The Producers: Gene Wilder & Zero Mostel

I first saw this movie on television, perhaps on NBC's "Saturday Night at the Movies," or another of the weeknight movies by one of the networks.* This had to be in the 1970s, as the film had its theatrical debut in late 1967, with its main release to theaters in the spring of 1968. I do recall I was a little bored with some of the first part of the movie, but that changed as I watched further. "The Producers" was the baby of Mel Brooks, and he won the Academy Award for the screenplay. Brooks also directed the movie. At that time, Brooks, in collaboration with writer-director Buck Henry, was well known for the successful television comedy spy spoof, "Get Smart," which often featured lead actor/comedian Don Adams talking into his shoe phone, which was thought to be kind of crazy in those times. Nowadays.... well, never mind!

The general idea behind the picture is a scheme by a once successful Broadway producer, Max Bialystock (played by Zero Mostel) and his accountant, Leo Bloom (played by Gene Wilder), to make a bundle of money by overselling shares in a Broadway production; a production they will make sure fails, leaving them lots of money, because they believe no one will check the books of a failed production. Boy do they oversell! There is only 100% of anything, but they sell 25,000%!!!

In order to guarantee failure, they choose a script by a former nutty Nazi soldier (played by Kenneth Mars), who still wears his helmet around everywhere. His play is called "Springtime for Hitler," a script which glorifies the "misunderstood" Führer and war. Obviously, the idea of such a show was ahead of its time, because it might be a hit with a part of the American population today. But in those days, Americans overwhelmingly opposed fascism, in spite of any flaws we had, which were numerous, but at least we were trying to make things right. Ah, anyway...

The two money hungry schemers choose a director who has had nothing but a string of failures. Then they try to further guarantee failure by choosing a 1960s "flower power" hippie, nicknamed, "LSD" (played by Dick Shawn), as their man to play Hitler. When the show opens, the house is packed, and Max and Leo watch as the audience is appalled by the Nazi Party-like rally being performed on stage, complete with goose stepping dancers, who fall in line to form a twirling swastika. Then there's the music, with lyrics, "we're marching to a faster pace, look out, here comes the master race ... Don't be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi Party." The two decide to go celebrate with some drinks, and to avoid being mauled by the audience as they stomp out of the show at intermission.

As the shocked and angry audience begins to leave early, out comes the hippie-like Hitler, spouting groovy terms like "cool baby," and, "far out." The audience returns to their seats, barely able to control their hysterical laughter. At intermission, some of the now delighted audience goes to the bar where Max and Leo are celebrating. The two conspirators are stunned to hear how these members of the audience cannot say enough good things about "Springtime for Hitler," and saying how it will run on Broadway for years. These people can't wait to get back to see the second half of the show. Max and Leo are shaken, with Leo wanting to turn himself in to get a lighter sentence. (Remember, no matter how successful the show is, the two can never pay off all the investors.)

During the remainder of the show, the scriptwriter, the Nazi nutcase named Franz, is so upset with the show, he tries to halt it by going backstage to drop the curtain. He then goes out to tell the audience how the show is misrepresenting Hitler, and that his Führer never said things like "baby." The audience assumes this is all part of the show and continues to laugh hysterically, even when Franz is conked on the head by someone behind the curtain.

With the two conspirators at odds over what to do, Franz comes after them with a gun. After firing and missing Max and Leo, Franz can't even commit suicide, like his Führer, because the gun is out of bullets. Max and Leo talk Franz into working with them to blow up the theater to halt future performances. Franz is willing to do anything to stop the ridicule of Hitler and the distortion of his Führer-praising script. The three are injured by the blast and then arrested. At the trial, Max tells the court how the two have learned their lesson, and that they will never do any such thing again. The scene shifts to the prison and Max and Leo have a new prison show they are funding by overselling shares in it, with one of the investors being the warden himself! 

* For those too young to know this, in those times there were only three commercial networks: ABC, CBS, NBC. There was also, by 1970, PBS, which came about from a number of previous educational television stations joining (becoming members). There were no cable stations, and in those times "cable" was a system of a relatively few providers, which offered television service in generally smaller markets, where programming from all of the 3 networks and educational television (later PBS), plus some independent stations, was not easily available otherwise.

Photo is from the 2013 blu-ray/dvd combo release by Shout! Factory 

WORD HISTORY:
Zero-This word, related to "cipher," has an uncertain origin, although that origin "might" actually be Indo European. It goes back to Arabic (transliterated) "safara," which meant, "empty;" thus, "nothing." It is "possible" the Arabic word was borrowed from Indo-Aryan, "perhaps" Sanskrit.^ Anyway, the Arabic word then gave Arabic (transliterated) "sifr," meaning, "nothing." This was borrowed by Latin as "zephirim," which meant the mathematical "zero, " and which then became "zerum," with the same meaning. This became "zero" in Italian, which was borrowed into French as "zéro." English borrowed the word in the early 1600s from either French or Italian, with likely reinforcement from one for the other.

^ Indo-Aryan is a sub branch of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo European languages. These languages, therefore, are related to English, but much further down the family tree. The modern Indo-Aryan languages are chiefly spoken in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.