It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks by James Robert Parish

Although he was inexperienced in the demands of stage directing, he had an instinctive flair for knowing when the cast needed to be guided in one direction or another and how to convey his instructions to his coworkers. Amazingly, the season at Red Bank continued onward with relatively few hitches.
    •     •     •
    When the summer ended and the troupe departed Red Bank, Mel returned to the city. His absorbing New Jersey theater experience had enticed him into thinking big and trying his hand at acting on the Broadway stage. Summoning up his chutzpah, Mel personally made the rounds to the offices of various established Broadway producers. Typical of Brooks’s brazen determination was his visit to the headquarters of Kermit Bloomgarden, one of the reigning New York theater impresarios. Mel strode cockily into the producer’s office suite, surveyed the crowd (which included some well-known actors) seated in the waiting room, and swept over to the receptionist’s desk. In his best stentorian voice, he announced, “Paul Muni is here and I have to go in three minutes.” The inexperienced secretary jumped to attention and immediately summoned Bloomgarden to greet the visiting stage/film veteran. Kermit emerged into the waiting room, took one look at the young interloper, and said, “This boy is not Paul Muni.” Cheeky Mel was not about to admit defeat. He explained (in a non sequitur), “Muni’s name is Harold Gottwald. I am the real Paul Muni.” Bloomgarden grasped Mel by the collar and said, “You’ve got a lot of moxie. I’m going to remember you.” (Unfortunately or not, Brooks never did get his audition with the august Bloomgarden.)
    If Mel could not obtain any actual theater assignments for himself, he at least could bask in the glory of his growing circle of show business comrades. In the process, he reasoned, he could, perhaps, pick up some professional tips and connections. One evening, with too much free time on his hands, Brooks trekked out to New Jersey to see one of his new pals perform in a cabaret. The entertainer was Philadelphian Ronny Graham, a talented entertainer in several guises (including actor, comedian, songwriter, and pianist). After the gig, the seven-years-older Graham, who would become a lifelong pal of Brooks’s, offered to give Mel a ride back to Manhattan.
    En route, the duo stopped at an all-night diner that catered to truck drivers. Brooks later recalled, “Ronny was still wearing his stage makeup and some pretty avant-garde clothes, and these big, hairy men all swiveled round and started to stare at us. Some of them even stood up. While we were eating, everything went very quiet. I was terrified. Suddenly, I turned on Ronny like a cobra and said, ‘I want my ring back.’ He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘You
spoke
to that man. Back at the club. Don’t think I didn’t see you speaking to him, because I did.
I want my ring back
.’ And we both went into this berserk faggot row. Finally I picked up my cup of coffee and threw it in his face. Then I flounced out to the car with Ronny right behind me, wiping his eyes and screaming. Some of the truck drivers followed us out… [into] the parking lot. They just stood there, dumbstruck, with their hands on their hips, as we drove off, kissing and making up. I waved at them out of the window.”

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Hail Caesar!
    Sid [Caesar] was a genius, a great comic actor—still is—the greatest mime who ever lived. Only he didn’t impersonate celebrities; he did types.… Sid had this terrific angle in him; he was angry with the world—and so was I. Maybe I was angry because I was a Jew, because I was short, because my mother didn’t buy me a bicycle, because it was tough to get ahead, because I wasn’t God—who knows why. Anyway, if Sid and I hadn’t felt so much alike, I would have been a comic ten years earlier. But he was such a great vehicle for my passion.
    –Mel Brooks, 1975
    Many media historians credit Milton Berle