Mel Brooks Donates 20,000-Document Archive to the National Comedy Center

A month before his 100th birthday, Mel Brooks is donating a 20,000-document archive of his works to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York. The donation places his materials alongside those of his longtime comedy partner and friend Carl Reiner, whose own archives were given to the Center shortly after his death in 2020.

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The collection reaches back to Brooks’s Army service during World War II, when he kept a notebook of comedy ideas while hunting for Nazi landmines in the European theater. It also contains a comprehensive tour of his film catalogue, including storyboards and other documents for every film, a full script for *Spaceballs* (originally titled “Planet Moron”), and an early draft of the lyrics for *The Producers* song “Springtime For Hitler.” The archive comprises 15,000 documents and 5,000 photographs documenting his creative process.

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Brooks and Reiner collaborated on the “2,000 Year Old Man” books and routines, establishing a partnership that shaped modern American comedy. Reiner, an early supporter of the National Comedy Center, had his own archives donated to the institution after his death, creating a shared repository for the two friends’ legacies.

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• Total items: 20,000 documents

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• Photographs: 5,000

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• Documents: 15,000 (including notebooks, drafts, and correspondence)

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• Film materials: storyboards and scripts for all of Brooks’s films

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• Historical artifacts: World War II notebook, early lyric drafts for *The Producers*

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Housing the archive at the Center ensures that Brooks’s work will be preserved for future generations, a goal he highlighted in his remarks. Co-locating his collection with Reiner’s creates a contiguous record of two influential comedic figures whose collaborations span decades of American humor.

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Brooks said he is honored that his contributions will be preserved at the National Comedy Center, a place meaningful to Carl Reiner, who championed the preservation of comedy history. He added that he knows Reiner would be pleased to see their work available for the next 2,000 years or more.

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• “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. I know he’d be happy that our work will be around for the next 2,000 years, or maybe even more.” — Mel Brooks, comedian-filmmaker

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• “I’m very proud of the mustache line, but in the end, it didn’t make it in.” — Mel Brooks, speaking to *The Times*

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