American comedian Mel Brooks overcame a childhood of abuse from his peers (he was small and sickly) by taking on the comically aggressive job of "toomler" in various Catskills resorts. For very little money but a great deal of personal satisfaction Brooks kept the resort clientele happy by performing quickie monologues and routines, pretending to insult both the help and the customers, and when all else failed, jumping fully clothed into the swimming pool. Applying for the writing staff of TV comedian Sid Caesar, Brooks literally fell to his knees and sang a song about himself. Before he was 30, Brooks was earning $2500 per show writing for Caesar, in collaboration with such formidable wits as Neil Simon, Woody Allen and Carl Reiner. Though the work was grueling, it was the best formal education that any comedian could have. Brooks left Caesar in the mid-1950s, and the sudden severe drop in his income fed Brooks' longtime phobia that success would invariably lead to crushing defeat. In the early 1960s, Brooks teamed with Carl Reiner for their celebrated "2000 Year Old Man" routines, which graduated into a hit record and numerous TV appearances. With Buck Henry, Brooks developed a satirical spy sitcom for comedian Don Adams titled Get Smart, which ran successfully from 1965 through 1970. Itching to make movies, Brooks directed a very low budget comedy about a conniving shoestring impresario titled The Producers (1968). Somehow The Producers came together, and though it died at the box office it has since gained a reputation as one of the most screamingly funny comedies of all time. Brooks wasn't laughing in the late 1960s, however; his average yearly income was around $8000 per year, forcing his wife, actress Anne Bancroft, to be the family breadwinner. After five or six years of disappointment, Brooks convinced Warner Bros. to finance an uproariously tasteless comedy about a black western sheriff. Directed, co-written and costarring Brooks, Blazing Saddles was one of the biggest moneyspinners of 1974, and for several years thereafter the world was Brook's oyster (even though he continually believed that the oyster would spoil). Young Frankenstein (1974) followed, and once again Brooks had a hit on his hands. Then he decided to star in as well as direct his films. Silent Movie (1976) and High Anxiety (1977) both had their moments, but might have even been funnier if someone other than Brooks had played the leads (it wasn't that he was unfunny; it was simply that he was a bit too much). By the time of History of the World Part One (1981), audiences were growing weary of Brooks' recycled gags and repetitious style. Still neurotic but a bit more willing to take advice than in earlier years, Brooks starred and produced in To Be Or Not to Be (1983), but did not direct, allowing director Alan Johnson to tone down Brooks' thespic excesses and deliver a well-balanced performance. While this and subsequent projects would suggest that Brooks has nothing more than wild slapstick and raunchy verbal humor on the brain, he is more than capable of turning out a project of restraint and taste. He bought the rights for The Elephant Man, the melancholy true story of a hideously deformed 19th century Londoner, and with his partner Michael Gruskopf produced an exquisite film version of the story in 1980. However, the self-flagellating Brooks rose again, here as elsewhere: Worried that filmgoers might think that Elephant Man would be just another gross-out comedy, Brooks had his own name removed from all publicity pertaining to the film.