50 free Mel Brooks trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
43 free Mel Brooks trivia questions with answers. Mel Brooks has been making people laugh for nine decades, from the writers' room of Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows to a Broadway record for The Producers and a Spaceballs sequel announced when he was 99. This Mel Brooks trivia quiz covers the whole run: the Borscht Belt and the Battle of the Bulge, the 2000 Year Old Man, Get Smart, his Oscar for The Producers, the twin 1974 triumphs Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World Part I, Spaceballs, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, his serious films through Brooksfilms, and his marriage to Anne Bancroft. The 50 questions start with things every fan knows and work up to the details only people who have read All About Me! will remember, so it suits a solo run or a movie round at trivia night. Every answer is checked against Brooks's own accounts and the documented history of the films, not fan lists.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Mel Brooks's birth surname?
Kaminsky
He picked Brooks by shortening his mother's maiden name, Brookman, because the full name wouldn't fit on his drum kit.
Q 02In which New York borough was Mel Brooks born and raised?
Brooklyn
He was born on a tenement kitchen table in Brownsville and grew up in Williamsburg; his father died when he was two.
Q 03Which jazz drummer, a fellow Williamsburg native, taught the teenage Mel Brooks to play drums?
Buddy Rich
Brooks earned money as a drummer from 14 and got his first comedy break at 16 filling in for a sick emcee.
Q 04In which December 1944 German offensive did Mel Brooks serve as a combat engineer?
The Battle of the Bulge
His unit cleared booby-trapped buildings and mines; he says he answered German loudspeaker songs by singing Al Jolson through a bullhorn.
Q 05Mel Brooks began his writing career on which comedian's 1950s TV show?
Sid Caesar
He first met Caesar as a 14-year-old poolside 'tummler' at a Borscht Belt resort.
Q 06With which collaborator did Brooks create the comedy sketch The 2000 Year Old Man?
Carl Reiner
They shared a Grammy for The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000, one of the pieces of Brooks's EGOT.
Q 07Which spy-spoof sitcom did Brooks co-create with Buck Henry in 1965?
Get Smart
Brooks said no one had ever done a show about an idiot before, so he decided to be the first.
Q 08In Get Smart, Maxwell Smart is Agent 86 of which secret agency?
CONTROL
His enemies at KAOS were 'the international organization of evil'; Don Adams played Smart and Barbara Feldon Agent 99.
Q 09For which film, his directorial debut, did Mel Brooks win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay?
The Producers
It was his directorial debut; his acceptance speech thanked Gene Wilder three times.
Q 10What is the title of the deliberately terrible musical-within-the-film in Brooks's 1967 debut?
Springtime for Hitler
Brooks first blurted the title as a joke at a 1962 press conference when asked what he'd do next.
Q 11Which two actors starred as Bialystock and Bloom in Brooks's original 1967 film?
Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder
Leo Bloom's name is a nod to Leopold Bloom of Joyce's Ulysses; the film was so brazen that major studios wouldn't touch it.
Q 12Brooks's second film, The Twelve Chairs (1970), is based on a Russian novel by which writing duo?
Ilf and Petrov
Brooks cameos as an ex-serf who 'yearns for the regular beatings of yesteryear'.
Q 13Which comedian was among the co-writers of Blazing Saddles, whom Brooks called 'very brave and very far-out'?
Richard Pryor
Q 21What is the label on the brain Igor accidentally brings back for the monster in Young Frankenstein?
Abnormal
He was supposed to steal the brain of the 'scientist and saint' Hans Delbrück, but dropped it.
Q 22Which Oscar-winning actor makes a cameo as the blind hermit in Young Frankenstein?
Gene Hackman
The film was shot in black and white with old-fashioned iris shots and wipes to evoke the 1930s Universal horrors.
Q 23Which two science-fiction awards did Young Frankenstein win, unusually for a comedy?
The Hugo and the Nebula
It was also nominated for Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound.
Brooks was originally hired as a script doctor on an unproduced project called Tex-X before ending up directing.
Q 14Who plays Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles?
Cleavon Little
Gene Wilder plays the washed-up Waco Kid, a part he took over from Gig Young.
Q 15What is the name of the town the railroad must pass through in Blazing Saddles?
Rock Ridge
Nearly every citizen is surnamed Johnson; the townsfolk build a fake copy of the town as a decoy.
Q 16Which bandleader plays 'April in Paris' in the middle of the desert in Blazing Saddles?
Count Basie
Slim Pickens's character also mentions ABC's Wide World of Sports, one of many deliberate anachronisms.
Q 17Which two roles does Mel Brooks play in Blazing Saddles?
Governor Le Petomane and an Indian chief
The film cost $2.6 million and grossed $119.6 million; the AFI moved it to number one on its 100 Laughs list in 2026.
Q 18On what condition did Gene Wilder agree to replace Gig Young in Blazing Saddles?
That Brooks would next direct his Frankenstein spoof
They wrote Young Frankenstein as soon as Blazing Saddles wrapped and shot it in spring 1974.
Q 19Who plays the monster in Young Frankenstein?
Peter Boyle
Much of the lab equipment was Kenneth Strickfaden's original props from the 1931 Frankenstein.
Q 20How does Frederick Frankenstein insist his surname be pronounced at the start of Young Frankenstein?
Fronkensteen
Marty Feldman's Igor retaliates by insisting his own name is pronounced 'Eye-gor'.
Q 24In Silent Movie (1976), who speaks the film's only audible word of dialogue?
Marcel Marceau
The mime says 'Non!' when asked to appear in a silent film. Burt Reynolds, Liza Minnelli and James Caan play themselves.
Q 25High Anxiety (1977) is Brooks's parody of which director?
Alfred Hitchcock
Brooks plays a Nobel-winning psychiatrist; the film spoofs Spellbound, Vertigo, Psycho and The Birds, among others.
Q 26Which 1980 David Lynch film did Mel Brooks produce, keeping his name off the poster so audiences wouldn't expect comedy?
The Elephant Man
Brooks called Eraserhead 'the best film I've ever seen about what it's like to have kids'.
Q 27Which 1986 David Cronenberg horror film was produced by Brooksfilms?
The Fly
Brooks told Cronenberg, 'When it comes to gore, extreme whatever, don't hold back.'
Q 28How many roles does Mel Brooks play in History of the World, Part I?
Five
They include Moses, Comicus the stand-up philosopher, Torquemada and Louis XVI; Orson Welles narrates.
Q 29History of the World, Part I plays on an unfinished multi-volume history by which Elizabethan figure?
Sir Walter Raleigh
There were no plans for a sequel until Hulu's History of the World, Part II premiered in 2023.
Q 30On which streaming service did the series History of the World, Part II premiere in 2023?
Hulu
Brooks narrated and earned an Emmy nomination for character voice-over performance.