Mel Brooks has always been a comedy genius. From the old days when he had teamed up with a Carl Reiner for the comedy skits “2000 Year Old Man” to his many fabulous films including: “Blazing Saddles”, “Young Frankenstein”, “High Anxiety”, “Silent Movie”, “The Producers”, “Spaceballs”, “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and the list goes on and on. He even put “The Producers” on Broadway.
Recently Mel Brooks, at the age of 88, received one the most prestigious honors in Hollywood. He put his feet and handprints in cement outside TCL Chinese Theater (Formerly Grauman’s Chinese Theater). It was also the 40th Anniversary of “Young Frankenstein”.
He’s still up to his shenanigans when he placed his hands in the cement, and he even had help from two people to make sure the impression was deep enough. As he raised his hands to the cameras, you look at his cement filled palms and realize something was not right. And Mel had a huge smile on his face because he just about got away with it.
Mel Brooks had a make-up specialist put a prosthetic finger on his left hand. If you check the photos, he has six fingers on his left hand and a six finger impression in the cement. What really got to the people was that it looked so real. Often times Hollywood will use computer generated “Extra” digits like in “Bruce Almighty” with Jim Carrey. But Mel’s almost fooled them all.
Polydactyly or Hyperdactyly is hereditary and basically means “poly (many) and dactylos (fingers).
I hope that what I’m about to write will not make you think of me any differently. I, Bob Harris, was born with 11 fingers! That right, just think how fast I would be able to type if I still had number 11. It comes from my mother’s side of the family. Mom had 12 toes and 12 fingers, and Grandma had 11 toes. My sister came into this world with 12 toes, and one of her sons had an extra finger. Me? I had 11 fingers, the regular five on the left but 6 fingers on the right. I have no pictures of it, but Mom had told me it grew from the pinky finger at the middle knuckle. It had no bone, but there was a fingernail. Apparently until they decided to remove it, I was entertained by closing it up in my fist and then opening it, to watch it “boing” out.
When I was in grade school, a toy came out called “Six Finger”. You held it in your hand as if it was an extra index finger. It had a “clicker” for sending messages, plus it could fire a bullet, a bomb (you put a cap in the end if it) a projectile that stored a secret written message, and you could turn it into an ink pen. This was so cool and for some reason I gave it to my brother. He doesn’t have it anymore. I want my “Six Finger” back. The toy that is! I still remember the jingle, “Six Finger, Six Finger man alive, how’d I ever get along with five.”
By the way, I had to look up the world record for most fingers and toes. The record belongs to a youngster born in India in 2010 with 14 fingers, seven on each hand and 20 toes, ten on each foot.