Kenneth Mars

Kenneth Mars, the actor who died on February 12 aged 75, made memorable appearances in Mel Brooks’s films, notably as Franz Liebkind in The Producers (1968) and as Police Inspector Hans Wilhelm Fredrich Kemp in Young Frankenstein (1974). 

 

Kenneth Mars (centre) with Gene Wilder (left) and Zero Mostel in 'The Producers' Photo: MOVIESTORE COLLECTION

 

As Franz Liebkind, Mars almost stole the show as a crazed former Nazi and pigeon fancier with an exaggerated German accent who has written a musical “love letter” to the Führer entitled Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden. The two protagonists, Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom (played by Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder), decide to produce this “worst play ever written” as part of a plot to defraud investors by staging a sure-fire flop.

They convince Liebkind to sign over the stage rights, telling him they want to show the world “the true Hitler, the Hitler with a song in his heart”. To guarantee that the show is a disaster, they hire a notoriously incompetent director (Christopher Hewett) and give the part of Hitler to “LSD”, a spaced-out hippie (Dick Shawn), who wanders into the theatre during casting.

The production opens with the title song, which features a Busby Berkeley-style chorus line in the shape of a swastika and the memorable line: “Don’t be stupid, be a smartie/Come and join the Nazi Party.” Unfortunately for the two tricksters, however, it is taken by the audience to be a satire and turns out to be a smash hit. As the protagonists blame each other, they are confronted by an enraged, gun-toting Liebkind. In desperation, the three band together and blow up the theatre to bring the production to an end.

Kenneth Mars was born in Chicago on April 14 1935 and began his acting career on television in the early 1960s. After The Producers, Brooks cast Mars again in Young Frankenstein (1974) as Inspector Kemp, the investigator with an eyepatch and malfunctioning prosthetic arm, a role which confirmed his reputation as a comic actor with a talent for over-the-top foreign accents.

Mars’s other film credits included Woody Allen’s Radio Days (1987) and Shadows and Fog (1991), and Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? (1972) in which he played a (heavily accented) Croatian musicologist. He worked extensively on television and provided numerous voices for cartoon characters, including King Triton in Walt Disney’s Little Mermaid. He also recorded a comedy LP, on which he played a gravel-voiced Henry Kissinger.

Kenneth Mars is survived by two daughters.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/8326666/Kenneth-Mars.html