Kliph Nesteroff: 1947. Sid Caesar opened at the Copacabana. Max Liebman was fashioning a nightclub act for him. And then 1948-49 Sid Caesar is becoming hot on Broadway in a show called Make Mine Mannhattan. This was around the time that you first met Sid Caesar. There’s a shadow figure here, some Catskill comedian that you’re mentioned in the past, Don Appell, who introduces you to Sid Caesar. Who was Don Appell ?
Mel Brooks: None of your business! All right, I’ll tell you. Don Appell was, like, the only genuine celebrity we had in Williamsburg. And he was in a play. He was an actor in a play based on a book called Native Son. A great Black actor by the name of Canada Lee starred. Don Appell was in that.
My friend Joey and I used to meet Don at the grocery store - on the milk box outside the store. Joey and I would sit there waiting until about 11:30 when Don would show up and tell us what was happening at the Rialto, what was going on on Broadway, and stories of being an actor on Broadway. And we were thrilled… we were thrilled.
That was Don Appel. And then Joey did his stuff - juggling and running around to show Don impressions of Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart and stuff like that. And then I would do kind of bizarre things like impressions of a bald, Jewish man going on strike.
Don appreciated that. He thought, you know, there’s a brush stroke of avant-garde here. Don was a social director, in addition to being an actor on Broadway. He was a social director in the Mountains, the Borscht Belt. And in the band at The Avon Lodge, where he was social director, was Sid Caesar playing tenor sax.
He used Sid as a utility comic - and began to see he was a lot more than a utility comic… that he was really blessed with comic brilliance and madness.
Don became a fan of Sid and kept moving him along. I think he talked to Max Liebman at Tamiment about Sid because Tamiment was a big place and Avon Lodge was very little.
Max Liebman used Sid as comedy relief in Tars and Spars, which he directed, or produced - I’m not sure what he did. But he put together this little coast guard show with Alfred Drake and Janet Blair in the leads, and for comedy relief there was Sid Caesar doing shtick. Don Appell was there always helping and guiding like the eminence grise, guiding Sid Caesar’s career.
And then when there was an opening, in the Mountains, Don sent me to the Butler Lodge, which was a neighboring hotel, in Hurleyville. I had four or five jobs. I was an assistant busboy - I don’t know how low you can get. I was very young. I was fourteen. I was an assistant busboy. I was a rowboat wrangler - keeping the rowboats so they wouldn’t drift away. I was a utility actor. And one day - Don Appel got me this job.
There was a guy Joe Dolphin - D-O-L-F-A-N - it was really was “F” and he changed it to “P.H.” He wanted to be just a little more gentile because the “F” was kind of Russian-Jewish.
There was a play called Uncle Harry. The actor playing the district attorney fell in a hole or something, hurt his leg and couldn’t go on. One of the actors made me up. He was cruel - gave me a wig, glued it on my head, glued a beard. I knew the lines: “There there, Harry. Relax. Have a glass of water and tell me in your own words exactly what you recall of that night.”
All right, so comes time, I’m a little worried, a little nervous, I get onstage, and I’m sitting there. The star enters, and he says, “Oh, I don't know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” I say, “ There there, Harry. Relax. Take it easy, have a glass of water, and tell me in your own words…”
And on the word ‘words,’ the water - a full glass of water - falls out of my hand, smashes, and there’s glass and water all over the fucking place. There’s nothing but glass and water and there is a shocked silence from the audience. Oh my god. I get up, I walk down to the footlights, I rip off this crazy wig, I say, “I’m only fourteen! I’ve never done this before!” And the audience goes crazy, and I knew, well, I think it’s comedy for me.