When it comes to sense of humour, hardly anyone can beat him. Mel Brooks, who turned 100 on June 28, has always joked about his humble origins: "My parents were so poor that the lady next door gave birth to me."
Jokes aside, it is true that he was born in the kitchen of a family practically without resources living in a rented building in the New York neighbourhood of Williamsburg. The young Melvin James Kaminsky, his real name, suffered the loss of his father at the age of two due to tuberculosis, so his mother and three older siblings had to take care of him.
At 18, he was drafted into the army and shortly after, he served in World War II as a combat engineer. After the war, he focused on telling jokes at military bases.
Upon returning home, his mother arranged for him to work in a shipyard, but Mel escaped to the Catskills mountain range where he worked as a pianist and drummer in various resorts. But what he enjoyed the most was making people laugh, so he found his big break when one of the comedians fell ill, and he started to fill in for him.
Not only did he tell jokes and stories, but he also wrote monologues. At that time, he was a big fan of the genius Sid Caesar, whom he used to stop on the street to pitch his ideas. After persisting, the star of the golden age of American television finally hired him as a writer on Your Show of Shows (1950-1954).
During the filming of the series, he met Florence Baum, a successful Broadway dancer for whom Dean Martin had a crush. However, she chose Mel. As his son Nicholas (69) revealed in the documentary Mel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man!, recently released on HBO Max, Dean had referred to his father as "a dead end," to which his mother replied, "I'm sorry, but I really like him, so I'll let it slide." The couple married in 1953 and, in addition to Nicholas, they had two other children, Stefanie (70) and Edward (67).
Despite having formed a beautiful family, everything became complicated when the contract for Your Show of Shows ended because Mel started to face financial and mental problems. As he told People magazine, "the marriage suffered because it was very difficult to deal with me as I was very frustrated with hitting a dead end with my creativity," leading to a divorce in 1962. "I don't blame her for divorcing me. Living with me was hell," the actor concluded.
A year earlier, Brooks had met Anne Bancroft during rehearsals for one of Perry Como's variety shows on Kraft Music Hall, who had become the highest-paid artist on television. It all happened in the most surreal way.
"When the song ended, I jumped up, applauded enthusiastically, and shouted, 'Anne Bancroft! I love you!' She laughed and shouted back, 'Who the hell are you?' She was incredibly beautiful," the actor wrote in his memoirs, All About Me!: My Memorable Exploits in the Showbiz Universe (2021).
Both Bancroft and Mel later said it was love at first sight. "I fell in love with him instantly," Bancroft said in footage from the documentary series. "He reminded me of my father and acted like my mother."
They married on August 5, 1964, in a civil ceremony in New York with a passerby as a witness. They had a son named Max (54), who has also won an Emmy like his famous parents.
"I am married to a beautiful and talented woman who can lift your spirits just by looking at you," the comedian once said about his wife.
In the late '60s, he tried his luck in the film industry. Brooks was somewhat discouraged because he didn't have a big budget, but Bancroft was his main support in every way. She had already become a Hollywood star thanks to The Robe (1953) and The Miracle Worker (1962), for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress.
His first work as a director and writer was The Producers (1968), which remains a cult classic to this day and has even been staged on Broadway. Subsequently, Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), History of the World, Part I (1981), and Spaceballs (1987) were released.
All of them ended up becoming comedy classics and a new way of making comedy, as through cinematic parody, he cleverly mocked almost every genre. Despite being a skilled and prolific composer, all his musical knowledge came from playing instruments like the drums as a teenager, so he would hum his music into a recorder for an arranger to transcribe later.
After more than seven decades in show business, Mel Brooks is one of the 28 individuals who have achieved EGOT status, meaning he has won at least one of the four entertainment awards like the Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony. But for him, the greatest prize was finding the great love of his life, Anne Bancroft, who passed away in 2005 at the age of 73 from uterine cancer.
Since then, he has not remarried. In an interview with People in 2021, the brilliant director, actor, and producer revealed: "Living this life without her is not easy," and added, "There were many great kisses and great spaghetti." That has always been his favourite food.