Still blazing after all these years: Mel Brooks at 100
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- Mel Brooks turns 100, born in Brooklyn to European immigrants whose father died when he was 2; he went on to serve in the 78th Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge in WWII.
- Buddy Rich taught Brooks drums in his youth, before Brooks moved into comedy writing on Your Show of Shows, where he met Carl Reiner and together they co-created the 2,000 Year Old Man character.
- The Producers (1967) featured the now-infamous number "Springtime for Hitler"; Larry David called it "possibly the greatest comedic premise that anybody has ever dreamed up" and built an entire season of Curb Your Enthusiasm around the film.
- Blazing Saddles became the highest-grossing western in history until Dances With Wolves surpassed it in 1990, while 1974 also delivered Young Frankenstein — together ushering in the golden age of parody.
- Brooks is one of only 22 people in history to win an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony, and produced The Elephant Man, handpicking David Lynch to direct while taking his own name off the credits to avoid comedy assumptions.
- The unashamedly Jewish 2,000 Year Old Man routines — performed from the 1950s on five albums — found fans as lofty as Cary Grant and the Queen Mother at Buckingham Palace, allaying fears that gentiles would be baffled.
Why it matters: Brooks is one of only 22 people in history to complete the EGOT, and his 100th year puts a spotlight on a near-vanished archetype: a WWII veteran who turned the trauma of the Battle of the Bulge into boundary-breaking parody, from Springtime for Hitler just 22 years after the Holocaust to Blazing Saddles out-grossing the westerns it mocked.
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