JAMESTOWN, NEW YORK — Mel Brooks has donated his career archive of more than 150,000 production documents and 5,000 photographs to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York. The collection spans Brooks' decadeslong career as a writer, performer, director and producer.

The archive features material from many of Brooks' films, including "The Producers" (1967), "Blazing Saddles" (1974), "Young Frankenstein" (1974), "Silent Movie" (1976) and "Spaceballs" (1987). Items include storyboards, visual development materials and extensive production records from every feature film Brooks directed, along with photographs documenting him at work throughout his directing career. The collection also includes the original lyric sheet for "Springtime for Hitler" from "The Producers."

Some material in the collection dates back more than 80 years, including some of Brooks' earliest comedic writings drafted while he was serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. The collection also features material from Brooks' screenwriting work with Sid Caesar on "Your Show of Shows," the live variety program that ran for four seasons in the 1950s and earned two Primetime Emmy Awards.

"I've always been proud to say that I make people laugh for a living," Brooks said. "So, knowing that my work will have a home at comedy's national archive and continue making people laugh leaves me with a deep sense of pride."

The National Comedy Center, a nonprofit cultural institution that opened in 2018 in Western New York, also holds the papers of Brooks' longtime collaborator Carl Reiner, which were donated in 2021. Reiner died in 2020 at age 98. Brooks and Reiner worked together on "Your Show of Shows" and were known for the recurring bit "The 2000-Year-Old Man," in which Brooks played a man from ancient times interviewed about contemporary culture by Reiner as a TV newsman.

"I'm honored that my contributions will be preserved for future generations at the National Comedy Center — especially because it's a place that was meaningful to my best friend Carl Reiner, who believed deeply in preserving comedy's history," Brooks said. "I know he'd be happy that our work will be around for the next 2,000 years — or maybe even more."

The center's holdings include George Carlin's handwritten creative notes, Joan Rivers' 70,000-joke card catalog, Lenny Bruce's annotated manuscripts and obscenity trial papers, production records from Ball and Desi Arnaz's Desilu Studios, and original creative materials from Saturday Night Live, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, In Living Color and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Journey Gunderson, Executive Director of the National Comedy Center, said: "Preserving this material is not simply an act of stewardship — it is the safeguarding of a vital cultural legacy that will inform scholarship, creative inquiry, and historical understanding for generations."

"Mel Brooks is simply a giant of comedy, and his influence on my life and career is immeasurable. I have had the good fortune of knowing so many hilarious, funny people, and Mel is the king. Now his extraordinary body of work will take its place alongside Carl Reiner's in the National Comedy Center's archives," Billy Crystal said.

Brooks, 99, is marking his centennial year in 2026 as his birthday approaches on June 28. He has won an Academy Award for screenwriting, four Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and three Tonys.