Mel Brooks although Brooks was not involved with its production after the pilot episode. "Get Smart" was highly rated for most of its production and won seven Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series in 1968 and 1969. For several years, Brooks had been toying with a bizarre and unconventional idea about a musical comedy of Adolf Hitler. Brooks explored the idea as a novel and a play before finally writing a script. Eventually, he was able to find two producers to fund the show, Joseph E. Levine and Sidney Glazier, and made his first feature film, "The Producers", in 1967. "The Producers"
A Broadway Musical Gussow, in his review for "The New York Times", wrote that the idea was to write a spoof of Broadway intrigue and duplicity; "cynicism is rampant." There are jokes about blacks on Broadway, Jewish theater party women and lawyers with "steel clauses." The lyrics are not funny. Finally, Gussow wrote: "The cast performs with eagerness, even as the show sinks." Julius Novick of "The Village Voice" called it "the best Broadway musical since "Platinum"," a disaster that had opened the month before. Critic and theatre historian Ken Mandelbaum has described the show as "a genuine turkey... hopeless... [a] well-meaning but