Unlike most soundtrack albums, the one for
The Producers does not restrict itself to containing just the score of the film; in fact, it is dominated by dialogue excerpts that add up to an audio version of the movie in miniature. Writer/director
Mel Brooks' comedy about two producers who scheme to make a bundle by over-capitalizing a flop Broadway show stars
Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, who also turn up on most of the tracks here, conceiving the idea; executing it by finding a terrible script, a terrible director, and a terrible cast; and suffering the consequences of its surprise success. The film itself is a semi-musical, with
Dick Shawn swanning through a folk-rock protest song parody, "Love Power" (written by Norman Blagman and Herb Hartig), and two purported show excerpts, "Springtime for Hitler" and "Prisoners of Love" (both composed by
Brooks). And there is a score, composed by
John Morris, which peeks in here and there, displaying a '60s pop sensibility. But this soundtrack is mostly about the comic interaction between
Mostel and Wilder, much of which is hilarious. Initially released on LP by RCA Victor Records in 1968,
The Producers was reissued on CD as part of the Razor & Tie Showbiz Series in 1997. (In 2001, 33 years after the film's premiere, a stage musical adaptation of The Producers opened on Broadway, for which
Brooks wrote a full-length song score that incorporated "Springtime for Hitler" and "Prisoners of Love" with much new material.) ~ William Ruhlmann