Hitler: “Groovy!”
We cut to Franz Liebkind in the first-night audience. “What is dis ‘baby’？ The Führer has never said ‘baby.’ I did not write babies.”
A woman sitting next to him shushes him. Kenny Mars as Liebkind angrily responds, “You shut up! You are the audience! I am the playwright! I outrank you!”
* * *
—
But back to the Cherry Hill Cinema and our sneak preview. It was a thousand-seat theater but besides Levine’s group and Alfa-Betty, David and me, and a shopping-bag lady in the first row, practically nobody showed up. Embassy hadn’t spent any money to promote the screening.
Joe Levine watched a few scenes and left in a hurry.
He told Sidney Glazier, “I don’t want to spend good money after bad to open this movie. I think it may be a big mistake.”
God bless Sidney Glazier, who said to Joe, “You gotta open it. We made it. If you don’t open it, I’ll open it. You’ve got to spend some money and you’ve got to open it. It’s not Hercules, we know. You can’t go by Cherry Hill, New Jersey; there’s a big audience out there waiting to see this.”
And so Joe, against his better judgment, opened the movie.
Joe got us the Fine Arts Theatre in New York on Fifty-eighth Street, a really terrific independent art house theater. On opening day in early March 1968, I got there at ten o’clock in the morning and, believe it or not, there were lines around the block.
I was stunned—but there may have been a reason for that surprising phenomenon.
It turns out that Peter Sellers had by accident seen a pre-release screening of The Producers. This is the story: Peter Sellers was in the middle of making a movie called I Love You Alice B. Toklas and every Saturday night he would gather some of the cast and crew and the screenwriters of the film and rent the Aidikoff screening room in Hollywood and have a movie night. One of the screenwriters （who later became a dear friend of mine） was the writer/director Paul Mazursky. Paul told me that they were supposed to see one of Fellini’s early films called I Vitelloni and were eagerly looking forward to it. But the projectionist, Charles Aidikoff himself, who was running the screening, said that he had looked everywhere but couldn’t find the movie.
Peter Sellers said, “Well, do you have anything else for us to see? Anything!”
Aidikoff said, “I have a pre-release copy of a Mel Brooks movie that Embassy is supposed to release next month, but I was told not to let anyone see it. So I can’t run it.”
“Run that Mel Brooks movie or I’ll kill you!” said Peter.
“Okay, Mr. Sellers, here goes,” replied Aidikoff.
Paul Mazursky said that the movie was a flat-out hilarious success. Peter never stopped laughing.
That night when the movie was over, Peter Sellers called and woke up Joseph E. Levine and said, “I’m sorry to wake you up, Joe, I know it’s two or three in the morning in New York, but I want to tell you I just saw The Producers and I want you to know how incredibly funny and marvelous it is.”
Joe said something back about a limited release, and Peter said, “No! No! You’re wrong! Open it everywhere! Make a thousand prints! Flood every screen in America! It’s a great, great comedy.”
I don’t know what Joe said back, but I know what Peter did. He was so enamored with the movie that he personally paid for a big industry ad in Variety that read:
Last night I saw the ultimate film… “The Producers,” or as it was originally titled “Springtime for Hitler.” Brilliantly written and directed by Mel Brooks, it is the essence of all great comedy combined in a single motion picture. Without any doubt, Mel Brooks displays true genius in weaving together tragedy-comedy, comedy-tragedy, pity, fear, hysteria, schizophrenic-inspired madness and a largess of lunacy of sheer magic. The casting was perfect. Those of us who have seen the film and understand it have experienced a phenomenon which occurs only once in a life span.
Obviously, the ad had found its way to New York, and hence the lines around the block.
My spirits soared, but they came crashing down again when I read The New York Times review the next day. The Times critic Renata Adler took the picture apart—she lambasted it, saying, “But there is just enough talent and energy to keep this blackest of collegiate humors comic. Barely.” And “？‘The Producers’ leaves one alternately picking up one’s coat to leave and sitting back to laugh.” Not a review that would send you running to the movie theater.