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“I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.”
Happy 100th birthday to Melvin James Kaminsky, born—on a kitchen table in Brooklyn—June 28, 1926.
He wrote of his 1944 war experiences, when he served while just eighteen or nineteen, as a combat engineer at the Battle of the Bulge:
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.
Somewhere during those teenage years, Melvin Kaminsky changed his name, adopting a variant of his mother's maiden name as his own surname, so that we have come to know him—over the eighty or so intervening years—as the incomparable "Mel Brooks."
I suspect that many of us have a favorite Mel Brooks movie, or a story about how much we liked, or didn't like, or were influenced by him, growing up.
I have two such. One has to do with Brooks's iconic movie, Blazing Saddles. I'd never seen it myself, but last May, a little over a year ago, it was featured in a "flashback" series at a reasonably local cinema. So I went. There was—of course—a mild "language and 'dated attitudes'" warning before the film, but otherwise, they just let it rip. I loved it. And I thought about my brother, who was just a bit too young to drive when the film was originally released in the UK. He bullied (I mean that kindly) my mother into taking him to see it at a theatre in Worcester.
I don't think Mum was ever quite the same again.
The other relates to a very "un-Brooks-like" movie, 84 Charing Cross Road. It's a lovely little film, based on an epistolary memoir by Helene Hanff, starring Anthony Hopkins and Brooks's wife, Anne Bancroft. I can only suppose that he envisioned and produced it just for her. Highly recommended.
Please share your "Mel Brooks" memories below.
Discussion (21)
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I saw Young Frankenstein when I was in Jr. High. I went by myself. It was a double feature with M*A*S*H which had been re-edited into a PG version.
I know I didn't catch all the jokes on that first viewing (such as "Transylvania 6-5000") but I got enough (such as "knockers".) I loved it. I had always been a fan of the Universal Monsters which I watched on TV, it was good to see this in a theater. I still enjoy the film, watch it every few years. Gene Kelly dancing in the rain is the only more joyous musical number than the Doctor and the Creature Puttin' on the Ritz.
(If you've never listened to The 2000 Year Old Man, track it down on YouTube now.)
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My late wife loved 84 Charing Cross Road. She was surprised when I told her the bookstore was involved with British intelligence during WWII.
The Producers remains my favorite Brooks movie. My brother-in-law and I discussed the movie a few weeks back. We chewed over if the movie were redone set today what subject a musical intended to flop, but which would be a roaring success would use as its theme. It would not be Nazis. To the Islamists and their Democrat allies (spit . . . Platner . . . spit) Hitler is a hero, if not freely admitted to be so.
We finally decided the only thing that would work would be a musical comedy about Donald Trump, done an over-the-top adoration of him. The woke producers putting the thing on today would be convinced it would flop big, Just as Bialystok and Blum were convinced Springtime for Hitler would flop. I am not so sure New Yorkers, outside the woke enclaves would agree.
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Blazing Saddles was the first "adult" movie I saw at the theater. It's been downhill ever since.
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Raaahzbrees, raaahzbrees, raaahzbrees, ...
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Silent Movie had some nice touches. Like the giant fly that landed in Henny Youngman's soup and that the only word spoken in the movie was by Marcel Marceau.
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