The film is about a mild-mannered accountant and a con artist theater producer who scheme to get rich by fraudulently overselling interests in a stage musical designed to fail.

Wishing to put this scheme into action and flee to Rio de Janeiro with the profits, Max convinces Leo to join him, treating him to lunch and a day out and saying that his drab life is little different to prison anyway.

To guarantee the show's failure, they hire Roger De Bris, a flamboyantly gay transvestite director, whose productions seldom make it past initial rehearsals.

The part of Hitler goes to a hippie named Lorenzo Saint DuBois, also known, in a reference to the counterculture drug, as L. S. D., who wanders into the theater during the casting call.

At the theater on opening night, Max tries to ensure a harshly negative review by attempting to bribe The New York Times theatre critic.

At the trial, where they are found "incredibly guilty" by the jury, Leo makes an impassioned statement praising Max for being his friend and changing his life.

You show how crazy they are.A substantive early New York Times account of the property's genesis dates to December 1961: "Edward Padula has acquired a new comedy by Mel Brooks tentatively called 'Springtime for Hitler'.

Kenneth Williams, rated by Mr. Padula as 'England's new comic discovery' is under consideration for the leading role....Work on the new Brooks comedy will start immediately after the local presentation of 'All American'.

In her 1943 novel The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand in fact anticipates Mel Brooks's premise by having a consortium of unscrupulous businessmen sell 200 percent of a planned vacation resort which they intend to be a disaster, to that end hiring the controversial modernist architect Howard Roark, but his buildings are a great success, and the backers are prosecuted.

[6] Brooks, in a 2001 episode of 60 Minutes, stated that, while serving in the army, he was called "Jew boy", and he lightheartedly admitted that he made The Producers to "get even" with antisemites, particularly Hitler.

Half the money came from philanthropist Louis Wolfson, who liked the idea of laughing at a dictator,[6] and the remainder, along with the distribution, was arranged by Joseph E. Levine of Embassy Pictures.

While Mostel did not like the prospect of playing "a Jewish producer going to bed with old women on the brink of the grave", his wife liked the script so much, she eventually convinced him to accept the role.

[23] When production arrived, Peter Sellers accepted an invitation to play Leo Bloom, but he never contacted again, so Brooks remembered Wilder, who was about to make his film debut in Bonnie and Clyde.

[24] Wilder received the script to The Producers as Brooks visited him backstage during a performance of Luv, and his co-star Renée Taylor was brought for a brief appearance as the actress playing Eva Braun.

[24] Recent American Academy of Dramatic Arts graduate Lee Meredith was invited to audition as Ulla on condition of being able to do a Swedish accent.

Brooks is heard briefly in the film, his voice dubbed over a dancer singing, "Don't be stupid, be a smarty / Come and join the Nazi Party", in the song "Springtime for Hitler".

He got impatient with the slow development compared to how quick television production was, temporarily banned Glazier from the set, berated a visiting reporter from The New York Times, and had clashes with cinematographer Joseph Coffey and main actor Zero Mostel.

Given the fact that the leg injury got worse in humid weather,[24] the last scene, filmed at the Revson Fountain in Lincoln Center, had Mostel throwing a fit and giving up on production.

Glazier had to leave a dentist's appointment and rush to the set where Mostel and Brooks were arguing, and once the producer managed to calm them down, the resulting scene had to be shot all night long.

Morris then developed the stage performance with choreographer Alan Johnson, instructed to do the number "big, wonderful, flashy, but terrible".

As Brooks kept suggesting bizarre costume ideas to enhance the burlesque nature of "Springtime for Hitler", such as women with clothes inspired by beer mugs and pretzels, Johnson decided to showcase them all in a parade.

Rosen also incorporated an anecdote of his life, as he had to share a small elevator with a flamboyant Broadway director, to design the lift at Roger De Bris's house.

About the acting, she writes that Mostel is "overacting grotesquely under the direction of Mel Brooks" and that, in the role of Max Bialystock, he is "as gross and unfunny as only an enormous comedian bearing down too hard on some frail, tasteless routines can be".

Her early conclusion, at the end of the first paragraph, is also a comparison to other comedic movies of the time, it reads: "[The Producers] is less delicate than Lenny Bruce, less funny than Dr. Strangelove, but much funnier than The Loved One or What's New Pussycat?

"[5] The more critical and negative reviews partly targeted the directorial style and broad ethnic humor,[30] but also commonly noted the bad taste and insensitivity of devising a broad comedy about two Jews conspiring to cheat theatrical investors by devising a designed-to-fail tasteless Broadway musical about Hitler only 23 years after the end of World War II.

[31] Among the harshest critics were Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic, who wrote that "the film bloats into sogginess" and "Springtime for Hitler ... doesn't even rise to the level of tastelessness", John Simon wrote The Producers "is a model of how not to make a comedy",[32] and Pauline Kael who called it "amateurishly crude" in The New Yorker: The Producers isn't basically unconventional; it only seems so because it's so amateurishly crude and because it revels in the kind of show-business Jewish humor that used to be considered too specialized for movies.

Although they labelled it "disjointed and inconsistent", they also praised it as "a wildly funny joy ride", and concluded by saying that "despite its bad moments, [it] is some of the funniest American cinema comedy in years".

The website's critical consensus reads, "A hilarious satire of the business side of Hollywood, The Producers is one of Mel Brooks' finest, as well as funniest films, featuring standout performances by Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel.

[38] Ebert wrote, "I remember finding myself in an elevator with Brooks and his wife, actress Anne Bancroft, in New York City a few months after The Producers was released.

The film was a sleeper hit at the U.S. box office;[39] But Embassy Pictures deemed its initial theatrical run a flop -- considering the additional costs to market and distribute, it barely broke even at the box-office.