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Mel Brooks, the Williamsburg kid who turned Nazi jokes into art, just turned 100

Mel Brooks, the Williamsburg-born comedy legend who turned childhood trauma into groundbreaking satire, celebrates his 100th birthday with tributes and a new HBO documentary.

Mel Brooks, the Williamsburg kid who turned Nazi jokes into art, just turned 100
Mel Brooks, celebrating his 100th birthday, beams at the premiere of his HBO documentary 'The 99 Year Old Man!' — a fitting tribute to the Williamsburg-born comedy legend.
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Mel Brooks, the comedian and filmmaker who was born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn and turned his childhood there into a half-century of movies, just turned 100. According to PageSix, Brooks was born on June 28, 1926, and the man who voiced the “2000 Year Old Man” is still cracking jokes about turning 100.

Brooks grew up in Williamsburg, and he has said flatly that those years, not the Oscar and not his marriage to Anne Bancroft, were the best of his life. “I wanted to keep the party going. I wanted to keep the happiness and joy and explosions of laughter going into a dour part of our lives, not our childhood anymore,” Brooks told The Associated Press in 2021, in comments PageSix republished. Asked once to name the happiest part of his life, he said it was ages 4 or 5 to 9. Asked what happened at 9, he said: “Homework.”

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Featured image: Images for HBO

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