anxiety, Dracula, and History of the World,

Born Harvey Herschel Korman, he died in 2008. His most famous early roles were as straight man in the sketches on The Carol Burnett Show, on which he began his collaboration with Tim Conway, a partnership which lasted long past the show's amazing 11-year run. He had already practiced for that on another, earlier sketch show, The Danny Kaye show. (Danny was Jewish, too.)

If you have ever seen The Flintstones cartoons, you have heard Harvey's nasal voice, mainly as The Great Gazoo, the alien who visits caveman Fred Flintstone. Hey, who says aliens can only visit the future?

Bonus Bonus:

Mel's stage musical version of Young Frankenstein was less of a hit, but the movie is still considered a comedy classic. It's a parody of the Frankenstein story, with a great Jewish cast including Gene Wilder, Madeline Khan...

...and Marty Feldman, who plays Dr. Frankenstein's helper Igor. Marty had a condition that made his eyes bulge out a bit, and he uses it to great comic effect here. OK, it’s weird but funny. Which sort if describes Marty’s comedy style altogether!

Marty had his own TV shows a couple of times. Movie-wise, he was in another parody called The Last Remake of Beau Geste, about three brothers who join the French Foreign Legion, a branch of the French army that served in North Africa, who look for adventure but find love and lunacy.

Marty was in another movie with Gene, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother... and in another Mel movie, called simply Silent Movie, which it was! His last movie was a Monty Python pirate-parody called Yellowbeard. All of these are very wacky and goofy and a lot of fun. Check 'em out!