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The Producers | Introduction

Mel Brooks adapted his Broadway musical The Producers from his own 1968 movie of the same name. The film was only a modest success, but it did win the Academy Award for best original screenplay. Over the course of more than thirty years it became a cult classic, with legions of devoted fans who knew the script line-for-line. The musical, on the other hand, was a phenomenon from its beginning. At the 2001 Antoinette Perry (‘‘Tony’’) Awards, it took twelve statues—the most ever won by any Broadway show. The show sold millions of dollars in tickets before it even opened and continued to sell tickets for dates years into the future. In the months after the destruction of the World Trade Center, when the entertainment world in New York City was devastated by huge financial losses due to audience uncertainty, the unstoppable popularity of The Producers is sometimes credited with saving Broadway.

The story concerns Max Bialystock, a washedup Broadway producer, and Leo Bloom, a meek accountant who comes to do his books. When Bloom casually notes that a producer could make more money on a show that failed, because the show’s investors would never have to be paid back, Bialystock thinks up a plan to gain them millions. They set about looking for the worst Broadway show imaginable, settling on Springtime for Hitler, A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden. They then enlist a flamboyant gay producer, assuming that he can make the show even more unbearable.

The Producers is populated with colorful characters and enlivened with witty songs filled with sly cultural references. It also relies heavily on crass and obvious stereotypes meant to offend all equally, with mincing gays, sex-object women, greedy Jews, bubble-headed Swedes, oversexed old ladies, gruff Irish cops, and kick lines of singing Nazis.

The Producers Summary

Act 1, Scene 1
The first scene of The Producers takes place outside of the Schubert Theater on Broadway on a June evening in 1959, where Max Bialystock’s latest show, Funny Boy!, has just opened. A musical version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the show is closing that night, reviled by critics who could not even stay to the end. Bialystock sings a song about how famous and successful he once was.

Act 1, Scene 2
Leo Bloom, a mild accountant, shows up at Bialystock’s office to do his bookkeeping. One of Bialystock’s backers, an amorous old lady, comes in, and Bloom is forced to hide. After she leaves, Bloom finds a discrepancy in the account but decides that it does not matter since the show closed early, and investors will not expect any money back. Bloom idly mentions that a producer could make more with a failure than with a hit, because he could sell unlimited shares and keep all of the money. Bialystock tries to convince him that they should become rich doing just that, but Bloom is too timid to break the law.

Act 1, Scene 3
At Whitehall and Marks, the office where Bloom works, the accountants sing about how unhappy their lives are. Mr. Marks shouts at Bloom for coming in six minutes late, sending Bloom into a fantasy about what it would be like to be a producer, surrounded by beautiful chorus girls. At the end of his reverie, Bloom quits his job.

Act 1, Scene 4
Bloom returns to Bialystock and explains his decision to join in his production scheme.

Act 1, Scene 5
Bialystock and Bloom search through stacks of scripts, looking for one that is guaranteed to be a flop. The winner is Springtime for Hitler, a lighthearted look at the dictator who was responsible for the Holocaust. Bialystock takes out two hats and puts on one, but he refuses to let Bloom wear the other: these are ‘‘producer’’ hats, he explains, and Bloom is not a real producer until the show opens.

Act 1, Scene 6
On the roof of the Greenwich Village building he lives in, Franz Liebkind, wearing a Nazi helmet and lederhosen, sings about how lonesome he is in America, accompanied in his song by the pigeons that he keeps in cages. Bialystock and Bloom arrive to obtain the rights for Springtime for Hitler, which Liebkind wrote. Liebkind is excited about their interest in his play, but refuses to let them produce it unless they take ‘‘the Siegfried Oath,’’ pledging their... » Complete The Producers Summary