Early Life
Brooks was born Melvin James Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, a son of James Kaminsky and his wife Kate (née Brookman). His father's family were German Jews from the Baltic Sea port of Danzig (the modern Polish port of Gdansk); his mother's family were Ukrainian Jews from Kiev. He had three older brothers, Irving, Lenny and Bernie. His father died of kidney disease at 34 when Brooks was only two years old. Brooks has said of his father's death that "there's an outrage there. I may be angry at God, or at the world, for that. And I'm sure a lot of my comedy is based on anger and hostility. Growing up in Williamsburg, I learned to clothe it in comedy to spare myself problems - like a punch in the face. "
Brooks was a small, sickly boy who was often bullied and picked on by his classmates. He was taught by Buddy Rich (who had also grown up in Williamsburg) to learn how to play the drums and started earning money at it when he was fourteen. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School, he spent a year at Brooklyn College as a psychology major before being drafted into the army. He attended the Army Specialized Training Program conducted at the Virginia Military Institute (although not actually as a VMI cadet) served in the United States Army as a corporal during World War II, and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
Read more about this topic: Mel Brooks
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I taught school in the early days of my manhood and I think I know something about mothers. There is a thread of aspiration that runs strong in them. It is the fiber that has formed the most unselfish creatures who inhabit this earth. They want three things only; for their children to be fed, to be healthy, and to make the most of themselves.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)