Mel Brooks Finally Exposed the 6 Worst Racist Stars in Old Hollywood Golden Age History

Mel Brooks's seventy years inside the American entertainment industry as a Jewish-American comedy voice gave him a documented vantage point on six Old Hollywood Golden Age figures whose institutional power, congressional testimony, organizational memberships, and creative choices Brooks confronted directly through Blazing Saddles in 1974 and continued exposing across his 2021 memoir All About Me! and his late-career interviews. The video traces Brooks from his 1950 arrival in the Your Show of Shows writers room with Sid Caesar, through his 1967 film The Producers and his 1974 anti-racist satire Blazing Saddles co-written with Richard Pryor, and into his candid late-career interviews and 2021 memoir. The six exposed figures are Mickey Rooney, Adolphe Menjou, Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford, Ronald Reagan, and John Wayne. Each entry draws on Joseph McBride's 2001 biography Searching for John Ford, Seth Rosenfeld's 2012 book Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power, Menjou's 1948 autobiography It Took Nine Tailors, Wayne's May 1971 Playboy interview, and Brooks's own published memoir. What's covered in this video: Mel Brooks's seventy-year career from Your Show of Shows in 1950 through The Producers in 1967, Blazing Saddles in 1974 co-written with Richard Pryor, his Battle of the Bulge service in World War Two, his Jewish-American outsider perspective on the Hollywood blacklist, his Mel Brooks: Make a Noise documentary in 2013, his 2021 memoir All About Me!, and his late-career interviews refusing to soften his judgments about the figures whose institutional racism shaped his industry. Mickey Rooney as the Brooklyn-born child star whose Andy Hardy MGM films made him the top box-office star from 1939 to 1941, his 360 films across seven decades until his 2014 death at age 93, his portrayal of Mr. I.Y. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's in 1961 opposite Audrey Hepburn's Holly Golightly, the documented contemporary critical responses from the New York Times and James Powers at The Hollywood Reporter, director Blake Edwards's later regret before his 2010 death, and Rooney's documented 2008 non-apology defending the performance. Adolphe Menjou as the impeccably dressed Hollywood character actor of the 1930s and 1940s, his nominated performance in The Front Page in 1931, his supporting roles in Stage Door, A Star Is Born, and Paths of Glory, his 1948 autobiography It Took Nine Tailors documenting his openly white supremacist political views, his founding membership in the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals in 1944, and his October 1947 friendly witness testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Cecil B. DeMille as the studio system's founding spectacle director, his 70 films from 1914 through 1956 including both The Ten Commandments productions, Cleopatra, and Samson and Delilah, his 1944 co-founding of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, his 1950 campaign within the Directors Guild of America against Joseph Mankiewicz, and the documented joke referring to him in Blazing Saddles as the man who killed more men than DeMille. Mentioned in this video: Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, Richard Pryor, Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Mickey Rooney, Adolphe Menjou, Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford, Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Audrey Hepburn, Blake Edwards, Walt Disney, Hedda Hopper, Ginger Rogers, Ward Bond, Ayn Rand, Joseph Mankiewicz, J. Edward Bromberg, Joseph McBride, Seth Rosenfeld, Stepin Fetchit, Woody Strode, D.W. Griffith, Judy Garland, Richard Nixon, James Powers, Franklin Roosevelt, Your Show of Shows, The Producers, Blazing Saddles, All About Me!, Mel Brooks: Make a Noise, Searching for John Ford, Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals and Reagan's Rise to Power, It Took Nine Tailors, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Front Page, Stage Door, A Star Is Born, Paths of Glory, The Ten Commandments, Cleopatra, Samson and Delilah, The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, The Quiet Man, The Birth of a Nation, Judge Priest, Steamboat Round the Bend, Stagecoach, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Andy Hardy, Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, House Un-American Activities Committee, Screen Actors Guild, Directors Guild of America, FBI, Warner Brothers, General Electric Theater, MGM, Hollywood blacklist, New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Playboy magazine, National Archives, Battle of the Bulge, Old Hollywood Golden Age.