How much is Mel Brooks worth?
| Net Worth: | $100 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional actor |
| Date of Birth: | 28 June 1926 |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 1.65 m |
About Mel Brooks
At the beginning of his senior year at Eastern District High School in 1944, Brooks was approached by an Army recruiter about taking the Army General Classification Test, which was an intelligence test similar to the Stanford–Binet. Following his outstanding performance, Brooks was accepted into the Army Specialized Training Program at the Virginia Military Institute, where he received instruction in electrical engineering, equestrian skills, and saber combat. In 1944, Brooks was recruited into the Army.
Twelve weeks after he was drafted, at the age of 18, he officially enlisted in the United States Army at the Fort Dix, New Jersey, induction center. After that, he was transferred to the Field Artillery Replacement Training Center at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for basic training and radio operator training. Brooks was subsequently transported back to Fort Dix for overseas duty.
Brooks was born on a tenement kitchen table, on June 28, 1926, in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York City, to Kate (née Brookman) and Max Kaminsky, and grew up in Williamsburg. His paternal family were German Jews originally from Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), while his maternal family were Jews originally from Kyiv, which was located in the Pale of Settlement under the rule of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine).
As the Allies pushed into Nazi Germany, it was the battalion’s job to clear booby-trapped structures and defuse land mines. They were stationed at Saarbrücken and Baumholder. The responsibility of locating land mines was given to Brooks, while an expert was responsible for defusing them. Brooks has alleged that in response to hearing Germans singing over loudspeakers, he sang into a bullhorn the song “Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo’ Bye!)” by Jewish performer Al Jolson.
After the war in Europe was over, Brooks enlisted in the Special Services to work as a comic touring Army sites. He was eventually promoted to the rank of acting corporal and given responsibility for the entertainment at Wiesbaden. In June of 1946, Brooks was given a discharge from the Army with honors, holding the rank of corporal.
He found more gratifying work behind the scenes in the entertainment industry, becoming a comic writer for television. In 1949, his friend Sid Caesar engaged him to write jokes for the DuMont/NBC series The Admiral Broadway Revue, paying him, off-the-books, $50 a week.
Brooks was one of the writers whom Caesar hired in 1950 for the groundbreaking variety comedy series Your Show of Shows. Carl Reiner was the other writer that Caesar chose for the series. Reiner, in his capacity as the creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, modeled the character of Morey Amsterdam’s Buddy Sorell after Brooks. The same can be said for the movie My Favorite Year (1982), which is mostly inspired by the events that Brooks went through while working as a writer on the show and includes an interaction with the actor Errol Flynn.
Brooks and his co-writer, Reiner, had developed a strong friendship and started improvising comedic routines together in their spare time when they were not working. Mel Tolkin and Mel Brooks both gave performances at Mamma Leone’s in October 1959 for the book launch of Moss Hart’s autobiography, Act One, which was published by Random House. Kenneth Tynan later reported that Mel Tolkin had filled in for Carl Reiner at the event.
Brooks relocated from New York to Hollywood in 1960, but he left his family behind and did not come back until the following year. On The Steve Allen Show, he and Reiner initially started performing their “2000 Year Old Man” performance. As a result of their performances, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks collaborated on the comedy album titled 2000 Years, which was released in 1961 and went on to sell more than a million copies.
Brooks had a hand in the development of the Broadway musical All American, which made its premiere on the Great White Way in the year 1962. He was the author of the play, which also featured lyrics written by Lee Adams and music composed by Charles Strouse. Ernest Pintoff was the director of the animated short film The Critic (1963), which was a satire of arty and esoteric cinema and was conceived of and created by Albert Brooks. Brooks offered a running commentary in the role of a confused moviegoer who was attempting to make sense of the confusing imagery. The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film was bestowed upon it.
Glazier provided financing for Brooks’s subsequent film, The Twelve Chairs, following the film The Producers’s average level of commercial success. A drunken former serf who “yearns for the regular beatings of yesteryear” played by Brooks, makes a cameo appearance in the film. The budget for the movie was set at $1.5 million, and it was shot in Yugoslavia. It was not well regarded by critics and did not achieve commercial success.
In 1972, he met agent David Begelman, who assisted him in setting up a deal with Warner Brothers to hire Brooks (in addition to Richard Pryor, Andrew Bergman, Norman Steinberg, and Alan Uger) as a script doctor for an unproduced script called Tex-X. Brooks was one of the people Warner Brothers hired. In the end, Brooks was given the opportunity to direct Blazing Saddles (1974), which was the director’s third feature film.
Blazing Saddles was a hit with younger audiences in spite of both negative and positive reviews. It grossed a total of $119.5 million in the United States and Canada, making it the second-highest grossing film in the United States in 1974. It garnered three nominations for the Academy Awards, including one for Madeline Kahn as the Best Actress in a Supporting Role, one for Best Film Editing, and one for Best Music, Original Song.
When Things Were Rotten was Brooks’ second attempt at working in television, and it aired in 1975, at the pinnacle of his success in the film industry. The show was a satire of the Robin Hood legend, although it only lasted for 13 episodes. Nearly 20 years later, in response to the success of the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which was released in 1991, Brooks produced another Robin Hood parody titled Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). It brought back a few lines of dialogue from his television series as well as from prior films that Mel Brooks had directed.
In 1981, Brooks made a joke about how the only genres he had not parodied yet were historical epics and Biblical spectacles. Brooks has done spoofs of nearly every other genre. The first part of “History of the World” was a humorous look at human culture from the beginning of human history through the beginning of the French Revolution. Another moderate commercial success, it brought in $31 million and was written, produced, and directed by Brooks. Narration for the film was provided by Orson Welles. Life Stinks (1991), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1993) were all films that Albert Brooks directed during the following decade.
In addition, Brooks has provided his voice for other animated characters. In the animated film Robots (2005), he provided the voice of Bigweld, the master inventor. Years later, in the animated film Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014), he had a cameo appearance as Albert Einstein.
The public declaration of Brooks’ support for a political candidate came in the form of an endorsement for Joe Biden in the presidential election of 2020. It was revealed on October 18, 2021 that Brooks would write and produce History of the World Part II, a follow-up television series to his movie that was released in 1981. In 2021, when Brooks was 95 years old, he wrote a memoir under the title All About Me!
