The free biography of mel brooks moses

A one-man comic industry, Mel Brooks wrote, produced, directed and starred in some of the most uproarious film and television comedies of the 1960s and 1970s, including "The Producers" (1967), "Blazing Saddles" (1974) and "Young Frankenstein" (1974), which, along with a hit Broadway version of "The Producers," ushered him into that rare circle of talent that could claim an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony to their names. Born Melvin Kaminsky to a family of Russian and Polish Jews in Brooklyn, New York on June 28, 1926, Brooks discovered humor at an early age as a way to combat bullying over his small stature and sickly frame.

He also found his life's ambition during this time period by attending a performance of "Anything Goes" on Broadway; he left the show determined to make a career as an entertainer. Brooks found his first outlet for that goal as a poolside entertainment and master of ceremonies at resorts in the Catskills region of New York. Billed as Mel Brooks, he performed as a musician and comic through his teenaged years, pausing in 1944 to serve with the United States Army's 78th Infantry Division during World War II. Upon his return to the United States, Brooks continued to perform on the resort circuit while also working as an actor on stage and in radio.

In 1949, he took his first job as a comedy writer for "The Admiral Broadway Revue" (NBC/DuMont, 1949), a live variety series featuring a powerfully built comic with a talent for mimicry and pantomime named Sid Caesar. When Caesar got his own series, "Your Show of Show" (NBC, 1950-1954), he took Brooks and several other "Revue" writers with him, along with such future talents as Neil Simon, Carl Reiner and Woody Allen; the resulting variety series was one of the most acclaimed comedy programs of television's Golden Age, and a profoundly influential series on television comedy in the 20th century.

Brooks would work with Caesar on several subsequent television projects before moving to Los

In the 1940s, when Mel Brooks launched himself into comedy, he invented a persona: “Crazy Mel.” Perhaps you remember Crazy Mel: He was exuberant, reckless, loud—a wild, comedic id. Carson loved him. So did his audience. When Crazy Mel wasn’t vamping on TV, he was mugging in photos, including one gloriously zany shot in which he appears wild-eyed and open-mouthed, like a zoo animal hit with a tranquilizer dart. Silently, he conveys shock, fear, and aggression. “Tragedy is when I cut my finger,” Brooks once said. “Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”

That crazy photo appears, fittingly, on the cover of FunnyMan, a rich and revealing biography of Brooks by Patrick McGilligan. It’s an ancient human truth that comedians get away with murder, and here’s proof, 640 pages of it. Consider Brooks’s films, which serve up whatever comic mischief your inner teenager craves. For schlock, Spaceballs. For sheer chutzpah, The Producers. For cheeky homage, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, and Silent Movie. For inspired, juvenile hokum—well, pretty much all of them.

If you love Brooks’s comic anarchy, you might hope for an appreciative biography. But McGilligan, a seasoned chronicler of Hollywood lives, is a cool, methodical narrator with a well-hidden ruthless streak. In Brooks, he has a fine subject, a well-known but not terribly well-understood creative genius. Brooks’s exuberance is legendary; his colossal egotism can be inferred—you don’t conquer Hollywood and Broadway without a healthy self-regard. But the rest of Brooks’s character may come as a harsh surprise. That he slavishly pursued wealth and fame, and was often selfish, spiteful, and cruel—Crazy Mel, minus the impish charm—is the main revelation here, served in huge, unsavory spoonfuls.

FunnyMan tells the improbable story of how Melvin Kaminsky, the short, unbookish, unhandsome son of Kitty Kaminsky, became a comedy icon, an Emmy, Grammy, Tony, and Oscar winner. He was Kitty’s