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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • At 95, the legendary Mel Brooks continues to set the standard for comedy across television, film, and the stage. Now he shares his story for the first time in “a wonderful addition to a seminal career” (San Francisco Chronicle), “infused with nostalgia and his signature hilarity” (Parade).
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NEW YORK POST • “Laugh-out-loud hilarious and always fascinating, from the great Mel Brooks. What else do you expect from the man who knew Jesus and dated Joan of Arc?”—Billy Crystal
For anyone who loves American comedy, the long wait is over. Here are the never-before-told, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and remembrances from a master storyteller, filmmaker, and creator of all things funny.
All About Me! charts Mel Brooks’s meteoric rise from a Depression-era kid in Brooklyn to the recipient of the National Medal of Arts. Whether serving in the United States Army in World War II, or during his burgeoning career as a teenage comedian in the Catskills, Mel was always mining his experiences for material, always looking for the perfect joke. His iconic career began with Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, where he was part of the greatest writers’ room in history, which included Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. After co-creating both the mega-hit 2000 Year Old Man comedy albums and the classic television series Get Smart, Brooks’s stellar film career took off. He would go on to write, direct, and star in The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, and Spaceballs, as well as produce groundbreaking and eclectic films, including The Elephant Man, The Fly, and My Favorite Year. Brooks then went on to conquer Broadway with his record-breaking, Tony-winning musical, The Producers.
All About Me! offers fans insight into the inspiration behind the ideas for his outstanding collection of boundary-breaking work, and offers details about the many close friendships and collaborations Brooks had, including those with Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Gene Wilder, Madeleine Kahn, Alfred Hitchcock, and the great love of his life, Anne Bancroft.
Filled with tales of struggle, achievement, and camaraderie (and dozens of photographs), readers will gain a more personal and deeper understanding of the incredible body of work behind one of the most accomplished and beloved entertainers in history.
“Delightful . . . A wonderful addition to a seminal career, All About Me! is not only a worthy summary of all Mel Brooks has achieved but also a lasting testament to the laughs he’s had along the way.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“The book . . . covers [Brooks’s] ninety-five years of life with a tummler’s panache.” —The New Yorker
“Full of both hilarity and wisdom.” —Adam Grant, “15 Inspiring Books to Read Over the Holidays”
“If you’re a Mel Brooks fan, All About Me! is the book you’ve been waiting for.” —The AV Club
“This book has everything you would ever want Mel Brooks to tell you, and at 480 pages it is still not enough! Pure joy.” —Judd Apatow
“Mel Brooks is Mount Hilarious. All any of us can do is look up and feel small and not as funny in comparison.” —Marc Maron
“No one ever made me laugh harder than Mel Brooks. There was no more magical couple than Mel and Anne Bancroft. I treasure every memory with him and with them.” —Norman Lear
“There are people who have great stories and there are people that tell great stories. Mel is that precious combination of a person with amazing stories who happens to be one of the greatest storytellers of all time. Lucky for him? Lucky for us!” —Sarah Silverman
“If you are holding the great Mel Brooks’s memoir and you are wasting time reading this blurb, you’re an idiot.” —Conan O’Brien
“This marvelous book by the great man himself will give you a mega-dose of sheer reading pleasure. It’s the personal, delightfully revealing life story of a giant comic talent. All About Me! delivers a much-needed, therapeutic supply of full-out laughter.” —Dick Cavett
“ All About Me! isn’t a typical comedy memoir, and why would it be? Mel is a singular talent, still witty, still sharp, and still zinging us after all these years. These stories thread a hilarious narrative that is also profound and touching. Reading this, you’ll learn very quickly why Mel Brooks is a king of comedy.” —Wanda Sykes
“Not since the Bible have I read anything so powerful and poignant. And to boot—it’s a lot funnier!” —M. Brooks
“In this laugh-a-minute memoir, actor and producer Brooks looks back at his rise through Hollywood, gleefully doling out punch lines along the way. . . . Studded with snickering asides and rapid-fire jokes, Brooks’s account of making it in show biz is just as sidesplitting as his movies.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Brooks is legendary in comedy, TV, and film, and his upbeat memoir is just the sort of fun book many readers are seeking.” —Booklist
Mel Brooks, director, producer, writer, and actor, is an EGOT—one of the few entertainers in an elite group to earn all four major entertainment prizes: the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, and the Tony. His career began in television writing for Your Show of Shows, after which he helped create the TV series Get Smart. He and Carl Reiner wrote and performed the 2000 Year Old Man Grammy-winning comedy albums. Brooks won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for his first feature film, The Producers. Many hit comedy films followed including The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, YoungFrankenstein, High Anxiety, History of the World Part I, To Be or Not to Be, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. His film company, Brooksfilms Limited, produced critically acclaimed films such as The Elephant Man, Frances, My Favorite Year and 84 Charing Cross Road. In 2009 Mel Brooks was a Kennedy Center Honoree, recognized for a lifetime of extraordinary contributions to American culture. In 2013 he was the forty-first recipient of the AFI’s Life Achievement Award. In 2016 Mr. Brooks was presented with the National Medal of Arts by President Obama.
Chapter 1
Brooklyn
It is 1931, I am five years old, and my older brother Bernie takes me to see a movie called Frankenstein at the Republic Movie Theatre. Big mistake! That evening, even though it was a hot summer night, I closed the window next to my little bed. My mother hears it being closed and immediately comes into the bedroom and quickly opens it.
“Mel,” she says, “we’re on the top floor and it’s a hundred degrees in here. It’s very hot. We have to keep the window open.”
I counter with, “No, we must keep it closed! Because if we keep it open Frankenstein will come up the fire escape and grab me by the throat and kill me and eat me!”
(Even though it was the doctor who was named Frankenstein, all the kids called the monster Frankenstein because that was the title of the picture.)
My mother, realizing that she could never win by demanding that the window stay open, decides to reason with her five-year-old baby boy. “Mel,” she says, “let’s say you are right. That Frankenstein wants to come here and kill you and eat you. But let’s look at all the trouble he’s going to have to get to Brooklyn. First of all, he lives in Transylvania. That’s somewhere in Romania. That’s in Europe. And that’s a long, long ways away. So even if he decides to come here, he has to get a bus or a train or hitchhike to somewhere he can get a boat to go to America. Believe me, nobody is going to pick him up. So let’s say he’s lucky enough to find a boat that would take him here. Okay, so he is here in New York City, but he really doesn’t know how the subways work. When he asks people they just run away! Finally, let’s say he figures out it’s not the IRT, it’s the BMT and he gets to Brooklyn. Then he’s got to figure out how to get to 365 South Third Street. Okay, it’s going to be a long walk. So let’s say he finally gets to Williamsburg and he finally finds our tenement. But remember, all the windows at 365 are going to be wide open and he’s had a long journey, so he must be very hungry. So if he has to kill and eat somebody, he probably would go through the first-floor window and eat all the Rothsteins who are living in apartment 1A. And once he’s full, there is no reason for him to go all the way up to the fifth floor and eat you.”
The story made good sense to me. “Okay,” I said, “open the window. I’ll take a chance.” And that’s how my patient, loving mother solved only one of the many problems I would hand her each day.
Since we’re talking about me, let me go back to the very beginning. I was born on June 28, 1926. As far as I was concerned, a very good time to be born. Maybe not so good a date for the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, as it was the twelfth anniversary of his assassination, which kicked off World War I. But in America things were good, we were still at peace and the Great Depression wouldn’t start until 1929. I was born in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. That’s where the Williamsburg Bridge makes it way over to Manhattan. I was the last child born to Kate Kaminsky, whose maiden name was Katie Brookman. A little later on in life when I was fourteen and learning to be a drummer, it occurred to me that if I was going to be in show business, Mel Brookman was a much better stage name than Melvin Kaminsky (which would be a good name for a professor of Russian literature). So with my new stage name decided on I began painting it on my bass drum, but when I got to B-R-O-O-K- there was no room left for M-A-N. I only had room for one letter, so I threw in an S at the end of BROOK. Hence, Mel Brooks, which has stood me in good stead ever since. But let’s get back to Melvin Kaminsky.
Rumor has it that my mother said she already had three boys and the only reason she tried again was in the hopes that this last child would be a girl. The story goes that when the doctor delivered me and said to my mother, “You have a big, beautiful bouncing baby boy!”
My mother replied, “Do you want him?”
But I’m sure she was kidding. (At least I hope so.)
Being the baby of the family was good stuff. Everything went my way. I had three older brothers: Bernie who was four years older, Lenny who was seven years older, and Irving who was ten years older. I remember Bernie telling me one night that Daddy had come home with a little yellow rubber duck in his hand. Bernie was sure the duck was for him, but Daddy went right past his eager face and of course gave it to the baby—me. Bernie never forgave me for that. But my brothers were wonderful; we were like puppies in a cardboard box. We enjoyed one another’s company tremendously. Plenty of fights, but plenty of fun. My uncles and aunts also adored me, as I was the youngest. I was always in the air, hurled up and kissed and thrown in the air again. Until I was five, I don’t remember my feet touching the ground.
When I was only two years old my father died. Max, like so many others at that time, was swept away by tuberculosis. It wasn’t very traumatic to me at that age, but it was to my older brothers. I was probably six years old when I realized that other kids had fathers and I didn’t. It was a brushstroke of depression that really never left me, not having a father, another great wellspring source of love that every child is entitled to. My father’s absence caused a lingering frustration in my life. I felt cheated because he never got to enjoy being a proud father. It was a shame that he never got to see me succeed in my career.
The eldest of my brothers, Irving, kind of took over as a surrogate dad to us. We didn’t have much money, so during the winter, Irving would find a broken sled that somebody had thrown out and make a big present of it for me. Then he would pull me around the block on it in the snow. I’d say, “One more time, Irv, please!” and even though he had already done it twenty times and his hands were frozen, he still gave me one more ride around the block. Nothing quite like having an older brother.
Even though my brother Bernie wasn’t very tall (he was only five feet five), he was a great underhand softball pitcher and a great hitter too. Lenny used to catch for him. Bernie became one of the best-known pitchers in the schoolyard. I was so proud of him. Unfortunately, he peaked at fourteen.
My brother Lenny was especially good to me on Saturday nights. When he left the house, god bless him, he would flip me a half a buck. (A small fortune to a little kid!) For half a buck in Brooklyn in those years I could go out with my friends and get a salami sandwich and a Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray tonic. And then I still had money left over for joining my friends at the movie house for a Saturday night double feature. And after that I still had fifteen cents left so I’d end up in an ice cream parlor and I’d have a frappe—two scoops of vanilla ice cream smothered in chocolate syrup with a cherry on top. Half a buck. It covered all of it!
Lenny also got me hooked on swing music. He was madly in love with Larry Clinton and his vocalist, Bea Wain, and with Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm, which sounded like somebody blowing bubbles into a glass of seltzer water. Lenny spent all his money on clothes; especially on a fedora hat he bought from Moe Penn’s, a hat store in Williamsburg. For twenty minutes he just worked the brim to get it exactly right. I used to sit on the toilet seat, cover down, and watch Lenny as he adjusted his Moe Penn hat in the medicine chest mirror. He would try the brim up and then shake his head no. Put the brim down front and back and shake his head no. Put the back up, put the brim down in front, and then with a broad smile on his face nod his head yes. He was happy. A private moment that I’ll always be grateful to him for allowing me to share.
My brothers were all wonderful. And even though they didn’t have a father of their own, they made sure that this little half-orphan, Melvy, who would never get to know his father, was cared for and looked after.
Not by choice, my mother became both parents. After my brothers were old enough to work, Kitty was able to stay home with her youngest son, me, “Melvy.” We got to know each other. She was my first comic foil, and enabler, and nurtured my imagination. On a Saturday morning she would give me three empty milk deposit bottles, which, upon return to the grocer, got me three cents each. Nine cents, I was short one penny to get into the movie house for a matinee. And believe it or not, during the Depression sometimes we didn’t have that extra penny in the household. So my mother would go next door to borrow a penny from a neighbor so that I could make the dime for the movie ticket.
I couldn’t wait for Saturday morning. The movie theaters opened at ten o’clock and we’d all be there. It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair. For one thin dime, you got two feature films, serials, a race, a newsreel, an animated cartoon, and coming attractions. Movies were magic. You stepped out of the real world (which had terrible things in it, like homework) and into a land of happy endings where dreams came true. There was nothing like the movies. My mother would send me to the theater with a salmon and tomato sandwich, wrapped in wax paper—“’cause it’s a long day, you know?”
