On this day: Mel Brooks is born

His career began in the 1940s while he was serving in the military. The Jewish comedian served as a combat engineer in the US Army and was known to respond to German propaganda broadcasts by imitating Al Jolson's "Toot Toot Tootsie".

After the war, Brooks did stand-up comedy acts in the Catskills resorts, where he became known for telling jokes and doing movie-star impressions. Routines included pretending to insult both co-workers and the guests.

As he would throughout his career, even then he went to great lengths in order to get laughs out of the audience, ending one show by jumping fully clothed into a swimming pool before returning to the stage to continue his act sopping wet.

What he told the JC: "We were very poor – but very clean. Every Friday my mother used to scrub the floor and we weren't allowed to walk on it. She used to cover it with the Jewish Daily Forward or the Freiheit – that's how I learned Yiddish, from the kitchen floor."

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