The Producers - Serious Mel Brooks Filtered by Vaudville
By now, most everyone knows the story of The Producers, the creative theater masterpiece written by Mel Brooks. It's a funny show with a serious message.
Reviews about The Producers began in 1968 when the original comedy movie was released. Mel Brooks won the Oscar in 1969 for best writing and screenplay for The Producers. Zero Mostel starred in the 1968 movie as the comic, albeit unscrupulous, Broadway producer, Max Bialystock, the role Nathan Hale perfected in the stage musical. Gene Wilder was nominated for a supporting role Oscar in the 1968 film for his portrayal of Leo Bloom, the forlorn accountant who Bialystock turns into a producer. Mathew Broderick plays this part in the Broadway musical and movie.
In 2001, The Producers won 12 Tony Awards including Best Book, Score and Musical, 2 Drama Desks as Outstanding Book and New Musical, and the New York Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical
For reasons unexplainable, I didn't actually appreciate the extraordinary genius of this vaudevillian story until my husband and I saw the musical performed live at the Maine State Music Theater at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, this summer. Two veteran actors star in the Maine State blockbuster show: Ed Romanoff plays Bialystock and Chuck Ragsdale plays Bloom. Ulla, the deliciously hot blond who captures Bloom's heart, is played by Amy Bodnar.
We enjoyed the musical. So, we immediately rented the DVD movie, which is a re-creation of the Broadway musical, with Nathan Hale and Mathew Broderick. It's a rare musical movie which, for once, follows the story line of the Mel Brooks screen play and musical, line for line.
Bialystock is a man trained in the P.T. Barnum school where a sucker is born every minute. He latches on to Bloom because the star struck accountant's financial expertise will help him to fraudulently create wealth out of a sure fire Broadway flop. Bialystock convinces Bloom to go against his accounting scruples and the two men begin searching for a play doomed to failure.
Along comes a horrid script called "Springtime for Hitler". The two men sense a Broadway bomb. Bialystock and Bloom start counting their chickens when they find the play's author is a lunatic Nazi sympathizer who raises carrier pigeons on the roof top of a New York City apartment building. Bialystock embarks on a scheme to extort money from dozens of little old lady investors. He hires a terrible director, under the pretext the show is destined to win a Tony Award. Together, Bialystock and Bloom dream about a blissful lifetime of luxury in Rio de Janeiro, with sex kitten Ulla, who walks into their lives looking for a part in
the "Springtime for Hitler", musical revue.
All of which is absolutely side splitting funny. Without realizing it, the audience buys into the premise of "Springtime for Hitler", being seduced by superb acting, comical debauchery and double-entendre sexual innuendos of the bi-sexual variety. Insidiously, Mel Brooks rips open the envelope of political correctness in The Producers by tossing socially polite dialogue into the proverbial trash.
In fact, the show is an upscale vaudeville production with a drop deadly serious theme. For those who, God Forbid, buy into historic revisionism by sinking into the underworld of Holocaust Denial, the vaudeville tone in The Producers shoves their best intentions into eternal folly.
Although Nazism's inherent evil leaves no room for burlesque, Mel Brooks, nonetheless, creates an eternal joke out of the Third Reich, using vaudevillian genius to immortalize the stupidity of the Hitler era.
By an extraordinary twist of fate, "Springtime for Hitler" becomes a big hit, when the director of the show, who is supposed to seal its failed fate, is thrust into playing Adolf Hitler. It turns out, the duped director unsuspectingly creates a gay caricature of the Nazi terrorist, a portrayal which captivates the audience. Instead of the bomb they hoped for, Bialystock and Bloom find they have hit show on their hands. Now, they must repay their unsuspecting investors with the money they intended to steal.
Everything vaudevillian is magnified in The Producers, except for the theme. There's nothing at all funny about Nazism, except, of course, if the life and times of Germany's notoriously failed Fuhrer will be remembered as utterly brainless. Likewise, those who followed the Nazi dictator, who perpetrated World War II in Europe resulting in the murders of millions of innocent people, are portrayed as stage hungry manikins, decorating the set for the entrance of a tyrant turned buffoon.
"Springtime for Hitler and Germany" is the juxtaposed musical revue and showstopper in The Producer's second act, belying the reality bubbling beneath the musical's farce. Just like Hitler's suicide at the end of World War II, the failure of Bialystock and Bloom to carry off their ruse is analogous to the reality faced by the German people when the ugly truth about Nazism could no longer be couched in the ultra
patriotic spirit of nationalism.
Mel Brooks is a world renowned film director, writer, actor and the widower of the wonderful actress Ann Bancroft. He is also a World War II army veteran of The Battle of the Bulge, in Belgium. Many aspects of his comedic life as a Jewish American are a far cry from being funny. Regardless of a lifetime of other achievements, The Producers is a theatrical legacy for Brooks, the writer. Like a magician, Brooks uses vaudeville to hide a historical slight of hand, whereby the laugh lines are rooted in exposing the brutal truth about one of the most heinous of
mankind's modern times.
Reviews about The Producers began in 1968 when the original comedy movie was released. Mel Brooks won the Oscar in 1969 for best writing and screenplay for The Producers. Zero Mostel starred in the 1968 movie as the comic, albeit unscrupulous, Broadway producer, Max Bialystock, the role Nathan Hale perfected in the stage musical. Gene Wilder was nominated for a supporting role Oscar in the 1968 film for his portrayal of Leo Bloom, the forlorn accountant who Bialystock turns into a producer. Mathew Broderick plays this part in the Broadway musical and movie.
In 2001, The Producers won 12 Tony Awards including Best Book, Score and Musical, 2 Drama Desks as Outstanding Book and New Musical, and the New York Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical
For reasons unexplainable, I didn't actually appreciate the extraordinary genius of this vaudevillian story until my husband and I saw the musical performed live at the Maine State Music Theater at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, this summer. Two veteran actors star in the Maine State blockbuster show: Ed Romanoff plays Bialystock and Chuck Ragsdale plays Bloom. Ulla, the deliciously hot blond who captures Bloom's heart, is played by Amy Bodnar.
We enjoyed the musical. So, we immediately rented the DVD movie, which is a re-creation of the Broadway musical, with Nathan Hale and Mathew Broderick. It's a rare musical movie which, for once, follows the story line of the Mel Brooks screen play and musical, line for line.
Bialystock is a man trained in the P.T. Barnum school where a sucker is born every minute. He latches on to Bloom because the star struck accountant's financial expertise will help him to fraudulently create wealth out of a sure fire Broadway flop. Bialystock convinces Bloom to go against his accounting scruples and the two men begin searching for a play doomed to failure.
Along comes a horrid script called "Springtime for Hitler". The two men sense a Broadway bomb. Bialystock and Bloom start counting their chickens when they find the play's author is a lunatic Nazi sympathizer who raises carrier pigeons on the roof top of a New York City apartment building. Bialystock embarks on a scheme to extort money from dozens of little old lady investors. He hires a terrible director, under the pretext the show is destined to win a Tony Award. Together, Bialystock and Bloom dream about a blissful lifetime of luxury in Rio de Janeiro, with sex kitten Ulla, who walks into their lives looking for a part in
the "Springtime for Hitler", musical revue.
All of which is absolutely side splitting funny. Without realizing it, the audience buys into the premise of "Springtime for Hitler", being seduced by superb acting, comical debauchery and double-entendre sexual innuendos of the bi-sexual variety. Insidiously, Mel Brooks rips open the envelope of political correctness in The Producers by tossing socially polite dialogue into the proverbial trash.
In fact, the show is an upscale vaudeville production with a drop deadly serious theme. For those who, God Forbid, buy into historic revisionism by sinking into the underworld of Holocaust Denial, the vaudeville tone in The Producers shoves their best intentions into eternal folly.
Although Nazism's inherent evil leaves no room for burlesque, Mel Brooks, nonetheless, creates an eternal joke out of the Third Reich, using vaudevillian genius to immortalize the stupidity of the Hitler era.
By an extraordinary twist of fate, "Springtime for Hitler" becomes a big hit, when the director of the show, who is supposed to seal its failed fate, is thrust into playing Adolf Hitler. It turns out, the duped director unsuspectingly creates a gay caricature of the Nazi terrorist, a portrayal which captivates the audience. Instead of the bomb they hoped for, Bialystock and Bloom find they have hit show on their hands. Now, they must repay their unsuspecting investors with the money they intended to steal.
Everything vaudevillian is magnified in The Producers, except for the theme. There's nothing at all funny about Nazism, except, of course, if the life and times of Germany's notoriously failed Fuhrer will be remembered as utterly brainless. Likewise, those who followed the Nazi dictator, who perpetrated World War II in Europe resulting in the murders of millions of innocent people, are portrayed as stage hungry manikins, decorating the set for the entrance of a tyrant turned buffoon.
"Springtime for Hitler and Germany" is the juxtaposed musical revue and showstopper in The Producer's second act, belying the reality bubbling beneath the musical's farce. Just like Hitler's suicide at the end of World War II, the failure of Bialystock and Bloom to carry off their ruse is analogous to the reality faced by the German people when the ugly truth about Nazism could no longer be couched in the ultra
patriotic spirit of nationalism.
Mel Brooks is a world renowned film director, writer, actor and the widower of the wonderful actress Ann Bancroft. He is also a World War II army veteran of The Battle of the Bulge, in Belgium. Many aspects of his comedic life as a Jewish American are a far cry from being funny. Regardless of a lifetime of other achievements, The Producers is a theatrical legacy for Brooks, the writer. Like a magician, Brooks uses vaudeville to hide a historical slight of hand, whereby the laugh lines are rooted in exposing the brutal truth about one of the most heinous of
mankind's modern times.
Labels: Germany, Maine State Music Theater, Mel Brooks, The Producers
posted by Juliana L'Heureux at 3:33 AM
1 Comments:
Hi, Juliana! I enjoyed reading your blog and your take on "The Producers". Chuck and I had the best time doing the show and we're glad you enjoyed it. I found your blog while researching press for my portfolio. Although many actors think of themselves as great Americans, I believe Nathan Lane (the actor) was never confronted by the British regarding his loyalty to his country as did Nathan Hale (the statesman). You may want to change the namesake...the actor is much, much younger and much, much, more alive.
Thanks again...
Ed Romanoff
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