We celebrate Mel Brooks, who turned 100 on June 28, 2026.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, the legendary comedy filmmaker and EGOT winner, originally named Melvin Kaminsky, was raised in a modest, hardworking Jewish family. During his youth, he had an above-average sense of humor for a child and was known in his neighborhood for always doing tricks and spoofs whenever he could. He was drafted into the Army in 1944 and served in war-era Germany.
He loved being on stage and appeared in many shows that entertained the troops. This helped launch his career, and the rest is history. He always had an affinity for German, Jewish, and gay humor, and he certainly proved it to the world with his productions of The Producers, To Be or Not to Be, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, The 2000 Year Old Man, and many others.
After his discharge from the army, he worked at NBC alongside Neil Simon and Carl Reiner. They were the comedy writers for Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, shaping modern television comedy. His career as a comedy writer took off.
He and Reiner summered on Fire Island. Fellow centurions residing in the Ocean Beach/Seaview area recall them testing their 2000-Year-Old Man material together at cocktail parties to determine which lines were successful and which were not.
Brooks tried his luck in Hollywood, where his career skyrocketed as a writer, director, producer, and major star.
In 1983, he produced To Be or Not to Be, starring his late wife, Anne Bancroft. The role of the hairdresser/dresser in the film was played by James (Gypsy) Haake, a waiter at the Sea Shack in Cherry Grove in the late 1970s.
He and his wife, Anne, eventually bought a beachfront home in Lonelyville. They came to Cherry Grove regularly for dinner at The Monster in the 1970s and 1980s, and then at Top of the Bay until Anne’s death in 2005. Milton Berle and his wife, Ruth, would sometimes join Brooks and his wife at the Cherry Grove Community House Theater for shows. Perhaps they recognized an affinity for the humor found in our local productions.
In 2002, Anne Bancroft appeared in an off-Broadway show at the Signature Theatre. I have an autograph book she signed. I waited for Mel at the theater and asked him to sign it. He initially refused. I told him I live in Cherry Grove. We spoke for at least 15 minutes about the Grove shows and life on Fire Island, and he eventually signed it.
News Nation reported that Brooks expressed relief that his friend Carl Reiner was not alive to grieve the tragic December murder of his son, Rob Reiner, and that Brooks was quoted as saying, “he never could have survived this terrible, terrible thing.”
Shoshanna McCollum contributed to this report.
