He was featured in the television show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, where he played straight man to Dick Martin. Born on a carnivaltrain near the small town of Beggs, Oklahoma, under the name of “Daniel Hale David”, Rowan toured with his parents, Oscar and Nellie David, who performed a singing and dancing act with the carnival. He was orphaned at age 11, spent four traumatic years at the McClelland Home in Pueblo, Colorado, then was taken in by a foster family at age 16 and enrolled in Central High School (Pueblo, Colorado). After graduating from high school, he hitchhiked to Los Angeles, California, in 1940 and found a job in the mailroom at Paramount Pictures; quickly ingratiating himself with studio head Buddy DeSylva, a year later he became Paramount's youngest staff writer.
Actor, writer, director son of Thelma Leeds (née Goodman), a singer and actress, and Harry Parke (né Einstein), a radio comedian who performed on Eddie Cantor's radio program and was known as Parkyarkarkus. His brothers are comedic actor Bob Einstein, better known by his stage name "Super Dave Osborne" and Cliff Einstein, a partner and longtime chief creative officer at the Los Angeles ad agency Dailey & Associates and his half-brother was Charles Einstein (1926-2007), a writer who wrote for such shows as Playhouse 90 and Lou Grant. Brooks started his own career in comedy by landing regular roles on variety shows in the late 1960s and gaining popularity on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s. Brooks' first film appearance was Taxi Driver(1976). He began screenwriting and directing in the 1980s, with films including Lost in America (1985), Defending Your Life (1991), The Muse(1999) and Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (2005).
