CHICAGO -- The way Susan Stroman tells it, a couple of years ago she got a phone call saying that Mel Brooks wanted to meet with her. Stroman idolizes Mel Brooks -- lots of people in show business do, at least those with a sense of humor.

"I was thrilled to death," says Stroman, a Tony-winning director and choreographer, "and I said, sure, maybe we can set something up next week." A little later, another phone call: Brooks insisted on meeting right away.

Stroman raced home and, 15 minutes later, "I opened my front door and there he was, the legend himself. I went to say hello, and instead he launched into song."Stroman had never heard this particular number before. Brooks "sang it full out, top of his voice, passed me, went down my long New York hallway and ended up finishing the song on top of my sofa.

"Then he said hello."

Hello, how are you, and I'm taking my 1968 movie "The Producers" and turning it into a musical, which is where that song comes from, and how would you like to be involved in it? "After that, he sang about four more songs he had written for `The Producers.' "

The way Stroman tells it, since she began directing and choreographing "The Producers," she has rarely stopped laughing. As she talks about the show, the legend himself, Brooks, nods in agreement.

Stroman, Brooks, coauthor Thomas Meehan and the show's stars, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, are meeting the press in Chicago. On Thursday, what its advertisements call "the new Mel Brooks musical" opens nearly a month of preview performances at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago before moving on to Broadway in March for more previews and an official opening scheduled for April 19.

The legendary movie -- it came in No. 11 in last year's American Film Institute poll naming the greatest American comedies ever -- "has made a remarkably easy metamorphosis" to the musical stage, according to Brooks.

"The biggest difference is that the film you can only see in the movie house or on television -- and this you can see in theaters."

This is vintage Brooks. So, by all accounts, is "The Producers." The plot remains the same. Leo Bloom, a shy, tightly wound accountant (Broderick, in the role Gene Wilder played in the movie) comes to the office of third-rate theatrical producer Max Bialy-stock (Lane, in the Zero Mostel movie role) to go over his books.

Bloom is unfamiliar with show business. Bialystock explains how commercial theater is financed: A producer gets other people to invest their money in each show in hope that it will be a hit and return a profit. Accountant Bloom observes that a producer could raise more money than necessary, deliberately stage a flop and keep what's left over. Of course, that would be wrong . . .

Whereupon Bialystock embarks on just such a venture, taking Bloom along for the ride. They discover a surefire flop, a musical called "Springtime for Hitler," by a wacky but harmless Nazi sympathizer who wants to portray his idol in a good light. Surely, a show like that will so offend audiences that its failure is guaranteed.

Uh-huh.

Nothing is guaranteed in show business, but the odds very much favor the new Mel Brooks musical. Potential backers were so numerous and eager that the producers of "The Producers" actually held a lottery to determine who would be permitted to invest money, limiting the amount of money each backer could invest. "The Producers" looks to be the most-talked-about musical of this year: "60 Minutes" is preparing a segment on Brooks, to air shortly before the show opens in New York. A crew from the show was in Chicago last week.

Brooks, 74, says he first saw Nazis as potentially humorous "somewhere in the middle of World War II. Their hats already were funny. Their attitudes were completely different from their hats."

The movie "The Producers" wasn't a musical, but it contained three or four songs that Brooks wrote, including "Springtime for Hitler" ("We're moving at a faster pace
ook out, here comes the master race"). Brooks has written some 15 songs for the stage version. One of the new songs, sung by the character Roger DeBris, director of "Springtime for Hitler," summarizes his philosophy of stage success. The song is entitled "Make It Gay."

Brooks wrote all of the music and lyrics. "Mel's been writing songs all his life," says Meehan. "This guy turns out to be the new Cole Porter." Meehan, who cowrote the show's book with Brooks, is no stranger to Broadway musicals, or to Mel Brooks, having written the book of the musical "Annie" and collaborated on two of Brooks' films, "To Be or Not to Be" and "Spaceballs."

Fans of the "Producers" movie will discover that the role of LSD has been eliminated. LSD, played by the late Dick Shawn in the film, was the eccentric actor hired to play Hitler. LSD had the movie's only song outside of the musical within. There is no room for that in the stage show, since "the characters of Max and Leo would now be singing and dancing about their wants and needs," Stroman explains.

Anyway, she adds, "we realized we had a better idea for the Hitler character, which you'll find out when you come to see the show."

Everyone involved in the musical seems to be a devotee of the movie.

"There's no bigger fan of the movie than myself," Lane says. "To be able to do this is like a dream."

Jim Stern, one of the producers of "The Producers," is also a major fan. He first saw the movie in Ann Arbor when he was a student at the University of Michigan. He felt a special connection, he says, because "I was producing all the student theater there. I've loved it ever since. Tears were running down my face."

Stern, a Chicagoan, has been attending as many rehearsals of "The Producers" as he can. He says he's still laughing.

2001, Detroit Free Press.
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