Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish comedian Mel Brooks.
Mel Brooks
The Latest
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Culture Why Carl Reiner was the dreamiest boss I ever had
“My secretaries stay a long time,” Carl Reiner said as he greeted me at the start of the job interview, “so I don’t know what I’m supposed to ask.” Okay, I was plotzing to get the job. Though at 26 I’d worked in show business long enough to know that celebrities were often nothing like…
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Culture Mel and Max Brooks’ father-son coronavirus PSA is a must-watch
“World War Z” author Max Brooks makes a living selling stories of the zombie apocalypse. But today, he’s enlisting his followers to help stave off the apocalypse at hand. On Twitter, the writer teamed up with his father, the veteran comedian and director Mel Brooks, to demonstrate proper social distancing techniques in the confusing era…
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Culture Happy 93rd Birthday, Mel Brooks!
At 93, Mel Brooks is a lot of things: A Kennedy Center award recipient, a titan of both stage and screen even a vampire grandfather in t “Hotel Transylvania 3,” but for all these distinctions he reduces himself to one thing. “I’m just a Jew comic,” he told David Denby in a profile published in…
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The Schmooze Mel Brooks Heads To Broadway For Two Night Engagement
Emmy-, Grammy-, Oscar- and Tony-Award (EGOT) winner Mel Brooks will be taking the stage at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York City on June 17th and 18th, Playbill reported. Titled “Mel Brooks On Broadway,” the engagement is part of the In Residence On Broadway series at the theater. During his stint, Brooks will bring comedy,…
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Music WATCH: Zero Mostel Sings A Yiddish Classic
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. After four years of scouring Youtube for Yiddish-language videos to feature in the Forverts’ weekly cultural supplement Oneg Shabes, I thought that I had pretty much found them all. Luckily, there are still some treasures out there to be uncovered. Case in point: Rokhl Kafrissen recently posted…
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Culture Salman Rushdie Talks Philip Roth, Mel Brooks And Bagels
Salman Rushdie is on the phone, and there is much I’d like to ask. For starters: Did Bob Dylan deserve the Nobel? On second thought, maybe better to go with the old Forward standard: What’s your favorite bagel? After all, Rushdie is aware that the truth of a character often lies in the details. That…
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Culture Neil Simon, A Yiddish-Influenced Wisecracker
In his heyday, the playwright Neil Simon, who died on August 26 at age 91, produced a series of long-running plays, some of them winners of significant awards, that tickled audiences as the height of the wisecrack genre. “Brighton Beach Memoirs” (1983), “Biloxi Blues” (1985), “Broadway Bound” (1986), and “Lost in Yonkers” (1991) capped a…
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Film & TV The Old Schtick Still Works For Mel Brooks
At 92, Mel Brooks is a lot of things: A Kennedy Center award recipient, a titan of both stage and screen even a vampire grandfather in the recently-released “Hotel Transylvania 3,” but for all these distinctions he reduces himself to one thing. “I’m just a Jew comic,” he tells David Denby in a new profile…
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