“Television evaporates. You do a show on Saturday night and by Monday it's forgotten."
That's one of comedy icon Mel Brooks' more famous quotes about the medium that helped launch an entertainment career that has spanned seven decades, a career whose impact is one that audiences and the industry could and will never forget.
Brooks, who turns 100 on June 28, is best known for his gut-busting feature films like Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs. But the EGOT winner's foundational work in television is just as notable.
In 1949, after fighting overseas in World War II and then entertaining audiences as a stand-up comic, Brooks was tapped by his pal Sid Caesar to write for the variety show The Admiral Broadway Revue. “One day, Sid called me: ‘Mel, they want me to do this thing called television,’” Brooks recalled in writer-director Judd Apatow's 2026 HBO documentary, Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!. That fateful phone call eventually led Brooks to join the writing staff of two sketch comedy series: Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour. (The latter series earned Brooks the first of three Emmy nominations for Best Comedy Writing.)
On Your Show of Shows, Brooks forged one of the most formative collaborations of his career — and most enduring friendships of his life — with the late Carl Reiner. Brooks and Reiner famously created the improv bit "The 2000 Year Old Man." Brooks played the titular ancient character, with Reiner as the straight man feeding him funny questions that resulted in even funnier answers. What began as dinner-party shtick spawned several successful comedy albums.
In 1965, Brooks partnered with Buck Henry to create the TV spy spoof Get Smart. The series, which ran for four seasons on NBC before airing its fifth and final season on CBS, scored 14 Emmy nominations and won seven, including two for Outstanding Comedy Series and three for star Don Adams’s lead performance. In 1967, Brooks would win his first Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Variety for The Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris Special. Then, in 1997, 30 years after his first Emmy, Brooks would begin a streak that led him to pick up three more consecutive Emmys — in the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series category — for his performance as Uncle Phil in the NBC sitcom Mad About You.
Read our interview with Mel Brooks looking back at Get Smart’s legacy on its 60th anniversary.
Brooks went on to become a prolific filmmaker whose body of work includes a long list of classic genre parodies with undeniable Get Smart DNA, including Blazing Saddles, Silent Movie, High Anxiety and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. And he’s still at it: In June 2025, just days before his 99th birthday, the trades announced that Brooks, along with members of the creative team behind What We Do in the Shadows, was developing a pilot at FX titled Very Young Frankenstein.
Brooks would also make hilarious appearances on such TV series as The Simpsons, The Tracey Ullman Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm — whose entire fourth season arc focused on Larry David starring in Brooks’ Tony-winning musical The Producers — and Only Murders in the Building. In 2023, Brooks cowrote and produced a television sequel series to his 1981 film History of the World, Part I — Hulu's History of the World, Part II. The show found Brooks working with other notable comedians and actor-writers in the comedy space, including Wanda Sykes, Jack Black, Seth Rogen and Quinta Brunson. (As Part II's narrator, Brooks earned his 14th Emmy nom, for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance.)
To say that Mel Brooks and his signature brand of comedy made an indelible mark on pop culture and the entertainment industry would be an understatement. As Brooks celebrates his 100th birthday, as much as he thinks television may "evaporate," it's doubtful his legacy ever will.
