Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks, director, producer, writer and actor, is in an elite group as one of the few entertainers to earn all four major entertainment prizes – the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards. His career began in television writing for Your Show of Shows and together with Buck Henry creating the TV series Get Smart. He then teamed up with Carl Reiner to write and perform the Grammy-winning The 2000 Year Old Man comedy albums. Brooks won his first Oscar in 1964 for writing and narrating the animated short The Critic (1963) and his second for the screenplay of his first feature film, The Producers (1967) in 1968. Many hit comedy films followed including The Twelve Chairs (1970), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), High Anxiety (1977), History of the World: Part I (1981), To Be or Not to Be (1983), SPACEBALLS (1987), Life Stinks (1991), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995). His film company, Brooksfilms Limited, also produced critically acclaimed films such as The Elephant Man (1980), The Fly (1986), Frances (1982), My Favorite Year (1982), and 84 Charring Cross Road (1987). For three successive seasons (1997 – 1999) Mel Brooks won Emmy Awards for his role as “Uncle Phil” on the hit sitcom Mad About You. Brooks received three 2001 Tony Awards and two Grammy Awards for The Producers: The New Mel Brooks Musical, which ran on Broadway from 2001 to 2006. The Producers still holds the record for the most Tony awards ever won by a Broadway musical. He followed that success with The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein, which ran on Broadway from 2007 to 2009 and opened in London’s West End in the Fall of 2017 to rave reviews. In 2009 Mel Brooks received The Kennedy Center Honors, recognizing a lifetime of extraordinary contributions to American culture. He was the subject of an Emmy winning 2013 American Masters documentary on PBS called “Mel Brooks: Make A Noise” and was the 41st recipient of the AFI’s Life Achievement Award. His recent projects include three Emmy nominated HBO comedy specials Mel Brooks and Dick Cavett Together Again, Mel Brooks Strikes Back!, and Mel Brooks Live at The Geffen. In 2016 Mr. Brooks was invited to the White House, where President Obama presented him with The National Medal of Arts – the highest award given to artists by the United States government. His long-awaited career spanning autobiography, All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business was published by Ballantine Books in 2021, instantly becoming a New York Times Bestseller and in 2022 the audiobook of All About Me! read by Mel Brooks was nonmined for a Grammy Award. In 2023 he produced, wrote for and narrated the Emmy nominated HULU sketch TV series History of The World Part II, a follow up to his own film that fans had been waiting over 40 years to see. This year the Board of Governors of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Mel Brooks with an Honorary Oscar, in recognition of “a legacy that has made a lasting impact on every facet of entertainment.”