Mel Brooks's Real Name: Melvin James Kaminsky

Quick answer: Mel Brooks's birth name is Melvin James Kaminsky. He was born on June 28, 1926, in Brooklyn, New York, and adopted the stage surname Brooks from his mother Kate Brookman's maiden name.

Real name and early life

CNN Fast Facts and Biography.com identify his birth name as Melvin James Kaminsky; Britannica lists the original name Melvin Kaminsky (CNN; Biography.com; Britannica). He was born June 28, 1926, in Brooklyn to Max Kaminsky, a process server, and Kate (Brookman) Kaminsky. CNN notes that Brooks took “Brooks” from Brookman. A gifted mimic, pianist, and drummer, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1944, trained under the Army Specialized Training Program (including instruction at the Virginia Military Institute), and served as a combat engineer in Europe in World War II. After the war he worked as a stand-up comic, emcee, and social director in the Catskills Borscht Belt resorts before joining Sid Caesar’s writing staff.

Career highlights

Brooks wrote for The Admiral Broadway Revue and the landmark Your Show of Shows (1950–54) alongside Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. With Reiner he developed the improvised “2,000 Year Old Man” routines and comedy albums. He co-created the spy spoof Get Smart (1965–70) with Buck Henry and won an Oscar for the original screenplay of The Producers (1968). Signature parody features followed: Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (both 1974), Silent Movie (1976), High Anxiety (1977), History of the World—Part I (1981), and Spaceballs (1987). Through Brooksfilms he produced serious dramas including The Elephant Man (1980). The Broadway musical of The Producers (2001) brought Tony Awards and completed his EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). He was a Kennedy Center Honoree (2009) and received a National Medal of Arts (2016). Across all of that work, billing stayed Mel Brooks; the documented birth name is Melvin James Kaminsky.

Name notes for searchers

Brooks is a stage surname derived from Brookman, not a legal middle-name swap. Prefer Britannica, Biography.com, and CNN Fast Facts over fan pages. Wikipedia is a pointer after those primaries.