What Are Mel Brooks’ Favorite Movies? To Celebrate His 100th Birthday, the Comedy Legend Picks 20 Films to Screen Across Los Angeles

In celebration of his 100th birthday, legendary writer, director, actor and comedian Mel Brooks has programmed a series of his favorite films, set to play in three Los Angeles-area theaters this fall. When the idea was first pitched to him by the American Cinematheque, the nonprofit film and arts organization presenting the showcase, they had no set number of movies in mind. Brooks finalized the 20-film list over the course of a few days, adding to it gradually.

Brooks was born in 1926, a year before The Jazz Singer helped usher in the era of talking pictures. In the century since, cinema has undergone enormous changes in style, technology and genre—a history reflected in Brooks’ selections. Performing on the Borscht Belt Mel Brooks worked as a comedian at resorts in New York’s Catskills, part of the famed Borscht Belt, where he honed the comic style that would define his career.

One can certainly draw connections between Brooks’ love of physical comedy and slapstick in such films as Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) and the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera (1935). One of the most recent releases on the list, Jojo Rabbit (2019), in which a young boy’s imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler, shares a level of irreverence with Brooks’ famed song “Springtime for Hitler,” which he wrote for his own film The Producers (1967). His choice of Top Hat (1935), a musical comedy in which an American dancer is mistaken for a “goofy producer,” follows something of a biographical thread: Brooks got his start as a stage performer in clubs and resorts across New York State before breaking into television and, later, movies.

The connection to Brooks’ personal history continues with The Miracle Worker (1962), for which Anne Bancroft, his late wife, won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Other selections speak to Brooks’ enduring affection for particular genres. Psycho (1960) and This Is Spinal Tap (1984), for instance, offer a glimpse of his fondness for both horror and parody, a combination he explored in his own films, including Young Frankenstein (1974), a spoof of the classic horror genre, and High Anxiety (1977), an Alfred Hitchcock satire.

Only one of the films on the list was written and directed by Brooks himself: 1970’s The Twelve Chairs. Though TCM calls it “perhaps the biggest commercial flop of Brooks’ career,” it was warmly regarded by some critics and the film’s stars. Brooks himself has said that it is one of the films he is most proud of.

Like The Producers, it is very strong on character relationships.” The program will run from early September through mid-November, with the films rotating between three classic movie palaces: the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica and, in Los Angeles, the Egyptian Theatre and Los Feliz 3. The event is yet another major announcement Brooks has made this summer in commemoration of his 100th birthday. In May, he announced that he would donate his archive of notes, scripts, photographs and other documents to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York, where they will be preserved and displayed to visitors.