Mel Brooks has donated his career archive of more than 150,000 documents and 5,000 photographs to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, N.Y., the same nonprofit institution that holds the papers of Brooks’ longtime collaborator Carl Reiner.
The archive includes Brooks’ earliest notes on comedy during his service in World War II through his years with Sid Caesar on NBC’s “Your Show of Shows” through his rise as a comedy auteur icon in the 1960s and ’70s with such films 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 for a living. So, knowing that my work will have a home at comedy’s national archive and continue making people laugh leaves me with a deep sense of pride,” Brooks said in announcing the deal for his archive. “I’m honored that my contributions will be preserved for future generations at the National Comedy Center – especially because it’s a place that was meaningful to my best friend Carl Reiner, who believed in the importance of preserving comedy’s history.”
Brooks and Reiner, who died in 2020 at age 98, worked together on “Your Show of Shows.” The pair were also known for the recurring bit known as “The 2000-Year-Old Man,” in which Brooks played a man from ancient times who was interviewed about contemporary culture by Reiner as a TV newsman. Brooks is marking his centennial year in 2026 as his birthday approaches on June 28. At 99, he is an influential legend for three generations of comedians, actors and directors, and counting.
“Mel Brooks is simply a giant of comedy, and his influence on my life and career is immeasurable. I have had the good fortune of knowing so many hilarious, funny people, and Mel is the king. Now his extraordinary body of work will take its place alongside Carl Reiner’s in the National Comedy Center’s archives,” Billy Crystal said in a statement. “They were my heroes, and became my friends and mentors and the hilarious uncles every comedian wishes they had. Now together again and always, their legacies will live longer than 2,000 years.”
Acquiring Brooks’ archive is a coup for the National Comedy Center, a nonprofit cultural institution that opened its doors in 2018 in Jamestown in Western New York, which is the hometown of Lucille Ball. The National Comedy Center is home to one-of-a-kind 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 trial papers, production records from Ball and Desi Arnaz’s trailblazing Desilu Studios. It also houses original creative materials 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.
“Mel Brooks’ archive represents an unparalleled primary-source record of how a singular artist reshaped narrative, satire and cinematic 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 the safeguarding of a vital cultural legacy that will inform scholarship, creative inquiry and historical understanding for generations.”