I took a big chance in demanding that I no longer just be Sid’s boy, but rather a real, full-fledged member of the writing team with credit, etc. There was a stormy argument between Sid and Max when Sid proposed this, but Sid won and Max reluctantly gave me credit on Your Show of Shows as “Additional Material by Mel Brooks” onscreen. Not to mention, a hundred and fifty dollars a week—which would be paid by the show and no longer by Sid. When Sid slapped me on the back and told me all this, I nearly fainted. Wow! My name was going to be on the show, and I was going to be making more money than my three older brothers’ salaries put together. Sometimes dreams really do come true.
I had never actually thought of myself as a writer until 1950, when I first saw my name on the credits of Your Show of Shows. I got scared. I said to myself, “I’m not a writer, I’m a talker.” I wished they’d change my billing on the show to “Additional Talking by Mel Brooks,” so I wouldn’t feel so intimidated. But I worked hard and conquered my fear of the empty page, which is the journey that all writers have to make. I worked my ass off thinking and writing day and night. I was lucky that Mel Tolkin and Lucille Kallen (who had followed Max Liebman to Your Show of Shows from The Admiral Broadway Revue) welcomed me aboard. They couldn’t have been kinder and more helpful.
As well as contributing to the guest stars’ sketches, my special writing province turned out to be Sid’s monologues and a new feature of the variety show in which Sid played a series of characters that were interviewed by a reporter every week. My first contribution was an interview sketch where he played “Jungle Boy,” a Tarzan-like character wearing a loincloth and carrying a big club, who somehow managed to survive in urban New York City. It went like this…
Reporter: Where are you from, sir?
Jungle Boy: Jungle.
Reporter: Sir, how do you survive in New York City?…What do you eat?
Jungle Boy: Pigeon.
Reporter: Don’t the pigeons object?
Jungle Boy: Only for a minute.
Reporter: What are you afraid of?
Jungle Boy: Buick.
Reporter: You’re afraid of a Buick?
Jungle Boy: Buick. Buick big. Buick yellow. Buick have big shiny teeth. Wait for eyes to go dark. I sneak up on sleeping Buick, punch in grille hard. Buick die!
It got huge laughs, and Sid was effusive in his thanks for my helping make “Jungle Boy” work.
Originally, the comedy interviews were conducted by one of the leading singers on the show, Tom Avera. Tom was doing a very good job for a singer, but he wasn’t what Sid needed. Sid was looking for a real second banana that could also do double-talk for the foreign movie satires that we had begun to write. Sid was a genius at mimicking foreign languages. Luck was with us. On a TV show called The Fifty-Fourth Street Revue we discovered Carl Reiner, a tall, good-looking, fast-talking comedy find. He was added to the top-drawer talent that already included Sid and Imogene Coca, and was talented enough to keep up with Sid’s brilliant French, Italian, German, and Japanese crazy double-talk. What a find!
(Small digression here, you’re going to hear a lot about Carl Reiner in the future. He became my partner in the 2000 Year Old Man, and has become my very best friend for too many decades to count.)
Carl met and interviewed a series of comedy characters played by Sid. The most consistently funny one that always worked was “the German Professor,” a know-it-all scholar dressed in an old-fashioned swallowtail coat, wide tie, the yellow W. C. Fields vest with the roll collar, baggy striped pants, and a broken-down top hat. He was an expert on everything. I remember helping Sid get big laughs on an interview with the German Professor as a world-famous expert on mountain climbing.
Carl: Professor, what do you do if when you’re climbing a mountain your rope breaks?
Sid: [as the professor, in a German accent] When your rope breaks you immediately start screaming, and keep screaming all the way down until you hit the ground.
Carl: How does that help you?
Sid: Actually, it doesn’t help you at all. But it helps the people on the ground know where to find you.
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The German Professor solidified my role as a valued contributor to the show. Writing the show was wonderful and terrible. The wonderful part was hearing the laughs that my jokes and sketches got from the live audience. The terrible part was I’d stay up until two or three in the morning trying to think of characters and situations that we could use on the show, which led to quite often being late for the writing sessions with Sid, Carl, and the other writers. They started at ten a.m. and I’d get in at eleven a.m. I would call the Carnegie Deli for my bagel, cream cheese, and coffee so it was waiting for me when I got there. One of the secretaries usually paid the dollar and a half, and I would reimburse them when I got there. The bagel and coffee came to about a dollar, but I always gave the delivery guy a fifty-cent tip.
One morning after being warned by Sid not to be late again, I came in my usual one hour late and gave the secretary a dollar fifty.
She said, “Sorry, Mel. It’s not a dollar and fifty cents today, it’s twenty-one dollars.”
“What! Twenty-one dollars? For a bagel and coffee?” I exclaimed.
Holding back a laugh, she said, “Yes, twenty-one dollars. Mr. Caesar paid for your bagel and coffee, and he tipped the delivery guy twenty bucks. I think he wanted to send you a message about being late every day.”
For a while after that, I was always on time.
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Let me jump away for a minute and tell you a little story about my very first appearance on television. Even though I had been a performer in the Borscht Belt and then in the Army, I felt that I couldn’t compete onstage with the likes of a Sid Caesar, an Imogene Coca, and a Carl Reiner, and was more than happy to contribute my talents just as a comedy writer. Carl Reiner was with the William Morris Agency and his agent was Harry Kalcheim of the (at the time) well-known William Morris Kalcheim brothers—Nat and Harry Kalcheim. Harry thought I was funny and always prodded me to grab a small part on the show. I always resisted saying, “The comedy is in good hands with Sid, Imogene, and Carl.”
But one day, he told me that there was a small comedy part open on the Texaco Star Theatre hosted by Milton Berle. It was the part of a dopey stooge for Sid Stone, the famous Texaco Star Theatre pitchman. He was the guy who said, “You say you’re not satisfied? You say you want more? Tell you what I’m gonna do!” He’d slap his hands together and open his little suitcase and make his sidewalk pitch. On this particular show, I was a window washer.
Sid Stone said, “I’ve got a great job for you. It’s the Empire State Building!”
“Too many windows,” I said. “And besides I don’t like to work way up high. I’m afraid.”
“What are you afraid of? Falling?” Sid said.
“No. Pigeons,” I said. “Pigeons, they live up there.”
Anyway, it got a few laughs. The amazing thing was, when I got back to Williamsburg to visit family and friends, I was an instant celebrity. Everybody in Brooklyn had seen me on the Texaco Star Theatre as the window washer on the Sid Stone spot. I was actually signing autographs!
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