The Producers (1967)

Producers Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom make money by producing a sure-fire flop.

Director:

Mel Brooks

Writer:

Mel Brooks

Stars:

Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Estelle Winwood

Won 1 Oscar. Another 2 wins & 5 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Estelle Winwood	...	Hold Me Touch Me
Renée Taylor	...	Eva Braun (as Renee Taylor)
David Patch	...	Goebbels
William Hickey	...	The Drunk (as Bill Hickey)
Barney Martin	...	Göring
Shimen Ruskin	...	The Landlord
Frank Campanella	...	The Bartender
Josip Elic	...	Violinist
Madelyn Cates	...	Concierge (as Madlyn Cates)
John Zoller	...	Drama Critic
Brutus Peck	...	Hot Dog Vendor
Anne Ives	...	Lady
Amelie Barleon	...	Lady
Lisa Kirk	...	Lady (as Elsie Kirk)
Nell Harrison	...	Lady

Storyline

Down-on-his-luck theatrical producer Max Bialystock is forced to romance rich old ladies to finance his efforts. When timid accountant Leo Bloom reviews Max's accounting books, the two hit upon a way to make a fortune by producing a sure-fire flop. The play which is to be their gold mine? "Springtime for Hitler."

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Plot Keywords:

joseph goebbels character | national film registry | hermann goring character | neo screwball comedy | broadway | 

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Taglines:

Once upon a time there was a Broadway producer...who met a "creative" but timid accountant. Together they concocted the most outrageous $1,000,000 scheme in the annals of Show Biz.

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Genres:

Comedy | Music

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Certificate:

PG

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English German

Release Date:

10 November 1968 (USA)

Also Known As:

Springtime for Hitler

Filming Locations:

100 East 7th Street, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$941,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$6,091, 9 June 2002, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$111,866, 12 January 2003

Company Credits

Production Co:

Crossbow Productions, Springtime Productions, U-M Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

88 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Pathécolor) (uncredited)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

As Max (Zero Mostel) and "Hold Me Touch Me" (Estelle Winwood) are cavorting during the title sequence, a poster from the 1964 stage production of "Baby Want a Kiss" can be seen prominently. The play's two principal leads' names (Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward) are shown obscured: "BAOL" and "OOANNE", with their surnames indecipherable.

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Goofs

When Max and Leo are about to enter Franz's apartment building, a pretty woman passes by and they check her out. In the distance, a young man exits another building; as the woman gets closer to him, they obviously don't know one another. When Max and Leo leave Franz and walk onto the same sidewalk in front of the building, the very same pretty woman can be seen walking towards them; what's more, she is with the same young man who was exiting the building, and now they are a "couple."

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Quotes

Franz Liebkind: Der Führer does not say, "Achtung, baby."

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Crazy Credits

The closing credits shows the actors full name and their picture. It only says "Zero" for Zero Mostel.

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Alternate Versions

Some prints eliminate the opening "Embassy Pictures" logo, as well as a few seconds of footage in the bar scene, including the drunk's dialogue "Let's have a toast...to toast! I love toast..." and the beginning of the song "By the Light of the Silvery Moon". Most prints just cut into the scene in the middle of the song verse.

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Connections

Referenced in Countdown: Episode #72.78 (2015)

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Soundtracks

Flying Down To Rio
Written by Vincent Youmans, Gus Kahn, and Edward Eliscu

User Reviews

"Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said." -Mel Brooks

In 21st Century America, the one feature of The Producers that astounds even today is the boisterous, exaggerated, confrontational impulsiveness of its two lead performances. But in 1968, the film's content was like a suicide bombing of the audience's idea of good manners. There's such greed in its heroes, such merry deceit, such eagerness to concede every ethic, that the 1968 audience just had to surrender, stick with it. How did Brooks get away with that? By proving the dishonorable struggle of both lead characters at the start, by casting them with actors you couldn't help liking. Mostel's Max Bialystock is a man whose yearnings are so measureless they exonerate his voracity. There's a scene where he rubs his grubby office window with coffee, peeps through the dirt, sees a white Rolls-Royce and shouts, "That's it, baby! When you've got it, flaunt it!" You can drink a tall glass of his gluttonous self-indulgence. "Look at me now! I'm wearing a cardboard belt!" It's characteristic of this movie that after he says the line, he rips off the belt, tears it to smithereens.

Mostel, a distinguished thespian, blacklist foil, and academic, here gives a tour de force of low comedy. Regardless of a comb-over that starts just above his clavicle, he propels buoyant egotism, spitting on his hand to slick back his hair before an elderly female investor enters for her weekly frolic. What Mostel propels in particular is unreserved self-assurance. He never has doubts. Maybe he never thinks at all, just simply carries on out of evolutionary necessity.

Wilder was a fresh mug in 1968, familiarized to audiences with a significant supporting role in Bonnie and Clyde a year before, also as a rather hysterical character. His performance in The Producers is a tinge short of cardiac arrest. On the floor with Mostel over him, he shrieks, "Don't jump! Don't jump!" Mostel begins to leap in a flurry. "I'm hysterical! I'm hysterical!" Mostel pours a glass of water and chucks it in his face. Wilder serves a perfect line: "I'm wet! I'm hysterical, and I'm wet! I'm in pain, and I'm wet, and I'm still hysterical!" Gene and Zero reel on the floor so violently we expect them to chew on one another. Mostel's so overexcited and feral, Wilder so flustered and frantic, you marvel that slobber didn't get on the camera lens. The entire movie's toned on that plane of turbulent anxiety. One of the delights of watching it is to see how the actors are able to manage timing and distinctions even while shrieking. Timing is in the hands of actors, but without scripts, there would be loads of tedious improvisation. Good timing in the written words is the gateway to good timing on screen. I'm sure we'd be surprised at how snappish the dialogue seems on the page. But Brooks, a veteran nightclub act himself, leaves space for delivery while simultaneously working economically with form. Characters repeat the last thing another character said to extend the laugh. Characteristic of Brooks, that's often what causes the laugh. Language is ecstasy to him.

Kenneth Mars is a militant live-action cartoon, up on the roof with his pigeons, singing Nazi songs, later commanding an audience member to stop laughing because "I am the author! I outrank you!" Brooks includes gay jokes, with the ostentatious couple of Broadway director Roger De Bris and his right-hand Carmen Giya. At one point Max, Leo and Carmen crowd into a teeny elevator, and are ejected breathless and ill-at-ease. Heterosexuality's epitomized by the nubile Lee Meredith, as Ulla, the voluptuous secretary, who types one letter at a time then stops for a pat-on-the-back smile. The other terrific performance is by Dick Shawn as the actor who plays Hitler. In a movie made at the pinnacle of the hipster era, he's a hippie comprised out of archetypal junk scraps, with his finger cymbals, soup can necklace and knee-high shag boots.

To produce a musical named Springtime for Hitler is naturally in the worst achievable taste, as an exiting audience member remarks in the movie, to the glee of Bialystock and Bloom, who're depending upon precisely that response. To make a movie about such a musical was also in bad taste, apparently. It's clear that Bialystock and Bloom are Jewish, but they never touch on that. As Franz Liebkind rages, they nod, because the more repugnant he is, the more liable his play will fail. Brooks throws in merely one brief flash to indicate their personal feelings. As the two men walk away from the playwright's apartment, Bloom covers the red-and-black Nazi armband Franz has given him. "All right, take off the armband," says Bialystock, taking off his own. They throw both armbands into a garbage can and spit in it.

Whilst jabbing at the troubles of Broadway, Brooks' directorial debut's concerned with two overtly Jewish characters who are, in the best tradition of Jewish comedy, doomed to failure, in a film steaming with conflict on every level. Whilst there may be a prominently Jewish-American sensibility about Brooks' work, it's a feature that he's chosen to leave out after this film, apart from the Yiddish Native American chief in Blazing Saddles, the metal detector scene in High Anxiety, occasional comments in To Be or Not To Be and the fictitious trailer for Jews in Space in History of the World Part I. But what he's maintained, and what I feel---having grown up in a family of Brooks fanatics---is what makes a particular generation enjoy him so insatiably, is a pure audacity, mischievous delight, eagerness to leap any bound for a laugh. They'll say, "Ah, comedy today's all eff this, eff that, fart on this, have sex with that. It's all bad taste." And I say, look at your boy Mel. He knows better than any of them: Bad taste can taste the best.