Kenneth Mars Movies

Theatrical producer Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) was once the toast of Broadway. Now he lives in his seedy office, cadging cash contributions from wealthy old ladies in exchange for sexual favors. Even worse, he's reduced to wearing a cardboard belt. Max's new accountant, Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), the soul of honesty, suggests that Max produce a hit to try to recoup his losses, but Max knows that it's too late for that. Offhandedly, Leo muses that, if Max found investors for a flop, he could legally keep all the extra money. Suddenly, Max's eyes light up -- and in that moment, Leo Bloom is gloriously corruptible. "I want everything I've ever seen in the movies!" cries Leo as Max embraces him. Together, Max and Leo conspire to select the worst play, the worst playwright, the worst director, and the worst actor to collaborate on their guaranteed flop. That play is Springtime for Hitler, "a delightful romp...with Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun." The playwright is Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars), an unreconstructed Nazi who, in drunken delirium, insists that Hitler was a better painter than Churchill -- "He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon, two coats!" The director is pompous transvestite Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewett), who is preparing to go to a costume party garbed as Marie Antoinette when Max and Leo come calling ("Max, Max, he's wearing a dress"). And the star, selected after extensive auditions, is hippie-freak Lorenzo St. DuBois (Dick Shawn) -- "L.S.D." for short.

At the end of several weeks, Max has sold 25,000 percent of the show; and, as a finishing touch, Max bribes the opening-night critics for a favorable review, knowing full well that such a gesture is the kiss of death. The curtains part, and Springtime for Hitler opens with perhaps the most tasteless production number in the history of films. At the end of this extravaganza, the audience sits in dumbfounded silence. Gleefully, Max and Leo repair to a corner bar to celebrate their failure. But then.... The first directorial effort of Mel Brooks, The Producers didn't do so well on its first release, but since that time it has taken its place as one of the all-time great movie comedies. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This comedy was banned in Mexico and plagued by vandalism and threats of violence during film production in San Antonio, Texas. General De Santos (Peter Ustinov) organizes a ragtag group of Mexican nationals for the purpose of retaking the Alamo. Using the Washington's Birthday Parade in Laredo as a guise to enter the United States, the group continues towards San Antonio ignored and unchallenged. With the help of Sergeant Valdez (John Astin), the unlikely invaders manage to raise the Mexican flag over the old mission for 24 hours. General Billy Joe Hallson (Jonathan Winters) is a colorful redneck called on to lead the National Guard to the site of the occupied landmark. Keenan Wynn, Alice Ghostley, Pamela Tiffin and Harry Morgan also star in this film farce. During filming, one irate Texan was arrested after waving a rifle in protest over the raising of the Mexican flag over the Alamo, long a symbol of Texas' pride and history. Electric cables were cut during the filming of this production, as some Texans could not even tolerate the fictional premise of the plot. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Virtually the first third of The April Fools takes place at a trendy party held by sharkish executive Ted Gunther (Peter Lawford). It is here that Howard Brubaker (Jack Lemmon), one of Gunther's employees, makes the acquaintance of the boss' lovely young trophy wife Catherine (Catherine Deneuve). It happens that Brubaker is unhappily wed to Phyllis (Sally Kellerman, who gives an excellent performance in an essentially one-note role) and that Catherine is equally unhappy in her relationship with Gunther. The two lost souls run off together, planning to fly to Paris. There's approximately 25 minutes' worth of plot in The April Fools; much of the leftover time is eaten up by a protracted drunken-driving sequence involving suburban hubbies Lemmon, Jack Weston, Harvey Korman and Kenneth Mars, and by a lengthy episode featuring Charles Boyer and Myrna Loy as a robust, free-thinking elderly married couple. Some good dialogue, notably Lemmon's shaggy-dog story about goldfish and Chinese food, cannot hide the slightness of the piece. Still, a great many filmgoers were charmed by The April Fools. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Frank D. Gilroy's adaptation of Paula Fox's novel Desperate Characters stars Shirley MacLaine as Sophie, a freelance book translator who leads a comfortable life in Brooklyn with her lawyer husband Otto (Kenneth Mars). Because of their crumbling marriage and the threatening presence of urban dangers like crime and vandalism, the couple are living a paranoid, scared existence. The film chronicles their emotional and psychological state through a series of interactions with each other and like-minded friends. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Brian Keith plays a wealthy stockbroker who purchases dusty Nevada ghost town. Remembering his own humble roots, Keith sets up the town as a community where life's losers can congregate. Here these unfortunates are afforded a "second chance"-which also happens to be the name of the town. If this made-for-TV feature sounds like a pilot film, that's because it is. Filmed on location in Phoenix, Arizona, Second Chance first aired February 8, 1972. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bruce Jay Friedman's acclaimed off-Broadway play, which offers a decidedly unusual perspective on the afterlife, is brought to the screen in this production originally created for public television. Tandy (Bill Bixby) is a New York Police Department employee who suddenly and unexpectedly finds himself enjoying a steam at a public bathhouse overseen by an elderly Hispanic gentleman, Morty (Jose Perez). As the evening wears on, Tandy and Morty are joined by several other guests -- a stock trader (Kenneth Mars), a cabbie (Stephen Elliott), an attractive woman (Valerie Perrine), and a schlubby nebbish (Herb Edelman) -- and it begins to dawn on Tandy and his companions that they've all recently died, and that the steam bath is actually the waiting room to the next life, where Morty is judging their fates. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Lending his burlesque touch to 1970s genre revision, Mel Brooks followed his hit "western" Blazing Saddles with this parody of 1930s Universal horror movies. Determined to live down his family's reputation, Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (co-screenwriter Gene Wilder) insists on pronouncing his name "Fronckensteen" and denies interest in replicating his grandfather's experiments. But when he is lured by Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman) to discover the tantalizingly titled journal "How I Did It" in his grandfather's castle, he cannot resist. With the help of voluptuous Inga (Teri Garr), wall-eyed assistant Igor (Marty Feldman), and a purloined brain, Frankenstein creates his monster (Peter Boyle). Igor, however, stole the wrong brain, and the monster tears off into the countryside, encountering a little girl and a blind hermit (Gene Hackman). Frankenstein finds the monster and trains him to do a little "Puttin' On the Ritz" soft-shoe, but the monster escapes again, this time seducing Frankenstein's uptight fiancée Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn) with his, ahem, sweet mystery. His love life and experiment in shambles, Frankenstein finally finds a way to create the being he had planned. Shooting in gleaming black-and-white, with sets and props from the 1930s and appropriate fright music by John Morris, Brooks' cheeky attitude towards the Hollywood past attracted a large audience, turning it into one of the most popular 1974 releases after (what else?) Blazing Saddles. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Private eye Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is dedicated to his job, but his dedication does not make him happy or powerful in his personal life, and his wife (Susan Clark) is cheating on him. Aging actress Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward) hires Harry to find her trust-funded daughter Delly (Melanie Griffith), distracting Harry from his marital problems as he tracks the lascivious runaway teen to Florida. In the Keys, Harry has an affair of his own with Paula (Jennifer Warren), and he succeeds in locating Delly, even as he learns that finding her is only the beginning of a much larger case. As the "accidental" deaths multiply, Harry discovers that everyone has his or her own motives and that he cannot do much to stem the tide of deep-seated depravity. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

The second made-for-TV movie based on Charles Moulton's classy comic-strip heroine Wonder Woman, The New Original Wonder Woman was the one that "sold", resulting in a popular and durable weekly series. Replacing Cathy Lee Crosby, who'd starred in the disastrous 1974 adaptation of Wonder Woman, is the statuesque Linda Carter. Having dwelled exclusively among females on Paradise Islandsince 200 BC, immortal Amazonian princess Diana comes in contact with the real world for the first time in her life when US Army Major Steve Trevor (Lyle Waggoner) crash-lands on the island during WWII. Falling in love with Steve, the Princess assumes the identity of mousy, bespectacled Diana Prince and returns with him to the mainland. Every so often, and unbeknownst to Steve, Diana occcasionally transforms herself into the scantily clad superheroine Wonder Woman (golden lasso, magic belt and bracelets, the whole bit) in order to save the world from the Nazi menace. On this occasion, Wonder Woman does her thing in order to prevent the Nazis from destroying the prototype of a revolutionary new bombsight. First telecast on November 7, 1975, The New Original Wonder Woman was seen on ABC; by the time the Wonder Woman series proper ran its course on September 11, 1979, the property had switched networks to CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The toothsome singing duo, Donny and Marie Osmond, head for Hawaii in this comedy. The trouble begins when Marie acquires a lovely necklace without realizing that it is coveted by a group of thieves. An enigmatic woman is also after the necklace. Mayhem, music, and sibling rivalry ensue. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The "before" version of Patty Duke is obese and slovenly. Emerging from a "fat farm," the "after" version of Patty Duke discovers that her husband (Bradford Dillman) has been playing the field while she's been trying to shed her excess poundage. Duke then takes up with a handsome artist (Art Hindle), who gives her new incentive to lose weight, even though he's made it clear that her physical appearance isn't all that important to him. His jealousy aroused, Duke's hubby tries to win her back, but she soon learns that he hasn't really changed a bit. The made-for-TV Before and After was initially broadcast October 5, 1979. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rick (Larry Manetti) falls in love with Sara Clifford (Judith Chapman), whom he meets while walking along the beach--and who abruptly disappears just as she and Rick are getting acquainted. Investigating, Magnum (Tom Selleck) is informed by Higgins (John Hillerman) that Sara Clifford committed suicide way back in 1946--and that practically everyone in Hawaii is familiar with the story of this tragedy. Is Rick's dream girl a ghost--or an impostor? The answers lies with a female novelist who happens to share a common bond with the unfortunate "Woman on the Beach." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide