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Mel Brooks

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition

Mel Brooks 1927-, American film director, writer, actor, and producer, b. New York City as Melvin Kaminsky. His earliest work was in television, notably as a gag writer for Sid Caesar 's "Your Show of Shows" (1950-54). He also scored a hit with a 1964 comedy recording, in which he played an irascible, Yiddish-accented 2,000-year-old man. Turning to film, he wrote and directed The Producers (1968), a comic masterpiece of uproarious bad taste. His other hit comedies are usually wild parodies that mix satire with slapstick; they include Blazing Saddles (1974), a spoof of Western movies; Young Frankenstein (1975), a Brooksian take on the horror genre, and High Anxiety (1977), a comic version of Alfred Hitchcock 's spine-tinglers. Among his later movies, which have been less successful with the public, are To Be or Not To Be (1983), Life Stinks (1991), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). Brooks turned to the stage in 2001, adapting his first film hit, The Producers, into a smash hit, Tony-winning Broadway musical (film, 2005).

Bibliography: See biography by J. R. Parish (2007); N. Smurthwaite and P. Gelder, Mel Brooks and the Spoof Movie (1982); M. Yakowar, In Method Madness: The Comic Art of Mel Brooks (1982); N. Sinyard, The Films of Mel Brooks (1987).



Author not available, BROOKS, MEL., The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition 2008


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The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press

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Related entries from encyclopedias, dictionaries, and thesauruses

Brooks, Mel
BROOKS, Mel Nationality: American. Born: Melvin Kaminsky...1976. "Comedy Directors: Interview with Mel Brooks," with R. Rivlin, in Millimeter (New York...Stegel in Playboy (Chicago), January 1989. "Mel Brooks: Of Woody, the Great Caesar, Flop Sweat... Read more
Brooks, Mel
BROOKS, Mel Nationality: American. Born: Melvin Kaminsky...1976. "Comedy Directors: Interview with Mel Brooks," interview with R. Rivlin, in Millimeter...Stegel, in Playboy (Chicago), January 1989. "Mel Brooks: Of Woody, the Great Caesar, Flop Sweat... Read more
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Mel Brooks Mel Brooks (born 1926) transformed traditional burlesque and Jewish humor into...Producers, into a smash Broadway musical. From Catskills to Television Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, on June 28, 1926. He... Read more
Brooks, Mel
Brooks, Mel. See Producers, The . Read more
Mel Brooks
...which was later transformed into a hit Broadway musical. He directed, produced, and cowrote (and sometimes acted in) film comedies such as Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), and Spaceballs (1987). Mel Brooks Mel Brooks Mel Brooks Read more

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