Mel Brooks donates his archive to the National Comedy Center in New York
Mel Brooks has donated his career archive of more than 150,000 documents and 5,000 photographs to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY, the same nonprofit that holds the papers of Brooks’ longtime collaborator Carl Reiner.
The archive includes Brooks’s first notes on comedy during his service in World War II, his years with Sid Caesar on NBC’s “Your Show of Shows” and his rise as a comedy auteur icon in the 1960s and 1970s with films such as “The Producers,” “Young Frankenstein,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Silent Movie,” “History of the World, Part I” and “Spaceballs.”
“I’ve always been proud to say that I make people laugh. So knowing that my work will find a home in the national comedy archive and continue to make people laugh gives me a deep sense of pride,” Brooks said in announcing the deal for his archive. “I am honored that my contributions will be preserved for future generations at the National Comedy Center – especially because it is a place that was meaningful to my best friend Carl Reiner, who believed in the importance of preserving the history of comedy.”
Brooks and Reiner, who died in 2020 at the age of 98, worked together on “Your Show of Shows.” The pair was also known for the recurring part known as “The 2000-Year-Old Man,” in which Brooks played an ancient man interviewed by Reiner as a TV journalist about contemporary culture. Brooks will celebrate his centennial in 2026, with his birthday approaching on June 28. At 99 years old, he is an influential legend for three generations of comedians, actors and directors, and counting.
“Mel Brooks is simply a comedy giant and his influence on my life and career is immeasurable. I have been fortunate to know so many hilarious, funny people, and Mel is the king. Now his extraordinary body of work will take its place alongside that of Carl Reiner in the National Comedy Center archives,” Billy Crystal said in a statement. “They were my heroes and became my friends and mentors and the hilarious uncles any comedian would want to have. Now that they are together again, their legacies will last more than 2,000 years.”
Acquiring Brooks’ archive is a coup for the National Comedy Center, a nonprofit cultural institution that opened in 2018 in Jamestown in western New York, Lucille Ball’s hometown. The National Comedy Center is home to unique historical items and comedy iconography, such as George Carlin’s extensive handwritten creative notes, Joan Rivers’ legendary 70,000-joke card catalog, Lenny Bruce’s annotated manuscripts and obscenity dissertations, production records from Ball and Desi Arnaz’s groundbreaking Desilu Studios. It also includes original creative material from “Saturday Night Live,” “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” “In Living Color” and “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” Reiner’s archive was donated to the center in 2021.
“The Mel Brooks archive represents an unparalleled primary source document of how an extraordinary artist reimagined narrative, satire, and film form – all through the lens of comedy,” said Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center. “Preserving this material is not simply an act of stewardship – it is safeguarding a vital cultural legacy that will inspire scholarship, creative inquiry and historical understanding for generations.”
