Word: mostel
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...sleazy theatrical producer (Zero Mostel) enlists the aid of his wide-eyed accountant (Gene Wilder) in a convoluted cabal. Given the improper circumstances, a Broadway entrepreneur can make more from a flop than he can from a hit-by pocketing the backers' money after the show folds. Accordingly, the two men begin a search for the world's worst script. Mostel finally zeroes in on Springtime for Hitler, written by an unrepentant Nazi who believes that the Führer was infinitely superior to Churchill because he had more hair and besides, he was a better painter...
...wristed directors, hire a totally mind-blown hippie (Dick Shawn) as their star, and attempt to bribe the New York Times drama critic by wrapping his ticket in a hundred dollar bill. To no avail. The show is unintentionally funny, the public floods the box office with orders, and Mostel and Wilder are floated up the river for fraud...
What How I Won The War proves is that a serious anti-war movie cannot be told in the same cacciatore style that works so well with the Beatles or Zero Mostel in a toga. Of the welter of punches Lester aims at his broad target, only a few can land with appreciable force. The rest necessarily have to deflect off each other, mutually weakening themselves. When John Lennon, in his non-Beatle debut, dies, he dies in a realistic ugly field with realistic blood spewing from his abdomen. But he doesn't just die realistically. He sits there, observes...
ZERO HOUR (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Zero Mostel in a one-man concert of singing, dancing and comedy...
...fairness to those who study such things, it should be said that all is not rosy in Lester's old Rome. The climactic chariot race, for instance, goes into excess, both of slapstick and length, and it does not do to play any joke too long. But as Mostel says, none of us is perfect, and Lester here is about as close as anybody has a right to expect. The opening number promises "A Comedy Tonight." And there...