Sidney Glazier | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | May 29, 1916 |
| Died | December 14, 2002 (aged 86) |
| Occupation | Producer |
Sidney Glazier (May 29, 1916 – December 14, 2002) was an American film producer best known for his work on the Mel Brooks film The Producers . [1]
Sidney Glazier | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Born | May 29, 1916 |
| Died | December 14, 2002 (aged 86) |
| Occupation | Producer |
Sidney Glazier (May 29, 1916 – December 14, 2002) was an American film producer best known for his work on the Mel Brooks film The Producers . [1]
Glazier was born in Philadelphia on May 29, 1916, the second of three sons born to Jewish émigré parents Jake Glazier and Sophie Schekid from Minsk. [2] His elder brother, Tom Glazer, became a composer, guitarist, and folk singer. [1] His father, a carpenter, died during the 1918 flu epidemic, and when his mother remarried, her new husband, Solomon Levick did not want her children in the house. [2] As a result, the three boys were placed in the Hebrew Orphan Home in Philadelphia when Glazier was 5. Glazier later reported that "[h]er reasoning and the pain it brought us remains incomprehensible, unfathomable." [1] [2] Glazier ran away from the orphanage after being sexually abused by a volunteer, but returned as he could find nowhere else to go. He later sought psychoanalysis to help him deal with these childhood experiences. [2] Glazier left the home at the age of 15, working as an usher at the Bijou burlesque theater that showed films between acts. He recalled "I instantly realized that films would always be the loveliest and best escape from the troubled life I inherited". [2] He also worked as a part-time pimp for a local madam. [2] [3]
Glazier was managing the Mayfair Theater in Dayton, Ohio, when shortly before the United States entered the Second World War, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. [2] The newly married Glazier served in Australia and New Guinea as a second lieutenant, commanding 100 black troops as a support unit of the 380th Bombardment Group. [2] [4]
After his discharge and divorce, Glazier moved to Manhattan, where he was appointed the night manager of the Apollo Bar and worked with jazz artists such as Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. He found a day job under the GI Bill as an apprentice jeweller, but left the position seeking to become a bonds salesman for the new state of Israel. His success in fund-raising led him to be appointed as the executive director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Cancer Foundation. [2] [5] He greatly admired Eleanor Roosevelt as a person and activist and the two later became friends. When she died in 1962, he initiated the production of the documentary on her life. The film, The Eleanor Roosevelt Story , which Glazier produced, was groundbreaking in style and won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. [2] [3] In 1964, he married Yungmei Tang who had worked as a production assistant on the film. The couple had a daughter, Karen, in 1965. [2] [4]
TV writer and fledgling film writer and director Mel Brooks pitched his project Springtime for Hitler to Glazier. Brooks had previously made numerous unsuccessful attempts to interest movie producers. Over lunch in Glazier's office, Brooks acted out all the parts and began singing Springtime for Hitler. Glazier reported that he had never laughed so hard in his life. "He spit out his coffee and tuna sandwich and couldn't stop laughing," recalled Brooks. "He said 'I vow to get this movie made. The world must see this picture.'" [2] [5] [6] Glazier struggled at first to interest movie studios in the show business satire, but with perseverance Joseph E. Levine at Avco Embassy accepted the project and agreed to let Brooks direct the movie. [2] [5] Filming was not without its challenges. Brooks was an anxious, perfectionist and difficult novice director, who had problems communicating with the actors. [5] [6] Zero Mostel was also often angry and demanding, and Glazier had to mediate between the director, Mostel and others. [2] [5] Despite frequent requests from Brooks for extra money and resources, Glazier succeeded in bringing the film in under budget. [2] Brooks remembered Glazier as a producer was "very bright, warm and a bit of a bon vivant. Sidney was the first one to say, "The dailies look good, let's have a party." He'd have a party about anything – have a few drinks, canapés and pretty girls. He was right out of a black-and-white Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie." [7] The film, renamed The Producers at the insistence of Levine, had a mixed reception. Many critics gave it poor reviews, but the actor and comedian Peter Sellers was so enthralled that he took out ads in various trade papers praising the film as "the essence of all great comedy combined in a single motion picture." [2] [5] The film was to become a cult classic, and in 1996 was entered into the National Film Registry as a "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant film." [2] [7] In his 2001 Tony Award acceptance speech for the Broadway adaptation of the film, Brooks credited Glazier as the "man who made it happen." [1] He recalled "None of it – all of this wonderful, magical stuff – would be, if it wasn't for the faith and courage of this terrific guy." [1]
Glazier formed a distribution company, Universal Marion Corporation Pictures, and acted as executive producer on films, such as Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run (1969), Waris Hussein's Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970), Mel Brooks's Twelve Chairs (1970), and Glen and Randa (1971). [1] [4] The company managed the US distribution of Luis Buñuel's Milky Way (1969) and the Dario Argento film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970). [1]
In 1973 Glazier produced the television drama Catholics (1973). The production, adapted from a Brian Moore novel about the Roman Catholic Church after Vatican II, won a Peabody Award. [4]
Brooks asked Glazier to go to Hollywood to work on further films, but with his marriage breaking up he demurred, preferring to remain in New York to be close to his daughter. [1] [2] He continued a savvy business career—for example he invested in the doctor who discovered Viagra—and maintained generous friendships with many, in which he disliked being the center of attention. [2] [3]
Glazier died at the age of 86 of natural causes at a nursing home in Bennington, Vermont. [7] "Most movie executives and producers," said Brooks, "are usually boring and dull, and not well-read. They don't care about art or painting, they just care about profits. But Sidney was always an artist. You could talk about anything with him - great literature, life and love." [2] The writer and critic Michael Coveney knew Glazier as “demanding [...], irascible, impatient but full of charm", someone who "epitomised [New York]'s spirit of tolerance, intellectual curiosity, fast living and taste for the high life". [3]
Melvin James Brooks is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies. A recipient of numerous accolades, he is one of 21 entertainers to win the EGOT, which includes an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Tony Award. He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013, a British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015, a National Medal of Arts in 2016, a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017, and the Honorary Academy Award in 2024.
The Producers is a 1967 American satirical black comedy film. It was written and directed by Mel Brooks, and stars Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn, and Kenneth Mars. The film is about a con artist theater producer and his accountant who scheme to get rich by fraudulently overselling interests in a stage musical designed to fail. To this end, they find a playscript celebrating Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and bring it to the stage. Because of this theme, The Producers was controversial from the start, and received mixed reviews. It became a cult film, and found a more positive critical reception later.
Anne Bancroft was an American actress and director. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft received an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Cannes Film Festival Award. She is one of 24 thespians to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting.
Sidney Arthur Lumet was an American film director. Lumet started his career in theatre before moving to film, where he gained a reputation for making realistic and gritty New York dramas which focused on the working class, tackled social injustices, and often questioned authority. He received several awards including an Academy Honorary Award and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for nine British Academy Film Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Gene Wilder was an American actor, comedian, writer and filmmaker. He was mainly known for his comedic roles, but also for his portrayal of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). He collaborated with Mel Brooks on the films The Producers (1967), Blazing Saddles (1974) and Young Frankenstein (1974), and with Richard Pryor in the films Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991).
Young Frankenstein is a 1974 American comedy horror film directed by Mel Brooks. The screenplay was co-written by Brooks and Gene Wilder. Wilder also starred in the lead role as the title character, a descendant of the infamous Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Peter Boyle portrayed the monster. The film co-stars Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, Richard Haydn, and Gene Hackman.
Thomas Zachariah Glazer was an American folk singer and songwriter known primarily as a composer of ballads, including: "Because All Men Are Brothers", recorded by The Weavers and Peter, Paul and Mary, "Talking Inflation Blues", recorded by Bob Dylan, "The Ballad of FDR" and "A Dollar Ain't A Dollar Anymore". He wrote the lyrics to the songs "Melody of Love" (1954), and "Skokian" (1954).
Samuel Joel "Zero" Mostel was an American actor, comedian, and singer. He is best known for his portrayal of comic characters including Tevye on stage in Fiddler on the Roof, Pseudolus on stage and on screen in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Max Bialystock in the original film version of Mel Brooks' The Producers (1967). Mostel was a student of Don Richardson and he used an acting technique based on muscle memory. He was blacklisted during the 1950s; his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee was well publicized. Mostel later starred in the Hollywood Blacklist drama film The Front (1976) alongside Woody Allen, for which Mostel was nominated for the British Academy Film Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp With Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden is a fictional musical in Mel Brooks' 1967 film The Producers, as well as the stage musical adaptation of the movie and the 2005 movie adaptation of the musical. It is a musical about Adolf Hitler, written by Franz Liebkind, an unbalanced Nazi originally played by Kenneth Mars.
The Front is a 1976 American comedy drama film set against the Hollywood blacklist in the 1950s, when artists, writers, directors, and others were rendered unemployable, having been accused of subversive political activities in support of Communism or of being Communists themselves. It was written by Walter Bernstein, directed by Martin Ritt, and stars Woody Allen, Zero Mostel and Michael Murphy.
Joseph Edward Levine was an American film distributor, financier, and producer. At the time of his death, it was said he was involved in one or another capacity with 497 films. Levine was responsible for the U.S. releases of Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, Attila and Hercules, which helped revolutionize U.S. film marketing, and was founder and president of Embassy Pictures.
The Twelve Chairs is a 1970 American comedy film directed and written by Mel Brooks, and starring Frank Langella, Ron Moody and Dom DeLuise. The film is one of at least eighteen film adaptations of the Soviet 1928 novel The Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov.
The Producers is a 2005 American musical comedy film directed by Susan Stroman and written by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan based on the eponymous 2001 Broadway musical, which in turn was based on Brooks's 1967 film of the same name. The film stars an ensemble cast led by Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Uma Thurman, Will Ferrell, Gary Beach, Roger Bart, and Jon Lovitz. Creature effects were provided by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.
The Producers is a musical comedy with music and lyrics by Mel Brooks, and a book by Brooks and Thomas Meehan. It is adapted from Brooks's 1967 film of the same name. The story concerns two theatrical producers who scheme to get rich by fraudulently overselling interests in a Broadway musical designed to fail. Complications arise when the show is a surprise hit. The humor of The Producers draws on exaggerated accents, caricatures of Jews, gay people and Nazis, and many show business in-jokes.
John Leonard Morris was an American film, television, and Broadway composer, dance arranger, conductor, and trained concert pianist. He collaborated with filmmakers Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder.
Alan Johnson was a three-time Emmy Award-winning American choreographer, best known for his work on Mel Brooks films and for restaging Jerome Robbins' original choreography in live productions of West Side Story in the United States and internationally. Johnson was linked to West Side Story since making his Broadway debut in the show in 1957.
"To Be or Not to Be (The Hitler Rap)" is a comedy hip hop song recorded by Mel Brooks in 1983 for Island Records. The song appeared on the soundtrack album for the movie of the same name. It was derived from the burlesque show within the film but did not appear within it. It also echoes Brooks's 1967 film The Producers, with the lines "Don't be stupid, be a smarty. Come and join the Nazi Party," taken from the song "Springtime for Hitler".
"Springtime for Hitler" is a song written and composed by Mel Brooks for his 1968 film The Producers.
Richard James Kaplan was an American documentary film and television writer, director, and producer.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
