According to The New York Times, comedy legend Mel Brooks was born "on his mother's kitchen table in Brooklyn in 1926," just two years before his father died. As History notes, at age 17 he joined the U.S. Army and served in Europe during World War II, clearing landmines ahead of the Allied advance. He was already writing his own comedy sketches at this point, and, according to the outlet, "Brooks once used a bullhorn to serenade nearby enemy troops along the German-French border with the Al Jolson song 'Toot, Toot, Tootsie'—and received a round of applause in return." He came under the stewardship of Your Show of Shows creator Sid Caesar after returning to the States and would go on to become an EGOT; people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony.
Brooks has long been known as both an actor and a filmmaker, but he's perhaps best known for his directorial endeavors, helming farcical classics like The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, Spaceballs, Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead and Loving It. He's still active today (he recently worked with Whoopi Goldberg and Jane Lynch on upcoming animated musical anthology Fairy Tale Forest), and he has the love of his life, late wife Anne Bancroft, to thank for that. "She believed in me right from the beginning, as a songwriter as well as a screenplay writer or whatever I wanted to do," Brooks told CBS News.
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