This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish comedian Mel Brooks.
Mel Brooks
The Latest
-
Culture For Mel Brooks’ 95th birthday, 4 ways he changed the world
From one Brooks, how many rivers flow? There’s a bit of trivia about the filmmaker, who turns 95 on Monday, that I often turn over in my head. On an episode of Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” Carl Reiner said that the two funniest people he knew were Brooks and a 16-year-old kid named Albert Einstein….
-
Culture Muse to Jews, Cloris Leachman played funny, flawed women
“Every time I hear a horse whinny I will forever think of Cloris’ unforgettable Frau Blücher,” Mel Brooks wrote Wednesday on Twitter, as the media reported Cloris Leachman’s death at the age of 94. Indeed, few characters or performances have been so linked to Foley sound as Leachman’s turn as the eldritch housekeeper from Brooks’…
-
Culture At 94, Mel Brooks makes his first ever political endorsement ad
While Mel Brooks has dabbled in the local politics of a frontier town, enjoined theatergoers to join a Nazi kickline and famously proclaimed “It’s good to be king,” he’s never made a video endorsing a political candidate. Even at 94, there’s a first time for everything. On October 21, Brooks’ son Max posted his father’s…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
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…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Music How a swaggering Jewish kid from East London became (albeit briefly) Britain’s greatest rock star and poet
- 2
News That whites-only, no Jews allowed Arkansas community is legal, says state’s attorney general. How?
- 3
Opinion As an Israeli political scientist, I resisted thinking this war was a genocide. Here’s what changed my mind
- 4
News In a first, Orthodox rabbinical school ordains an out gay rabbi
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture On a tour of Hasidic Brooklyn, this rabbi doesn’t have all the answers — but he knows who does
-
Opinion Which school of philosophy provides the best guide for how to think about Gaza?
-
Culture Everything’s terrible — but at least there are Moomins
-
Culture Roman Polanski’s take on the Dreyfus Affair is perfect for 2025. That’s the problem
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
