Through films like “Blazing Saddles” and “Spaceballs” and a pioneering career on television and Broadway, Mel Brooks has had a lifetime of serving up the funny. Now, the 99-year-old comedy legend plans to share it all with his legion of fans.
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The National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York, announced last week that the Oscar-winning filmmaker and comedian has donated a major collection of previously unseen documents and photographs to the museum.
The donation includes approximately 150,000 production documents and 5,000 photographs spanning Brooks’ decadeslong career as a writer, performer, director and producer.
Brooks is one of the few entertainers to achieve EGOT status, having won an Academy Award for screenwriting, four Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and three Tonys.
“I’ve always been proud to say that I make people laugh for a living,” Brooks said in the press release. “So, knowing that my work will have a home at comedy’s national archive and continue making people laugh leaves me with a deep sense of pride.”
The archive features material from many of Brooks’ most iconic films, including “The Producers” (1967), “Blazing Saddles” (1974), “Young Frankenstein” (1974), “Silent Movie” (1976) and “Spaceballs” (1987). Items include storyboards, visual development materials and extensive production records from every feature film Brooks directed, along with photographs documenting him at work throughout his directing career.
Some material in the collection dates back more than 80 years, including some of Brooks’ earliest comedic writings — among them notes drafted while he was serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. The collection also features material from Brooks’ screenwriting work with Sid Caesar on “Your Show of Shows,” the live variety program that ran for four seasons in the 1950s and earned two Primetime Emmy Awards.
Among the highlights is the original lyric sheet for “Springtime for Hitler” from “The Producers.”
“I’m honored that my contributions will be preserved for future generations at the National Comedy Center — especially because it’s a place that was meaningful to my best friend Carl Reiner, who believed deeply in preserving comedy’s history,” Brooks said.
“I know he’d be happy that our work will be around for the next 2,000 years — or maybe even more,” Brooks added, alluding to his recurring “2000 Year Old Man” comedy routine with Reiner, who died in 2020 at age 98.
Journey Gunderson, the executive director of the National Comedy Center, called the Mel Brooks archive essential to the history of comedy.
“Preserving this material is not simply an act of stewardship — it is the safeguarding of a vital cultural legacy that will inform scholarship, creative inquiry, and historical understanding for generations,” she said.
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