AWARDS AND HONORS

The Producers received Two Academy Award nominations: one for Best Original Screenplay and one for Gene Wilder's performance (Best Supporting Actor). Mel Brooks won Best Screenplay, but Gene Wilder lost to Jack Albertson in The Subject Was Roses.

Mel Brooks' screenplay was nominated for a Golden Globe along with Zero Mostel as Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

In 1996 The Library of Congress named The Producers to the National Film Registry.

Mel Brooks received two nominations from the Writers Guild of America (WGA) for Best Written American Comedy and Best Written American Original Screenplay. Brooks won for the latter.

The American Film Institute named The Producers #11 on its list of the 100 Funniest Movies of All Time.

The Critics' Corner - THE PRODUCERS

"A violently mixed bag. Some of it shoddy and gross and cruel...the rest is funny in an entirely unexpected way...The Producers leaves one alternately picking up one's coat to leave and sitting back to laugh." – The New York Times.

"The Producers has many things going for it -- notably a wild, ad-lib energy that explodes in a series of sight gags and punch lines....Unfortunately, the film is burdened with the kind of plot that demands resolution, and here Brooks the writer has failed Brooks the director. Springtime for Hitler is supposed to be like Valley of the Dolls - so excessively bad that it's hilarious. Instead it is just excessive." --Time.

"Mel Brooks has turned a funny idea into a slapstick film, thanks to the performers, particularly Zero Mostel.....The Producers is fast-paced and doesn't linger over the multiple puns, etc. that dot the script more frequently than punctuation marks....it makes a very entertaining film." -- Variety.

"It's a Marx Brothers sort of madness Brooks concocts, soaring to glorious heights of madness and hilarity in a gay camera romp through the city and the theatrical game." -- Judith Crist /The Today Show.

"Dismally unfunny satire except for the play itself, Springtime for Hitler, which is neatly put down. This has, however, become a cult film, so that criticism is pointless." - Halliwell's Film & Video Guide.

"An almost flawless triumph of bad taste, unredeemed by wit or style," - Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

"Some of the material is funny in an original way, but Mel Brooks...doesn't get the timing right and good gags fall apart or become gross or just don't develop. The sequence consisting of tryouts for the role of Hitler in the play...is potentially so great that what he does with it lets you down. Still, terrible as the picture is, a lot of it is very enjoyable. For satire of the theatre as inspired as Brooks' gags at their best, it's not hard to put up with the ineptitude and the amateurish camera angles. It's even possible to put up with Zero Mostel in closeups." - Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies.

"...an absolutely hilarious and tasteless New York Jewish comedy about Broadway...Mostel and Wilder (as his bumbling Portnovian accountant) ham outrageously, and some of the humour falls flat. But the entire flop itself could serve as the definition of kitsch, its centerpiece being the number "Springtime for Hitler," all tits, pretzels and beer steins, in the best tradition of gaudy American burlesque." - Rod MacShane, TimeOut Film Guide.

"The major strength of Mel Brooks's cult favorite is its clever premise...Max would seem to be the ideal role for Zero Mostel, but he looks uncomfortable whenever anyone else is dominating a scene and, like the most unskilled, insecure amateur, resorts to mugging to get attention. Wilder is fine, but Mostel can't handle being his straight man on occasion. Film's highlight is LSD's audition song, "Love Power"...." - Danny Peary, Guide for the Film Fanatic.

"The Producers has moments of rich bad taste, and its Jewish show-biz angle is all the sharper for having Hitlerism as an opponent and Zero Mostel as its spokesman." - David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.

Compiled by Andrea Passafiume, Scott McGee & Jeff Stafford