10/29/2026
Icons for sure.
For Dick Van D**e, World War II service led to a radio audition in a latrine. For Mel Brooks, it meant searching for land mines in Europe with a bayonet. The 2 comedy legends are now 100: Van D**e reached that birthday on December 13, 2025, and Brooks on June 28, 2026.
They're among the surviving entertainers with military-service histories. William Daniels reportedly worked as a DJ in Italy in 1945, and Doc Severinsen organized a military band at Fort Lewis.
Van D**e left Illinois' Danville High in March 1944 to join the Army Air Forces. Getting accepted took repeated attempts.
He stood 6-foot-1 and weighed about 135 pounds, below the weight requirement. A friend who drove him to the base 3 times credited “bananas and milkshakes” with finally getting him in.
He never flew in combat. When he learned some trainees would be sent out as tail gunners, he demonstrated his singing and dancing and landed in Special Services. He went on to host the base radio program Flight Time after that latrine audition.
“So cowardice got me into showbiz,” Van D**e said. In his 2011 memoir, he wrote, “The closest I got to my pilot's wings was when the other trainees and I serviced the planes.”
Brooks was drafted at 17 and became an Army combat engineer in Europe. His work included feeling for buried mines with a bayonet. As he described it, “if you heard, 'Tink! Tink! Tink!' you knew there was something dangerous underneath.”
His assessment of the assignment: “The two things I hate most in the world are combat and engineering.”
In spring 1945, Brooks heard German soldiers singing on the opposite side of a river. He used a bullhorn to answer them with Al Jolson's “Toot, Toot, Tootsie.”
Recalling their response, Brooks said, “I think I heard applause. I think they liked it.” He later made Hi**er a target of his comedy, saying “they would be defeated by laughter.”
Their lives also connected through Carl Reiner and monthly lunches at Norman Lear's. In December 2025, ahead of Van D**e's 100th birthday, Brooks said, “I love Dick Van D**e because he was so good-natured, so sweet, original.”
