Mel Brooks’ inauspicious debut

Mel Brooks had a rough start in showbiz, says Eric Estrin in TheWrap.com. It came when he was 14, while working at a hotel in the Catskills. “You had to do your normal work, which was waiter, busboy, rowboat attendant,” says the 83-year-old comic, “but on Saturday night you could be in a play. They were doing a play called Uncle Harry about some crazy serial killer. The only part open was for a district attorney. Now, I was 14, and the district attorney must have been 50 or 60. They gave me a beard and a wig and I was supposed to grill this Uncle Harry character. I had to casually pour him a glass of water and try to get information out of him.” But when his big moment came, Brooks choked. “I pour him a glass of water and the glass slips out of my hand and breaks. The water goes all over the desk and the stage. I don’t know what to do. So I say to the audience, ‘Hey, this is my first job as an actor, I’m really only 14,’ and I take off my wig and my beard, and the audience gets hysterical.” Not everyone laughed, though. “The director leaped on stage in a rage. I think he had a knife in his hand, and he chased me through three Catskill resorts. And that was my debut in show business.”

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