At a Glance
- Mel Brooks, 99, speaks candidly about life since Anne Bancroft’s 2005 death in a new HBO documentary
- Children recall the couple’s bond: “She was his best friend. It was the two of them against the world”
- Brooks credits comedy and family for helping him navigate grief: “You just find something in you that gives you the grit and the courage”
- Why it matters: The rare glimpse into a 41-year Hollywood marriage shows how love and laughter can outlast loss
Mel Brooks has never hidden his gift for making people laugh, but in a new two-part documentary he exposes the quiet sorrow that arrived when the laughter at home stopped. Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!, streaming January 22 and 23 on HBO Max, finds the comedy legend reflecting on the nearly two decades he has spent without Anne Bancroft, his wife of 41 years.
A Slow, Horrible Goodbye
Bancroft died of cancer in 2005 after a prolonged recurrence that left the family reeling. Their son Maximillian “Max” Brooks, 53, describes the ordeal in unflinching terms: “She had cancer. She beat it. It came back. It was a slow, horrible, lingering time, and anybody who has ever lost a loved one to cancer knows exactly what I’m talking about. We got a bad break, and that’s how [my dad] refers to it.”
The documentary, directed by Judd Apatow, stitches together archival footage and fresh interviews to show how the loss reshaped Brooks’ daily world. Edward “Eddie” Brooks, 66, Mel’s eldest child from his first marriage to Florence Baum, recalls the immediate aftermath: “All the light went out. He was not in a good place. We never dreamed that Anne would ever get sick or ultimately pass away. He just worshiped her.”
The Meeting That Changed Everything
The pair met in 1961 during a rehearsal for The Perry Como Show. At the time Brooks was still carving out a name for himself; Bancroft, already an Oscar winner for The Miracle Worker, saw potential others missed. Family members say her faith became his anchor during uncertain professional stretches.
“She was incredibly supportive of these chances that he was taking, and she was the one to say, ‘I believe in it. I believe in you. Of course you can write the songs, you’re a songwriter,'” Eddie remembers. “If it came from her, it was like the gospel.”
Max echoes the sentiment: “She was his best friend. It was the two of them against the world. My dad was the water, and my mother was the glass, and when the glass shattered, I was worried the water was going to go everywhere.”
Learning to Live With Absence
Apatow presses Brooks on what he misses most. The answer arrives in fragments: “Too many things. Things that nobody in the world would understand. When faced with an unhappy moment, the look on her face. When making up her mind to go somewhere, how fast she turned and moved. It’s hard to explain. There are some things that stay with you forever.”
The film shows Brooks gradually re-engaging with life. Longtime friend Carl Reiner, who lost his own wife Estelle in 2008 and died in 2020, provided companionship rooted in shared grief. Granddaughter Samantha Brooks notes that her grandfather now speaks of Bancroft more openly than he once did.
“My grandpa talks about Annie, my grandmother, a lot more now than he used to when she passed,” she says. One recent evening epitomizes the shift: “We were just sitting on the couch at his house, and he said, ‘I want to show you the movie To Be or Not to Be,’ and we watched it together. We got to watch her singing and performing and being herself together, and that felt like it healed something I didn’t even know was broken.” The 1983 film, starring the couple opposite one another, served as both memory and medicine.
Comedy as Survival Tool
Brooks has long claimed laughter is the greatest medicine, and he applies the maxim to his own sorrow. “You can’t indulge yourself in being unhappy and miserable because it doesn’t make the pain go away or better,” he tells Apatow. “You just find something in you that gives you the grit and the courage to get through the bad times that come after somebody you love passes away.”
The documentary frames this philosophy with scenes of Brooks on stage, in writers’ rooms, and surrounded by family-spaces where jokes still flow. Yet the humor never fully masks the underlying truth: the glass remains shattered, but the water, somehow, has stayed within recognizable bounds.
Key Takeaways
- Lasting Partnership: Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft’s 41-year marriage weathered career highs and health lows, ending only with her death in 2005
- Family Witness: Children and grandchildren describe Brooks’ grief as transformative yet tempered by an enduring belief in love and laughter
- Public Grief: The HBO film offers a rare, first-hand account of how a comedic icon processes private loss under a public spotlight
- Premiere Dates: Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! streams January 22 and 23 on HBO Max
