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Comedic Scene: The Producers

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Leopold Bloom Character Analysis

Abigail Welch

Theater 137!

Professor Kash

November 4th, 2020

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I am Leopold “Leo” Bloom, and for most of my adult life I have been an accountant who

is as meek and nervous as a mouse. I suffer from frequent panic attacks, and require my blue

blanket as a comfort object to calm me. This means my emotional condition leaves a lot to be

desired. Physically, I’m not much to look at; I’m tall, thin, and kind of plain. My language

suggests that I am a man who is anxious and thinks much quicker than I can speak. I tend to

repeat phrases such as in the lines: “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” or “I’m hysterical. I’m

having hysterics. I’m hysterical. I can’t stop. When I get like this, I can’t stop. I’m hysterical.”

(14). I also mumble to myself and when I do talk, my sentences are brief and punctuated.

However, my life is about to change for the better because I am going to be a producer! Wait, I

may be getting ahead of myself; allow me to explain what happened. Let me take you back to

where this all started.

The time is 11 o’clock on a June morning in 1959, and I have just met Max Bialystock. I

was called to his New York office to balance the books on his previous play “Funny Boy”. Mr.

Bialystock is an odd fellow. The moment before, he shoved me into his restroom while he was

getting intimate with an old woman he said was one of his investors. Then he accused me of

condemning him for his life choices. I promised I wasn’t condemning him for anything; he is the

King of Broadway afterall, and I look up to him. I even confessed my biggest secret to him: my

desire to be a broadway producer. He told me to keep that secret to myself and do my job. So I

have started on his books for “Funny Boy”, while he goes onto the balcony to yell to a woman

below of her beauty. However, I notice a grievous error which will shift my objective entirely. I

started this day believing that I needed to just balance this man’s books, but now my objective

has changed; I must get Max Bialystock to listen to me.

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He is a funny man who is hard to talk to, and this makes it hard for me to get the

necessary words out to explain what I need to say. He makes quite a few obstacles for me; by

only giving me one minute to speak I am pushed into a panic attack that he fails to calm me from

- at least at first. Unfortunately my tactics are not the best either; I start by hurriedly poking him

to get him to let me explain what I have uncovered. When this fails, I am reduced to a panicking

mess. I demand him to return my blue blanket - which is my comfort object, and then begin the

process of trying to calm myself. Max interferes with this and only escalates my panic. I continue

to freak out and Max attempts to help me calm down. His methods are less than ideal, however.

Finally, I convince him to get away from me and I am able to come out of my outburst. However

embarrassing it was to go through that with a person I had just met, I do wonder if my hysterical

outburst was what finally got Max to allow me to explain what I discovered. There was an error

in how much money was received for “Funny Boy”, nearly $2,000 was unaccounted for. My

expectation was met, I got Mr. Bialystock to listen to my concern. However, when he begs me

to hide the unaccounted funds, I am given a new objective. I will help this man cheat his books

and hide the missing funds.

I am an accountant; I know the laws surrounding tax fraud. However, I am keeping that

to myself. The subtext is that I know how much trouble Max Bialystock will be in for his

misrepresentation of funds. Even when I admit that a producer could make more money on a flop

than I hit, I do not expect anyone to actually try to do such a thing. Surely no one would actually

try to do such a dishonest thing? Well, I underestimate Mr. Bialystock. Apparently he is a

dishonest man willing to try anything to get back to his former glory. This scene is my beginning

though, because Max Bialystock is going to pull me into a crazy scheme I never thought

possible. This begins my arc of going from a nobody accountant to a broadway producer with
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my name in lights. My throughline, my dream is going to be a reality! It’s my function from

here on out to be the partner to Max Bialystock in this plan. We are going to find the worst play

imagined, raise two million for it, and when it flops we will retire to Rio funded on our business

losses alone.

Our choice for this flop is a play written by a former Nazi called “Springtime for Hitler:

A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden”. This follows a social movement of

changing media trends. In early World War II media, American’s were less concerned about the

ideology of Hitler and more focused on the subject of his war machine. Some media even praised

Hitler’s war machine and his efficiency. When America entered the war, the media shifted to

focus on the necessity of war. We had to fight in the war, because this was something worth

fighting for. It focused on the black and white good/bad of Americans against the Nazis. It

wasn’t until the war was over, that the scope of Hitler’s evil became realized. While

concentration camps were something Americans knew about, we were ignorant to the true scope

of how many people had died at Hitler’s hands. Then when the war criminal trials began, we

were faced with a horrific truth. The evil of the Nazis was not merely black/white, but banal.

Many of these men believed they were merely following orders. As such, the media had to shift

away from the glorification of World War II and into a new era of understanding what Hitler’s

regime was really about.

The trend of media shift also followed a political movement that came from a desperate

attempt to grapple with our uncertain future regarding the Cold War and relations with The

Soviet Union. The evil of the Nazi had to be put aside in American’s minds to focus on the

horror that was total nuclear annihilation. The Cold War had tensions pre-1950, but it wasn’t

until this decade that these tensions would begin to escalate into full on aggression. In 1950, the
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US had started production on the Hydrogen Bomb. June 22, 1950 would be the start of the

Korean War when North Korea - backed by the USSR - invaded South Korea. 1954 would see

the beginning of the scandalous US Army-McCarthy hearings. Americans had to put their fear

and hatred of the Nazis aside because the bigger immediate threat was Communism and the

USSR. It was necessary to just stay sane in this time. We could die at any moment from an

atomic strike.

“Springtime for Hitler” is a glorification piece of not just World War II but also for Hitler

himself. That is why it was chosen as our flop. Americans have lost the taste of this media, and

we intend to exploit that pushback by producing this media for them to consume far too late for

anyone to enjoy. The political climate has also changed, which we also know. The Nazi cannot

be represented like this because we have more pressing enemies to focus on. However, what we

failed to realize is that while this glorification was not what the media was trending to support,

there was a comedic movement that satirized what the Nazis represented. By playing

“Springtime for Hitler” with our gay director Roger Dubois as the lead, audiences inadvertently

thought we were actually making a satire of Hitler and the Nazis. So, our play becomes a success

against our best wishes or judgement.

The satire of Nazis wasn’t a trend until the mid to late 1960s, when this story was

originally written by Mel Brooks into his second film “The Producers” in 1967. At the time,

comedy was considered too lighthearted of a genre to tackle the seriousness of the Nazis. There

were not many satirical portrayals of Nazis in American media pre-1960. “The Great Dictator”

by Charlie Chaplin was an outlier in 1940, because it brought to focus the absurdity of Hitler and

how he treated the targets of his aggression, mainly the Jewish people. “The Producers” in 1967

was controversial for its portrayal of Hitler’s Third Reich, but public opinion towards the film
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softened over time to lead to it being adapted to the 2001 musical of the same name. It was for

this reason that I wanted to do this play for the comedic scene.

I identify deeply with Leo. He is anxious and suffers from a variety of anxiety disorders

and self-doubt. He has big dreams, but feels too scared to chase them. I know how these feelings

affect a person’s life to lead to them being in a dead end job and no hope for advancement.

Though he agrees to be a producer to help in a tax fraud scheme, I can’t help but root for Leo as

he begins chasing his dream. I would never go to such illegal measures, but I can appreciate a

man who finally has the courage to do what he has always wished. Sometimes I’m afraid to

reach for my dreams. I want a college degree, but somedays it feels so far away that I worry I

will never finish. I want to get to my dream job, I want to program. I know that I have a while to

go, but I hope that I can internalize the lesson of Leo Bloom to seize my moment when I have it.

I hope that I can find the courage to go after my dream even when the world seems to be

completely against it.

I am Leopold Bloom, and right now I am a nervous accountant. Soon though, I will get

the chance to seize my dream and become a producer like I’ve always wanted. Sure, it won’t go

exactly to plan, but I will make it in the end. We may have gotten caught in our scheme, but we

get another chance by writing our own musical behind bars. Max and I will be the Kings of

Broadway once again. All I have to do is take that first step and seize my moment.
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Works Cited

Brooks, Mel and Thomas Meehan. "The Producers" The Producers: The New Mel Brooks

Musical, Music Theatre International, 2001.

Ellis, Lindsay. "Mel Brooks, The Producers and the Ethics of Satire about N@zis." YouTube,

uploaded 2 June 2017,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE&ab_channel=LindsayEllis.

Llewellyn, Jennifer, Jim Southey, and Steve Thompson. “Cold War timeline – 1950 to 1959”

Alpha History, 11 September 2018.

https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/cold-war-timeline-1950-59/

"The Producers (Musical)" Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 October 2020.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Producers_(musical)
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Pictured: Matthew Broderick as Leopold

Bloom (right) next to Nathan Lane as Max

Bialystock (left) who originated the roles on

Broadway starting in 2001.

Pictured: A set of Max’s office in a 2014 Arizona Broadway production of The Producers.