Mel Brooks: WWII, Ethnicity, Gene Wilder & Recent Projects

Some comedians age into nostalgia; Mel Brooks aged into a second century. A 2026 Ynetnews profile describes him, at 100, as still active and still working, and this article covers his Brooklyn Jewish childhood, WWII draft notice, and defining friendship with Gene Wilder.

Born: June 28, 1926 ·
Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York City ·
Decades active: 9 ·
Awards: Oscar, Grammy, Tony, Emmy ·
WWII service: U.S. Army ·
Recent project: History of the World, Part II (2023)

Underneath the punchlines is the story people keep searching for: a Brooklyn Jewish childhood, a WWII draft notice, and a defining friendship with Gene Wilder. This is the verified file on all of it, with the gaps labeled.

Quick snapshot

1Confirmed facts

• Born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, in 1926 and drafted into the U.S. Army in 1944 (U.S. Department of War records).
• Publicly identifies as Jewish and has addressed anti-Semitism in interviews (CBS News interview).
• Parents were Jewish immigrants with roots in Germany, Ukraine, Poland, and Danzig/Gdańsk (Freedom From Religion Foundation profile).

2What’s unclear

• The exact wording of Gene Wilder’s final words rests only on family recollections.
• Mel Brooks’ private vote in any presidential election is not a matter of public record.
• Song-playlist stories attached to Wilder’s death and Freddie Mercury’s funeral come from personal accounts, not official records.

3Timeline signal

• 1944: drafted into the U.S. Army (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fact sheet).
• 2023: History of the World, Part II premieres on Hulu. (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fact sheet)
• 2026: still active and working at 100 (Ynetnews profile). (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fact sheet)

4What’s next

• Watch for continued public appearances in his 100th-birthday year.
• Any new projects connected to the History of the World franchise.
• A definitive family statement on the Gene Wilder song stories.

Eight facts, one pattern: the parts of Brooks’ life people argue about — politics, exact last words, private votes — sit on top of a biography that is itself remarkably well documented.

Field	Detail
Birth name	Melvin James Kaminsky
Born	June 28, 1926 (Freedom From Religion Foundation)
Birthplace	Brooklyn, New York City
Ethnicity	Jewish American (CBS News)
Occupation	Actor, comedian, filmmaker, screenwriter, composer, producer
WWII service	U.S. Army during World War II
Awards	Oscar, Grammy, Tony, Emmy (EGOT)
Notable films	The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs

Is Mel Brooks still active?

Recent projects and public appearances

• 2021: memoir All About Me! published.
• 2023: History of the World, Part II premieres on Hulu.
• 2026: a Ynetnews profile finds Brooks still active and working at 100.

Brooks has never staged a formal retirement. The 2023 Hulu series History of the World, Part II gave him a new writing and voice-acting credit nearly seventy years after his first television work, and the 2021 memoir All About Me! covered the ground his comedy always returns to: childhood, show business, and the war between them.

Career longevity

• Wrote for 1950s television comedy, including Your Show of Shows.
• Made his feature directorial debut with The Producers in the late 1960s.
• Completed the EGOT circuit — Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.

What audiences still associate with him

• The Producers (late 1960s)
• Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (1974)
• Spaceballs (1987)
• The 2001 Broadway musical The Producers

For most audiences, Brooks is those titles. Search behavior is more distracted than his filmography suggests: he is frequently tangled up with Mel Robbins, the author and podcast host, and the two names collide in autocomplete. That confusion is worth naming because it explains why a comedy legend’s search results include questions that read like self-help queries.

What is Mel Brooks’ ethnicity?

Born Melvin Kaminsky

• Birth name: Melvin James Kaminsky.
• Born June 28, 1926, in Brooklyn, New York City.
• The stage name “Mel Brooks” came later, after his Army discharge.

The “Mel” was always real; the “Brooks” was the invention. Born into a Jewish household in Brooklyn in 1926, Brooks grew up in the immigrant-heavy, joke-driven Brooklyn that later showed up all over his work. His ethnic identity was never a secret, never a phase, and never something he softened for mainstream audiences.

Jewish family background

• Parents were Jewish immigrants from Europe, with family roots spanning Germany, Ukraine, Poland, and Danzig/Gdańsk (Freedom From Religion Foundation profile).
• Brooks has publicly identified himself as Jewish throughout his career (CBS News interview).

His parents’ origins — Germany, Ukraine, Poland, and the port city of Danzig, now Gdańsk — put Brooks one generation away from the Europe that produced the catastrophes his comedy later spent decades mocking. In a CBS News interview on anti-Semitism, he treated the subject as lived experience rather than abstraction.

Name change to Mel Brooks

• Adopted the professional name Mel Brooks after leaving the Army (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fact sheet).
• Made the switch as he moved into professional comedy work.

The name change marks a transition: the Kaminsky who served in the Army became Brooks in the comedy clubs and writing rooms. Fans who search “Mel Brooks ethnicity” are usually looking for confirmation of the Kaminsky years; the stage name is part of the answer, but the Jewish identity never changed with it.

The implication: Brooks’ Jewishness is not decorative backstory. It is the lens through which his best-known work — from The Producers to Blazing Saddles — was written.

Did Mel Brooks fight in WWII?

U.S. Army service

• Drafted in 1944.
• Assigned to the Army Specialized Training Program at Virginia Military Institute.
• Arrived in France, then Belgium, in November 1944.

Brooks was 18 when the Army drafted him. His entrance-exam scores were strong enough that he was placed in the Army Specialized Training Program at Virginia Military Institute before deployment — and by November 1944, he was in France and then Belgium.

European theater duty

• Forward artillery observer with the 78th Infantry Division.
• Transferred to the 1104th Engineer Combat Group.
• Fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
• Cleared German land mines so Allied forces could advance.

The military record is specific. Brooks served as a forward artillery observer with the 78th Infantry Division before transferring to the 1104th Engineer Combat Group; he took part in the Battle of the Bulge, and one of his assignments was clearing German land mines so Allied forces could move forward (U.S. Department of War records). He also encountered anti-Semitism from some fellow soldiers, a detail documented by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fact sheet).

Impact of WWII on his work

• May 1945: Brooks saw starving Jewish refugees who had escaped concentration camps (U.S. Department of War records).
• Honorably discharged as a corporal.
• The war became the subtext of his satire of Hitler and authoritarianism.

In May 1945, as the war in Europe was ending, Brooks saw starving Jewish refugees who had escaped the camps — an image that never left his comedy. The Producers only works as a joke about Hitler because the man making the joke had been inside that history, a few years earlier, as a soldier. He was honorably discharged as a corporal. The service record is public because the military itself published it — a rare thing for a comedian whose life otherwise lives in press clippings.

Did Mel Brooks get along with Gene Wilder?

Creative partnership

• The Producers (late 1960s)
• Blazing Saddles (1974)
• Young Frankenstein (1974)

Yes — with texture. Brooks and Wilder made three films together, and their last one, Young Frankenstein, is the collaboration most often discussed when the partnership comes up. In a 2016 Los Angeles Times interview, Brooks described Wilder as a collaborator and walked through the creative partnership behind the film (Los Angeles Times interview).

The relationship was close but sometimes intense — a dynamic Brooks has acknowledged in interviews about their work together.

How Brooks described Wilder after his death

When Wilder died in 2016 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, the conversation returned to their films. In the Los Angeles Times interview from that year, Brooks discussed Young Frankenstein and described Wilder as a collaborator — his consistent public frame for a man he had spent a lifetime praising (Los Angeles Times interview).

The pattern: Brooks has never once turned a question about Wilder into a punchline. That consistency — across decades — is the real answer to “did they get along?”: professionally, yes; personally, close enough that the question still gets asked, and Brooks still answers it seriously.

Does Mel Brooks support Trump?

Public statements

• No public endorsement of Donald Trump is recorded.
• No reviewed interview from Brooks’ 2020s press cycle contains a statement of support.

The honest answer is also the shortest: there is no public record of Mel Brooks endorsing Donald Trump. Brooks has done extensive press in the 2020s, including the 2026 profile marking his 100th year, and none of it contains an endorsement. The absence of evidence is not a secret ballot; it is simply the entire public file.

Political satire in his films

• The Producers: a Broadway scheme built on a musical about Hitler.
• Blazing Saddles: a western that turns racism into farce.
• History of the World: a sketch history in which every empire gets mocked.

Brooks’ politics are easier to find in his work than in his interviews. He has spent six decades mocking authoritarians, racists, and pompous officials — the Nazi regime in The Producers, bigoted town leaders in Blazing Saddles, dictators across History of the World. That record is public, consistent, and aimed at power itself rather than at a party label. His comedy has never needed a specific president to aim at; the target is the type.

What is verifiable vs. private

Readers should treat “no public record” as exactly that. Assuming a private vote from a comedian’s filmography — in either direction — is a conclusion the evidence does not support. The verifiable position is: Brooks has not declared support, and his work has consistently satirized authoritarian figures.

What did Gene Wilder say before he died?

Family accounts of Wilder’s final words

• Wilder died in 2016 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
• The exact wording of his final words exists only through family recollections.
• No official record confirms the phrasing that circulates online.

A story about Wilder’s last words circulates widely online. The precise wording, however, lives only in family recollections, and that is how it should be labeled. What is documented is Wilder’s own repeated public statement, made across years of interviews: Gilda Radner was the love of his life. The internet prefers certainty, so the story keeps getting repeated as fact; the responsible read is an unverified personal memory that happens to be moving.

Gilda Radner as the love of his life

• Wilder publicly described Gilda Radner as the love of his life.
• After Radner’s death, Wilder remarried; that marriage lasted until his death.

The phrase “love of his life” was Wilder’s own, repeated in interviews after Radner’s death. She died before him, and he never stopped talking about her in those terms; his second marriage, later in life, lasted until he died.

Deathbed songs: Gene Wilder and Freddie Mercury queries

• Some accounts say a specific song was playing near Wilder’s death; those accounts cite family members.
• Freddie Mercury’s funeral music is a separate, often-conflated internet memory.
• Neither claim rests on an official public record.

The search data takes a strange turn here. People asking what song played as Wilder died and what song was played at Freddie Mercury’s funeral are often working from the same cluster of viral posts. Both stories involve beloved entertainers, music, and grief — and both rest on testimony rather than documents. Treat them as family accounts, not records.

Timeline: a century of Mel Brooks

Ten dates, one pattern: Brooks kept arriving just as American culture was about to change, and he made the change funnier. The record below draws on the same military, interview, and press accounts cited above.

Date	Event
1926	Born Melvin James Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York.
1944–1945	Served in the U.S. Army during WWII.
1950s	Wrote for television comedy, including Your Show of Shows.
Late 1960s	Released The Producers, his directorial debut.
1974	Released Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.
2001	Broadway musical The Producers premieres and wins 12 Tony Awards.
2005	Anne Bancroft dies.
2016	Gene Wilder dies from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
2021	Published memoir All About Me!
2023	History of the World, Part II premieres on Hulu.

Note what the table does not contain: no death, no decline, no farewell tour. The last quarter of Brooks’ timeline still contains new releases — the 2021 memoir, the 2023 Hulu series — not the usual shape of a century-long career.

Confirmed facts vs. what’s still unclear

Research confidence on Brooks’ biography splits cleanly: the war record and career facts are documented; the deathbed and voting-booth details are not. The confirmed column draws on the military records and biographical profiles cited above.

The balance is deliberate: four open questions against four documented facts. For a man whose life has been picked over for half a century, the surprising thing is how much remains private — and how much of what is public comes from his own military records rather than celebrity press.

What Brooks and Wilder said, on the record

The public record yields three statements worth pulling out — two from Brooks, one from Wilder.

Brooks, discussing Young Frankenstein in a 2016 interview, described Wilder as a collaborator and walked through the creative partnership behind the film.

Mel Brooks, in paraphrase, from the Los Angeles Times interview

Wilder, after Gilda Radner’s death, referred to her repeatedly as the love of his life — a phrase he used consistently enough that biographers treat it as his settled view.

Gene Wilder, in paraphrase, public interviews

Brooks, at 100, is still described as active and working — the closest the record comes to an answer on retirement: he has not taken one.

Mel Brooks, in paraphrase, from the Ynetnews profile

What this means: the most-quoted words from both men are personal and unguarded — a vote of confidence, a declaration of love, a refusal to retire.

Why Mel Brooks still matters in 2026

The odd thing about Mel Brooks at 100 is how much of his life is documented. The Army records are real. The Jewish identity is declared. The Wilder films exist, and so do Brooks’ own accounts of them. What remains unverifiable — exact last words, funeral playlists, a private vote — is exactly what the internet treats as fact. Mel Brooks’ legacy is best anchored in his military record and filmography, not in viral deathbed rumors.

Frequently asked questions

Who was Anne Bancroft?

Anne Bancroft was an award-winning actress and Mel Brooks’ wife until her death in 2005. She is known for stage and screen roles that made her one of the most decorated actresses of her generation.

Who is Max Brooks?

Max Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft and the author of World War Z, the worldwide bestseller adapted into a 2013 film.

What does EGOT stand for?

EGOT stands for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony — the four major American entertainment awards. Mel Brooks has won all four, with the Tony arriving for the 2001 Broadway musical The Producers.

Which Hotel Transylvania sequel features Mel Brooks?

Mel Brooks voices Vlad, Dracula’s father, in Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018), the third film in the animated franchise.

Is Mel Brooks related to Mel Robbins?

No. Mel Robbins is an author and podcast host; Mel Brooks is the actor, comedian, and filmmaker. They share a first name, not a family — which explains the persistent search confusion.