Mel Brooks’ memoir ‘All About Me’ out this fall

August 4, 2021 Associated Press, and Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle

In this May 17, 2017 file photo, Mel Brooks attends the LA Premiere of "If You're Not In The Obit, Eat Breakfast" in Beverly Hills, Calif. Brooks has a memoir coming in November. It's called “All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business.” Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File

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At 95, Mel Brooks, the famed comic actor-director who grew up in Brooklyn, is more than ready to flaunt his many achievements.

Ballantine Books announced Wednesday that Brooks’ memoir “All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business” will come out Nov. 30. Brooks is expected to share all the highlights — and a few setbacks — in a career that includes such classics as the films “Young Frankenstein” and “Blazing Saddles” and the film and Broadway play “The Producers.”

“It was joyous and at times bittersweet writing this book and reliving the peaks and valleys of my incredible journey from Brooklyn to Hollywood to Broadway,” Brooks said in a statement. “I hope fans of comedy will get a kick out of the stories behind my work, and really enjoy taking this remarkable ride with me.”

Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky in 1926 and grew up in a tenement in Williamsburg, at the time one of the city’s poorest East European-Jewish immigrant neighborhoods (Crown Heights and Flatbush were among the more well-to-do ones).

During an interview at the 92nd Street Y, Brooks once said that Williamsburg was not trendy during his era: “There were barrels and barrels of herring and sour pickles.” Like many comedians, he was a small, sickly child who used humor to avoid bullying.

During his teens, he played drums at a Catskill hotel during the summers, and first became a comic when the resident comedian became ill. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he became one of the resident writers for Sid Caesar’s early TV comedy shows, “Your Show of Shows,” working alongside Carl Reiner, Neil Simon and Woody Allen.

Brooks first became known to the public in the 1960s, when he and Reiner put out a series of comedy albums in which Brooks impersonated a 2,000-year-old man. The first film Brooks wrote and directed was the zany “The Producers” in 1967, which won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, although it was criticized by some for satirizing Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

More comic films (in which Brooks also appeared as an actor) followed, such as “The Twelve Chairs,” “Blazing Saddles,” “High Anxiety,” “Young Frankenstein” and “Silent Movie.” Starting in the 1980s, he produced a number of non-comedy films, such as “The Elephant Man” and “The Fly.”

In the early 2000s, Brooks turned to the Broadway stage with a musical version of “The Producers” that won 12 Tony awards. Showing his continued ties with Brooklyn, he filmed the movie version of the musical at the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Steiner Studios in 2004.

The film production, the first at the Steiner Studios, was announced in a ceremony with several officials present, including then-Gov. George Pataki. When Pataki wasn’t looking, Brooks taped a piece of paper with the word “Gov” onto his back.

Brooks recently appeared in “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast,” an HBO documentary about famous people who are still thriving in their nineties and 100s.