Mel Brooks

There's no way I can adequately describe Mel Brooks and his spectacular career. The Emmy, Tony, and Oscar winning Brooks continues to have a magical career that I'll only touch on briefly here.

Mel Brooks was born in New York City June 28, 1926 as Melvin Kaminsky. He began his show business career writing for Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, where he met Carl Reiner. The two of them cooked up their famous 2,000 Year Old Man skit while on a break in writing the show. That has produced four albums and a book.

Brooks was hired by Dan Melnick to create a spy spoof for television in 1964. Brooks helped create many of the concepts behind Get Smart, and is responsible for naming the lead character Max, which is also the name of his son. Brooks, who also co-wrote a few episodes in the first season, only stayed for the very beginning of Get Smart. He used the money from the show to allow him time to work on his first feature film, The Producers. He won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay for that movie and his career took off after that.

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