Word: mosteller
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Before long, Allen is fronting for more than one talented writer. Then come the investigators. The witch-hunters just cannot believe that a scriptwriter this skillful has not committed an investigatable offense. Along the way Allen becomes involved with a comic named Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel), whose career is destroyed by the witch-hunters and who then destroys himself. Allen's consciousness (and his conscience) have been steadily expanding. In the end, he heroically-and funnily -defies the congressional committee that tries to pry from him at least a few suspect names...
Blacklist Victims. The Front's scriptwriter, its director and one star (Zero Mostel) were themselves victims of the blacklist. Despite many virtues, however, the picture seems thin and schematic. Part of the problem lies in the fact that many of the incidents used in the story are taken directly from history. Whether they seem familiar or not, they are never as fully developed as they might have been in a documentary film, nor as fully digested as they should have been by any first-class dramatist. An even more serious flaw, however, is the fact that not a single...
...Grant-in-Aid's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in early November. Last year's Grant-in-Aid musicals, George M! and Godspell both received top-notch notices, so A Funny Thing... might be worth checking out. But if you want to see Zero Mostel, go into Boston instead--he'll be starring in a "new" version of Fiddler on the Roof, which is stopping here on its way to Broadway...
...Producers. Mel Brook's first feature, and an absolute must. Flawed by an overly sentimental ending, but the basic premise is golden--a Broadway producer on the skids (Zero Mostel) figures out that he can make more money on a flop than he can on a hit. He searches for the worst play ever written, and finds "Springtime for Hitler," a drama about Adolph and Eva at Berchtesgarten by a crazed ex-Nazi living in the Village. Mostel is brilliant--wooing funds from adoring septuagenarians, manipulating his timid bookkeeper (Gene Wilder) into compliance with his scheme...
...suite. What follows is a kind of Feydeau farce with one bedroom door. The scene has been directed with dazzling adroitness by Gene Saks, and Jack Weston's portray al of a human pachyderm in direst panic would bring tears of joy to the eyes of Zero Mostel...