Mel Brooks Donates Archive to National Comedy Center Ahead of 100th Birthday

Comedian Mel Brooks, a month before turning 100, is donating thousands of documents and photographs from his seven-decade career to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York. The archive includes jokes and notes from his World War II Army service, materials from films like The Producers, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein, and original handwritten lyrics for "Springtime for Hitler." Brooks, born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn in 1926, began his career writing for Sid Caesar's 1950s TV shows. He gained fame with the "2,000-Year-Old Man" routine alongside Carl Reiner, winning a 1998 Grammy for Best Spoken Comedy Album. The donation joins archives of George Carlin, Joan Rivers, and Lucille Ball at the institution, established in 2018. Laura LaPlaca, head of the archive, emphasized preserving Brooks' legacy for study. The center recently published Funny Stuff: How Comedy Shaped American History with the Smithsonian, featuring a foreword by Brooks.