Mel Brooks — comedian with roots in the Russian Empire
Mel Brooks is an American filmmaker, actor, comedian, and composer who is one of only a handful of EGOT winners. He created The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and Spaceballs — defining American comedy for five decades. He is also the last surviving member of the greatest generation of American Jewish comedians.
Tracing the roots — Kyiv (Ukraine)
Born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn in 1926, his mother Kate Brookman's family had emigrated from Kyiv (Russian Empire, now Ukraine). Growing up in the Jewish immigrant world of Williamsburg, Brooks absorbed the entire tradition of Jewish comedy — from the Borscht Belt to Sid Caesar's writers' room — and transformed it into cinema.
.svg?width=900)
Kyiv (Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."