2023 Governors Awards profile: Comedy legend Mel Brooks to receive Honorary Oscar
Over the past six decades, 18 artists have achieved EGOT status by winning at least one competitive Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. After becoming the eighth member of this elite club in 2002, multi-talented comedy legend Mel Brooks has now been designated as one of the next recipients of an honorary Academy Award. This makes him the 25th previous Oscar champion and first EGOT winner to be chosen for this special honor.
Along with Angela Bassett, Carol Littleton, and Michelle Satter, Brooks is set to be lauded at the upcoming 14th annual Governors Awards. The 97-year-old’s tribute comes in recognition of the way he “lights up… hearts with his humor” and has made “a lasting impact on every facet of entertainment.” After art director Robert F. Boyle, who was 98 when he collected his honorary Oscar in 2008, Brooks will be the second oldest person to ever receive an Academy Award of any kind.
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Brooks’s illustrious career dates back to the late 1940s when he first teamed with comic Sid Caesar as a writer for NBC and DuMont’s “Admiral Broadway Revue.” He then went on to pen sketches for Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” and “Caesar’s Hour” before clinching an Emmy for co-writing a 1967 variety special in which the cast of the former series reunited. After creating two-time Best Comedy Series Emmy winner “Get Smart,” he wrote and directed his first feature film, “The Producers,” which earned him the 1969 Best Original Screenplay Oscar.
In 1974, Brooks had a banner year with the releases of “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein,” which respectively brought him additional Oscar bids for Best Original Song and Best Adapted Screenplay. During the same decade, he also made “The Twelve Chairs” (1970), “Silent Movie” (1976), and “High Anxiety” (1977), the last of which constituted his first film producing credit.
Brooks then wrote, directed, and produced “History of the World: Part I” (1981), “Spaceballs” (1987), “Life Stinks” (1991), “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” (1993), and “Dracula: Dead and Loving It” (1995). Every one of his films also features him in some sort of acting role, or even multiple roles in some cases.
30 years after winning his first Emmy and Oscar, Brooks completed his EGOT with a Grammy for Best Comedy Album (1999) and three Tonys for the stage musical version of “The Producers” (2002). He also picked up three guest acting Emmys for “Mad About You” between 1997 and 1999 and two more Grammys for “The Producers” in 2002. Since then, he has been showered with many prestigious honorary prizes, including the Writers Guild of America’s Laurel Award (2003), a Kennedy Center Honor (2009), the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2013), and a BAFTA Academy Fellowship (2017).
An honorary Oscar is given “to honor extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences, or for outstanding service to the academy.” At least one of these awards has been conferred during or prior to all but 10 of the 95 Oscars ceremonies. Since 2009, they have been presented at a separate ceremony that takes place several months before the same year’s Oscars. Brooks and his fellow honorees will collect their trophies on November 18, 2023.
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