Funny Man

by Patrick McGilligan

  “He was very talented” is from the interview with Kitty Kaminsky in “Mel Brooks’ Mom Is Alive and Well” by Eunice Martin, Women’s News Service, The Daily Times-News (Burlington, NC) (March 15, 1978). “A hotbed of artistic intellectuality . . .” and “My very first impressions . . .” are from The Director Within: Storytellers of Stage and Screen by Rose Eichenbaum (Wesleyan, 2014). “A frankfurter, a root beer . . .” is from “Believing in Make Believe: An Interview with Mel Brooks” by Dan Lybarger, The Keaton Chronicle (Autumn 1997). Brooks talked about Chaplin and Keaton in “At the Movies” by Guy Flatley, the New York Times (Aug. 27, 1976). “Life was dirty . . .” is from “Mel Brooks: King of Clowns” by Maurice Zolotow, Reader’s Digest (April 1978). “The sire of mugging” is from “Mel Brooks: They Laughed When I Stood Up” by Arnold Reisman, Boston After Dark (Jan. 12, 1971). “Tooth problems . . .” is Max Brooks from “I Am a National Treasure” by Scott Vogel, Washington Post (Dec. 6, 2009).

  “I brought the house down . . .” is from “The History of Mel Brooks, from Jelly Jars to Yahrzeit Glasses” by Curt Schleier, The Forward (May 13, 2013). “I always got ’em at family parties . . .” and the vignettes of Uncle Joe and Anything Goes are from Brooks’s bylined “Springtime for the Music Man in Me,” New York Times (April 15, 2001). “That day infected me . . .” and “A musical not only transports you . . .” are from Broadway: The American Musical by Michael Kantor and Laurence Maslon (Bullfinch, 2004), based on Kantor’s documentary film of the same title. “My all-time favorite composer” and “the tunes and lyrics to a whole bunch . . .” are from MB’s bylined “Let Me Tell You How I Made It in Movies,” The Sunday Times (UK) (June 10, 2001). “On cold winter mornings . . .” is from “10 Questions” by Belinda Luscombe, Time (Dec. 3, 2012).

  “Exuberant joy of living” is from “And Then He Got Smart” by Joanne Stang, New York Times (Jan. 30, 1966). “Dump neighborhood theater . . .” is from “King of Clowns.” “How many beans . . .” and “The garbage trucks were big . . .” are from “What I’ve Learned: Mel Brooks” by Cal Fussman, Esquire (Dec. 17, 2007). “My Labor Party beginnings . . .” is from “The Entertainers: Max and Mel Brooks” by Taffy Brodesser-Anker, Town & Country (Aug. 5, 2014). “Lived on welfare checks” is from “Pell-Mel” by Roger D. Friedman, The Daily News (New York) (July 25, 1993).

  It Happened in the Catskills, an oral history by Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer (Harcourt, 1991), and Stephen Citron’s Jerry Herman: Poet of the Showtime (Yale University Press, 2004) added to my portrait of Don Appell. Stefan Kanfer’s A Summer World: The Attempt to Build a Jewish Eden (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989), The Catskills: Its History and How It Changed America by Stephen M. Silverman and Raphael D. Silver (Knopf, 2015), and Peter Davis’s 1986 documentary The Rise and Fall of the Borscht Belt helped illuminate the background and legacy of the Catskills.

  “Go to the diving board . . .” is from “Up a Notch or Two from the Borscht Belt” by Norman Mark, Los Angeles Times (July 14, 1968). “Sid was the Apollo . . .” is from “And Then He Got Smart.” Uncle Harry and the Joseph Dolphin anecdotes are from “Mel Brooks!” by Mel Brooks (as told to Eric Estrin), www.thewrap.com (July 21, 2009). “You hear about the people . . .” is from “A Man Who Makes Us Laugh” by Dick Schaap, Parade (Jan. 22, 1984). “Court jester” and “Pretty soon, I came to hate . . .” are from “Mel Brooks Is Finally Taken Seriously” by Charles Champlin, Los Angeles Times (Dec. 29, 1974). “Very influential on my work” is from It’s Good to Be the King. “One of my favorite swing recordings” is from Desert Island Discs, BBC radio (July 1, 1978). “Some punch lines should be . . .” is from “Quiet on the Set!” by Robert Weide, DGA Quarterly (Summer 2012).

  “Charcoal-gray thick alpaca coat” is from It’s Good to Be the King. “I was his sixteen-year-old assistant . . .” is from “The Producer” by Frances Hardy, The Daily Mail (UK) (Dec. 26, 2005). “Having the greatest influence . . .” is Joseph Papp quoted in Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public and the Greatest Story Ever Told by Kenneth Turan and Joseph Papp (Doubleday, 2010). “The class shmendrick” is Lester Persky from “Out of the Tax Shelters and Into the Trenches with Lester Persky” by Marie Brenner, New West (Jan. 31, 1977). Background on Bright Boy and producer Arthur J. Beckard is from The Absolute Joy of Work: From Vermont to Hollywood, Broadway and Damn Near ’Round the World by Carleton Carpenter (BearManor, 2016) and David Merrick: The Abominable Showman by Howard Kissel (Applause, 2000).

  CHAPTER 2: 1944: BIG WORLD

  “Almost immediately . . .” is from “‘Fort’ Gun Jammed, Boro Man Freezes Repairing It,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Dec. 20, 1943). “I went for a little while . . . ,” “For years I thought Roosevelt . . . ,” “Only when it’s dirty . . . ,” and “A stork that dropped a baby . . .” are from the Playboy interview. “I knew what Hitler was doing . . .” is from Lisa Ades’s 2018 documentary GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II. “The flowers of Virginia . . .” is from “Mel Brooks Sang for Mal Vincent” by Mal Vincent, The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA) (July 31, 2015). “A tough Jew from Brooklyn” is from “Mel Brooks: King of the Politically Incorrect” by Lynda Gorov, Moment (November–December 2010). “Somewhere in my head I said . . .” is from “Mel Brooks on Blazing New Comedic Trails in Blazing Saddles” by Adam Pockross, www.yahoo.com (May 7, 2014). “Near suicidal” is from “Mel Brooks Keeps Joking While Revisiting His Hits” by Steven Zeitchik, Los Angeles Times (Dec. 9, 2012). “Brooklyn-in-the-West . . .” is from “Young Frankenstein Creator Knows the Score” by Lawson Taitte, Dallas Morning News (Jan. 2, 2011).

  The Virginia Military Institute kindly furnished roster, curriculum, and group records from MB’s stint at VMI. Also informative was “Mel Brooks: After VMI” by George Austin Adams, The Virginian (Fall 1986). 1104th Combat Engineering Group activities were described and tracked with the help of Group History: 1104 Engineer Combat Group: 25 March 1943—9 May 1945 by Glenn E. Allred; The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Germany by Alfred M. Beck, Abe Bortz, Charles W. Lynch, Lida Mayo, and Ralph F. Weld, tothosewhoserved.org (1985), especially “Chapter 22: The Roer Crossing and the Remagen Bridgehead”; and “Army Engineers at the Battle of the Bulge” by Gustav J. Person, Engineer (September–December 2014). Brooks’s discharge records were obtained from the US National Archives.

  “I might be the first man . . .” is from It’s Good to Be the King. “Fired on by a lot of kids . . .” is from Terry Gross’s interview with MB on Fresh Air (National Public Radio) (Jan. 1, 2004). “That molten ball of hatred . . .” and “I had a wide audience . . .” are from “Mel Brooks: King of the Politically Incorrect.” “Barracks character,” “Every time Bob Hope came by . . . ,” “chauffeuse,” “certain rare cognacs,” “There wasn’t a nineteen-year-old . . . ,” and “Nothing frightened me . . .” are from the New Yorker profile. The Fort Dix Post layout of MB’s rubber faces is undated and flashes by on-screen in Robert Trachtenberg’s 2013 American Masters documentary Mel Brooks: Make a Noise. “In the barracks there . . .” is Stanley Kaplan from his 2005 interview in the Freeman/Lozier Library, Bellevue University, Bellevue, NE.

  The saga of the Red Bank Players is reconstructed from numerous Red Bank Register and Asbury Park Evening Press clippings, but also crucial was William Holtzman’s account in Seesaw, which includes an interview with Wilbur Roach/Will Jordan. Brooks’s signature song is excerpted in many MB interviews with slight variations dating from its first appearance in an Associated Press wire service feature in 1950. The version in this chapter is from “. . . And Please Love Melvin Brooks!” by Lisa Mitchell, Saturday Evening Post (May–June 1978). “I’m a better salesman . . .” is from “Brooks’ Bookshop” by Marc Kristal, Saturday Review (August 1983). “Sort of groupie . . .” is from Sid Caesar’s Where Have I Been?: An Autobiography (with Bill Davidson) (Crown, 1982).

  Martha Schmoyer LoMonaco’s Every Week a Broadway Revue: The Tamiment Playhouse, 1921–1960 (Greenwood, 1992) was useful for context. “It looked like
a family of birds” is from Caesar’s Writers, the 1996 documentary capturing the Writers Guild–sponsored reunion of Caesar’s writers. “A lovely little lady . . . ,” “I always called [Coca] Immy . . . ,” “He didn’t know how right . . . ,” “He would make catlike noises . . . ,” and “the funniest, the most good-hearted . . .” are from Caesar’s Hours: My Life in Comedy, with Love and Laughter (with Eddy W. Friedfeld) (Public Affairs, 2003). “Transferred in toto” is from Max Liebman’s June 28, 1977, letter to Carl Reiner (CR), among Liebman’s papers. “More tics than a flophouse mattress” is from Larry Gelbart’s Laughing Matters: On Writing M*A*S*H, Tootsie, Oh, God!, and a Few Other Things (Random House, 1998). Kenneth Tynan is always quoted from his bylined New Yorker profile of MB. “Out of her guts” is Mel Tolkin (MT) from a Feb. 17, 1989, letter to Lucille Kallen; unless otherwise noted, the Tolkin letters are among Kallen’s papers. Steve Allen includes the “Bomba, The Jungle Boy” sketch in his MB profile in Funny People (Stein & Day, 1981). “I belonged to Sid . . .” is from Caesar’s Writers. “I lost my father when I was only two . . .” is from “Hollywood Jew” by Danielle Berrin, Jewish Journal (Jan. 29, 2015).

  CHAPTER 3: 1949: FUNNY IS MONEY

  Your Show of Shows by Ted Sennett (Macmillan, 1977), the first book on the series, remains an essential source on Sid Caesar’s acclaimed program. MB discusses his psychoanalysis in many interviews, but I particularly relied upon “On and off the Couch with Mel Brooks” by Dick Hobson, Los Angeles (December 1977); the chapter on MB in Dick Selzer’s The Star Treatment (Bobbs-Merrill, 1977); and “Brooks Puts a Spin on ‘Vertigo’” by Mel Gussow, New York Times (Dec. 23, 1977). Unless otherwise noted, Mel Tolkin (MT) is quoted from his unpublished memoir “Where Did I Go Right?”

  “What we did, every night . . .” is from Caesar’s Writers. “I was not entertained . . .” is from a typed, one-page, undated reminiscence of MB among Liebman’s papers. “He always had a joke . . .” and “I always resented the fact . . .” are from Sunny Parich’s 1998 interview with Lucille Kallen in the Television Academy Foundation oral history archives. “The Russian novelists . . .” is from the Playboy interview. “An ancient Jewish respect for literature” is Lucille Kallen from Seesaw. “The human condition” is from Mel Tolkin’s Associated Press obituary (Nov. 28, 2007). “He was never Bob Hope . . .” is from MT’s obituary in Los Angeles Times (Nov. 27, 2007). “We were too stupid . . .” is MT from “Forty Years Later, the Laughter’s Still Loud” by William Grimes, New York Times (Aug. 18, 1996). “I was the king of Williamsburg” is from MB’s commentary on The Incredible Mel Brooks box set. “Brooks was on the staff . . .” is from “An Interview with Bill Persky” by Kliph Nesteroff, classicshowbiz.blogspot (March 11, 2011). “Without a character . . .” is Larry Gelbart from Laughing Matters. “Humiliation of being held by his feet . . .” is from a June 6, 1991, letter from MT to Kallen. “Incoherent with fear” is from “Where Did I Go Right?” “I wanted credit . . .” is from “Mel Brooks Zaps the Movie Schmendricks” by Albert Goldman, New York (Aug. 12, 1968). “Part of the whole business . . .” is from “The Mad Mad Mel Brooks” by Paul Zimmerman, Newsweek (Feb. 17, 1975).

  Earl Wild is always quoted from A Walk on the Wild Side: A Memoir by Virtuoso Pianist Earl Wild (Ivory Classics, 2011). “Mel coming in at one . . .” is CR from “Dialogue on Film: Carl Reiner,” American Film (Dec. 1, 1981). “He used to bare his teeth . . .” is MT from the New Yorker profile. The limerick anecdote and my version of the oft-told Scotch tape anecdote are from “Where Did I Go Right?” Marsha Mason is quoted from Journey: A Personal Odyssey (Simon & Schuster, 2000).

  “He performs brilliantly . . .” and “a rule observed more in the breach . . .” are MT from his oral history with the Kitchen Sisters for the California Audiovisual Preservation Project. “You have to distinguish . . .” is Joseph Heller from the New Yorker profile. “I instantly knew Mel Brooks . . .” is CR from “Brooks and Reiner” by Claudia Dreifus, Modern Maturity (March 1999). “Recognized that performing talent . . .” is from Larry Wilde’s probing interview with MB in How the Great Comedy Writers Create Laughter (Nelson-Hall, 1976). “What he secretly wanted . . .” is CR from the New Yorker profile. “For a good part of an hour” and the origins of the 2000 Year Old Man are from CR’s My Anecdotal Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2003); Reiner wrote about Brooks in several books, and I also drew from his later memoir I Remember Me (AuthorHouse, 2013). “Even if I remembered . . .” is from “Mel Brooks: The TV Worth Watching Interview, Take 2” by David Bianculli, www.tvworthwatching.com (Dec. 10, 2012). Lester Colodny is quoted from A Funny Thing Happened: Life Behind the Scenes—Hollywood Hilarity and Manhattan Mayhem (SciArt Media, 2010). “Berserk faggot row” is from the New Yorker profile. Herman Raucher is quoted from his novel There Should Have Been Castles (Delacorte, 1978); he declined an interview for this book. “Hebrew chipmunk” is from Alan Yentob’s 1981 documentary I Thought I Was Taller: A Short History of Mel Brooks (BBC/Arena).

  CHAPTER 4: 1952: DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES

  “Envisioned his death” is Lucille Kallen from the “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” special section in Esquire (May 1972). “A tummler . . .” is from the interview with Greg Garrison in the Your Show of Shows chapter of Emmy Award Winning Nighttime Television Shows, 1948–2004 by Wesley Hyatt (McFarland, 2006). “Add two jokes . . .” is from MT’s Jan. 1, 1990, letter to Kallen. “A very, very funny mind . . .” is MT from “Neil Simon’s Laughter on the 23rd Floor: The Show Behind Your Show of Shows” by Alan Wallach, Newsday (Nov. 22, 1993). Bill Hayes is quoted from his joint autobiography (with Susan Seaforth Hayes) Like Sands Through the Hourglass (NAL, 2005). “The same background . . .” is from the New Yorker profile.

  The Harry Cohn anecdote is constructed from versions Brooks told on Open End (Feb. 14, 1960) and The Dick Cavett Show, the latter where MB was joined by fellow filmmakers Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, and Frank Capra (Jan. 21, 1972). “So were the girls” is from Serious Jibber-Jabber with Conan O’Brien (Oct. 21, 2013). “Crass . . .” is from Robert Alan Aurthur’s “Hanging Out” column in Esquire (May 1972). Production records and memoranda from the USC Archives of the Cinematic Arts, particularly items in the Jerry Wald Collection, informed my account of MB’s stint at Columbia Pictures.

  My account of The Vamp is drawn partly from The Ballad of John Latouche: An American Lyricist’s Life and Work by Howard Pollack (Oxford University Press, 2017). MB’s stint on The Red Buttons Show is reconstructed from the version he told on Open End and Kliph Nesteroff’s interview with him in “Red Buttons and the Acrimony of Hilarity,” blog.wfmu.org (March 26, 2015). “He just takes everything . . .” is from Michael Rosen’s 2000 interview with Max Wilk in the Television Academy Foundation oral history archives. I also consulted Sunny Parich’s 1998 interview with Ernest Kinoy (another staff writer of The Imogene Coca Show) in the Television Academy Foundation oral history archives. “We were political people . . .” is from Caesar’s Writers. Sono Osato is quoted from her memoir Distant Dances (Knopf, 1980). “Substituting energy and noise . . .” is from Seesaw.

  CHAPTER 5: 1955: CLUB CAESAR

  “We became our own fan club” is from “Maybe Forgetting a Detail, but Never a Punch Line” by Walter Goodman, New York Times (Aug. 19, 1996). “[Simon] would have to tell Carl Reiner . . .” is from “On and Off the Couch.” “We nearly got to punching each other” is from “Mel Brooks,” People (May 4, 1989). The leprechaun/Irish saloon anecdote is from “Where Did I Go Right?” “[Brooks] wasn’t writing . . .” is from CR’s bonus interview in “In the Beginning: The Caesar Years” on The Incredible Mel Brooks box set.

  “Kind and warm and bright” and “psychological mess” are from the Playboy interview. “All I could say . . .” is from It’s Good to Be the King. “Anxiety hysteria” and “multiple guilt on every level . . .” are from “Brooks Puts a Spin on ‘Vertigo.’” “Was really responsible for the growth . . .” is from “And Then He Got Smart.” “Accepting the
mantle . . .” is from “On and Off the Couch.” Stefan Kanfer wrote about Freud, Reik, and Jewish humor in A Summer World.

  “We thought we were bringing . . .” is from “Blazing Mel” by Anne Marie Welsh, San Diego Union-Tribune (Dec. 29, 2002). “Concerned that my probing questions . . .” and “our number one benefactor” are from CR’s My Anecdotal Life. “A sexual relationship” and all other characterizations of what transpired inside the Brooks/Baum marriage are from mutual acquaintances, court depositions, and divorce records. “There are only twenty-four minutes . . .” is Sid Caesar from Seesaw. “Just so long as [Caesar and Coca] . . .” is from “TV’s Comics Went Thataway” by Gilbert Millstein, The New York Times Magazine (Feb. 2, 1958). The Kay Thompson project is reconstructed from Theodore “Ted” Granik’s papers and Kay Thompson: From Funny Face to “Eloise” by Sam Irvin (Simon & Schuster, 2010).

  CHAPTER 6: 1957: THE GENIUS AWAKES

  “Eat you alive . . .” is from “A Conversation with the Real Woody Allen” by Ken Kelley, Rolling Stone (July 1976). “One of the best hunks . . .” is from “TV Keynote: Ginger Rogers Reaps Benefit of Work,” The Troy [NY] Record (May 1, 1959). MB’s typewritten letter to Moss Hart can be found among Hart’s papers at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. Tony Randall is quoted from Matt Roush’s 1998 interview in the Television Academy Foundation oral history archives. Speed Vogel is quoted from No Laughing Matter by Joseph Heller and Vogel (Simon & Schuster, 2004); “Masterly Method in Brooks’ Madness” by Joan Goodman, The Times (UK) (Oct. 6, 1981); and Vogel’s bylined “The Gourmet Club” in The Southampton Review (Summer 2008). “Perfect producer . . .” is from Lee Adams’s Aug. 16, 1961, letter to Hillard Elkins, in Elkins’s papers. The Open End transcript, dated Feb. 14, 1960, is among Larry Gelbart’s papers in Special Collections at UCLA. MB’s failed collaboration with Jerry Lewis is reconstructed from production memoranda in the Lewis collection in the Cinematic Arts Library of USC. I also incorporated information from the Hunt Stromberg and Hal Humphreys papers at USC; items in Hillard Elkins’s collection at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research; and clippings and documents from The Ladies Man file of the Paramount Studio Collection at the Margaret Herrick Library. Shawn Levy’s King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis (St. Martin’s Press, 1996) was indispensable. I also drew from Justin Bozung’s two-part interview with Bill Richmond on blog.tvstoreonline.com (May 5 and 7, 2015) and consulted “The Sidekick” by Tom Keller in Written By (April–May 2011). “Made no contribution whatsoever . . .” is from Associate Producer Ernest D. Glucksman’s Feb. 15, 1961, memo to Paramount executive Eugene H. Frank in The Ladies Man files. “He had paid $10,000–$12,000 . . .” is from Serious Jibber-Jabber with Conan O’Brien. Bob Schwartz supplied background information relating to his father, Marvin Schwartz.