Melvin Kaminsky, known professionally as Mel Brooks, is an American director, writer, actor, comedian, producer and composer. He is known as a creator of broad film farces and comedic parodies. Brooks began his career as a comic and a writer for Sid Caesar's variety show Your Show of Shows alongside Woody Allen, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. Together with Carl Reiner, he created the comic character The 2000 Year Old Man. He wrote, with Buck Henry, the hit television comedy series Get Smart, which ran from 1965 to 1970.In middle age, Brooks became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films being among the top 10 moneymakers of the year they were released. His best-known films include The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World, Part I, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights.A musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers, ran on Broadway from 2001 to 2007, and was remade into a musical film in 2005 by Brooks himself.