As Mel Brooks celebrates his 100th year and looks back on a lifetime of comedy, he has a simple answer when asked the secret of his longevity.

“Making comedy is a great job. It keeps you sane and happy. It gives you a reason to be alive,” the iconic actor, director and producer told People magazine in January.

His reason may not be as funny as it sounds.

Born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, on June 28, 1926, Brookes cut his comedic teeth after returning from World War II performing in the so-called “Borscht Belt”  – the upstate New York hotels and resorts popular with Jewish vacationers.

Since then he has gone on to make classic TV shows and movies such as Get Smart, The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie and High Anxiety.

And he’s not done, with a starring role in the sequel to 1988’s Spaceballs – Spaceballs: The New One – to be released early next year.

Brooks served in the US Army during WWII. Photo: Wikipedia.

To mark the occasion of Brooks’ centennial, the American Film Institute has named 1974’s Blazing Saddles the funniest film of all time.

It has previously ranked sixth on its list of 100 greatest movies. Brooks’ film displaced Some Like It Hot – which Brooks had long held wasn’t as funny as his movies – from the top spot.

“He’s right!,” said Bob Gazzale, AFI president and chief executive.

Brooks’ love affair with laughter began with his childhood in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he told The Associated Press in 2021.

“I wanted to keep the party going. I wanted to keep the happiness and joy and explosions of laughter going into a dour part of our lives, not our childhood anymore,” Brooks recalled.

“I was once interviewed and the guy said, ‘What was the happiest part of your life? Was it winning the Academy Award? Was it marrying Anne Bancroft?’ I said no, not at all. It was my childhood. From about four or five to nine, it was the most exciting, happiest, joyous life that anyone could experience.

“The guy said, ‘What happened at nine?’. I said, ‘Homework’.”

The 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles is officially the funniest movie ever. Photo: Warner Bros

Earlier this year, Judd Apatow titled his retrospective documentary on him: Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!

“I was born to make people laugh,” Brooks says in the film.

“So, I do that.”

So could Brooks’ theory about laughter and longevity be right?

Research has repeatedly shown that laughter could indeed be one of the best medicines.

A 2016 Norwegan study, published by the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, found that women who scored highly on the cognitive component of sense of humour, or the ability to detect humour, were associated with a 48 per cent lower risk of death from all causes.

It found that death due to cardiovascular diseases in particularwas “significantly lower” in women with high scores on the cognitive component.

A separate US study in 2023 study discovered that spontaneous laughter was associated with a greater reduction in cortisol levels and may be a potential supplementary medical therapy to improve wellbeing.

Edward T Creagan, a Mayo Clinic expert and oncologist, said in 2024 that laughter was beneficial for mental wellbeing.

“If a patient can have a moment of levity in the face of crisis, I think it helps them better cope and better deal with the uncertainties of their problems,”Creagan said.

As for Brooks, he says he no longer thinks about his age or how much time he has left.

“I gave up after 60 thinking about it because if I did, I’d be thinking about it all the time, he told the Associated Press in 2021.

“When and if it happens it’s going to be a sad day — for everybody but me,” he joked.

“I enjoy living. I’d like to do it as long as I can.”

Brooks has sometimes made mortality a joke, too. In a 1980s sketch, he created a coin-operated gravestone for himself that played a videotaped message. It began: “I was Mel Brooks, one of the funniest little Jews to walk the Earth.”

-with agencies