All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business

by Mel Brooks

This was fun, and it got me on a Mel Brooks kick, which is always good. The older stuff, about his childhood, WWII, and early career was great. I skimmed some chapters to get to the ones I was interested in. He has a chapter about each of his most famous movies.

His father died of tuberculosis when he was two. His brother was shot down in WWII, tore off his dog tags (which identified him as “H,” Hebrew), and survived by passing as Polish in a POW camp.

Lots of funny stories. On patrol during WWII, his platoon had fun with a shooting contest, trying to hit some little white ceramic things way up on telephone polls. They got a call telling them to come back to the base, where they were told that “Army communications had been severed!”

“I quickly realized that we were the destroyers… Knowing that we were not really in danger, I gallantly offered to take my men out again and search for the enemy snipers that has sabotaged the phone lines. My company commander sent us off with a salute that said, ‘You men are a brave bunch.’ We never let on.” (67)

He wrote for Sid Caesar, ad-libbed The 2000 Year Old Man with Carl Reiner, released a record of it, and that was kind of an in. Anne Bancroft had heard it, so when he met her, she recognized him, and they eventually got married (at a JP, using her earrings for the rings). He created the Get Smart TV show. Then The Producers.

As a book, it’s pretty typical show-biz. Lots of quotes from the movies, praise for costars, very little juicy gossip. When George W. Bush tried to give him an award, he said no thanks, but a couple of years later he accepted the same award from Obama. That kind of thing is disappointing from someone who seems so apolitical (Seinfeldian in that regard – the important thing to him is what’s funny). But among his Hollywood friends, accepting an award from Bush would probably have raised eyebrows.

I’ve been finding old clips of Brooks on Johnny Carson, and those are great. He’s really funny, quick, generous, and has a lot of life.