Melvin James "Mel" Brooks (né Kaminsky) is an American actor, comedian, songwriter, director, and screenwriter, who is best known for creating broad film farces and comic parodies. He directed Young Frankenstein (a parody of the Frankenstein movies) and Spaceballs (a parody of Star Wars), and was the writer of the early variety show Your Show of Shows. He also created, with Buck Henry, the NBC/CBS hit comedy series Get Smart (1965–1970). Additionally, he is well-known for voicing Bigweld in Blue Sky's 2005 animated film Robots, Albert Einstein in DreamWorks' 2014 film Mr. Peabody & Sherman, and Vlad Dracula in Sony Pictures' Hotel Transylvania franchise.
For Disney, he voiced Grandpa Mel in Special Agent Oso and Melephant Brooks in Disney/Pixar's 2019 film Toy Story 4 and the Disney+ short series Forky Asks a Question (both characters being parodies of himself). He also played the film director in Mickey's Audition, as well as appeared as himself in Mickey's 50. Additionally, he developed a cancelled horror-comedy attraction for Disney's Hollywood Studios entitled "Hotel Mel", which ended up becoming the inspiration for The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. He also appeared as himself in both the Hulu series History of the World, Part II and Only Murders in the Building.
His song "The French Mistake" was featured in the 2004 Disney animated feature film Home on the Range.
Brooks was born on a tenement kitchen table in Brownsville, Brooklyn, to Kate (née Brookman) and Max Kaminsky, and grew up in Williamsburg. His father's family were German Jews from Danzig (Gdańsk, Poland); his mother was from Kyiv, in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine). He had three older brothers: Irving, Lenny, and Bernie. His father died of tuberculosis of the kidney at 34 when Brooks was two years old. He has said of his father's death, "There's an outrage there. I may be angry at God, or at the world, for that. And I'm sure a lot of my comedy is based on anger and hostility. Growing up in Williamsburg, I learned to clothe it in comedy to spare myself problems — like a punch in the face."
Roles
(Special Agent Oso)
.jpg "Mel Brooks (OMitB).jpg (47 KB)")
(Only Murders in the Building)
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