Few people did more than Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner to introduce the raucous Jewish humor of the borscht belt to the American mainstream; although the resorts and hotels where they began their careers are long gone, the two—at ages ninety-three and ninety-seven, respectively—have not lost their comic verve. Hadley Freeman describes an interview with the pair, who have been fast friends since the days when they began performing their 2,000-Year-Old Man routine together:
The 2,000-Year-Old Man is the revered comedy sketch Reiner and Brooks [created] in the 1950s, in which Reiner—always playing the straight man—would interview Brooks, the titular old man, about his life. Despite coming from the same time and place as Jesus, the 2,000-Year-Old Man talked an awful lot like a Jewish guy from 1950s Brooklyn: “I have over 42,000 children and not one of them ever visits me!” was a typical kvetch from Brooks. When Reiner asked what the plague was like, Brooks improvised back, “Too many rats, not enough cats.”
Brooks and Reiner were both born in New York, second-generation Jewish immigrants. America was made by immigrants, but it was these children of immigrants who helped to define Jewish-American comedy, with its mix of joyful silliness and whaddaya-gonna-do shrugs.
“I think Jews were naturally funny because they were low on the totem pole, so they made fun of the people higher on the pole,” says Reiner.
They met working on Sid Caesar’s TV variety show, Your Show of Shows. Other writers who worked for Caesar included Neil Simon and, later, Woody Allen, both of whom also played no small part in the [shaping] of Jewish-American comedy.
Read more on Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2020/feb/20/love-and-free-food-mel-brooks-and-carl-reiner-share-the-secrets-of-their-70-year-friendship