Springtime for Mel Ultimate comic zings showbiz in 'The Producers'
By WENDELL BROCK for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mel Brooks is remembering his first musical. It was Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" with Ethel Merman. He was 9 years old.
"I'll never forget all those gorgeous songs and those gorgeous lyrics — 'You're the Top' and 'All Through the Night,' " says the 77-year-old Brooks. "And I said to my Uncle Joe, who took me there, I said, 'Uncle Joe, when I grow up, that's what I want to do. I just want to write songs.' And I did. I got to write them."
But Uncle Joe probably never imagined that his Jewish nephew from Brooklyn would create a smash hit called "The Producers," in which a crafty impresario named Max Bialystock stages a musical that glorifies a gay Fuehrer.
"Don't be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi party," goes the anthem "Springtime for Hitler."
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Committing musical comedy in the first degree 'Producers' arrives at Fox for two-week run
By WENDELL BROCK for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Your honor, we the ladies and gentlemen of the jury find the defendant, Mel Brooks, guilty as charged. In creating "The Producers," he has committed musical comedy of the first degree and is to be sentenced to life on Broadway without the possibility of parole.
Three years after this verdict was handed down in the form of a record 12 Tony Awards, justice is finally being served at the Fox Theatre, where Brooks' raunchy and ridiculous showbiz sendup arrived Tuesday for a two-week run.
The good news is that the tale of Broadway con artists Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom holds up well under the rigorous hard labor of a national tour. Though Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick remain America's most wanted comedic accomplices, Lewis J. Stadlen and Alan Ruck have preserved the letter and spirit of Brooks' rip-roaring, leg-baring, politically irreverent burlesque.
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