34—Friday, December 25, 1970
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
DINING —
DANCING—
ENTERTAINMENT—
AT THE 24K CLUB
71wo perfect blend for a perfect evening. Thu
music is soft and scintillating, the claiming Is
delightful, the food — well, we are mighty proud of
It—come in, see why.
Hollywood Kudos for Mel Brooks and Fritz Lang
By HERBERT G. LUFT
(Copyright 1970, Mt. Inc.)
Mel Brooks, the "2,000-Year-Old
Man" of yesteryear's comedy al-
bums, is writer-director of the
Yugoslavian-made American movie
"The Twelve Chairs," set in
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Welcome '71 in Style'
Spend New Year's Eve at
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Take Your Choice of These Great Celebration Sites:
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Billy Maxted's Great Band
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Impeccable Service
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Detroit's favorite meeting place
Russia in 1927 and played against
the canvas of post-revolutionary
chaos.
Michael Hertzberg produced
the madcap screen comedy from
the classic tale by Ill & Petrov
for UMC Pictures, a division of
Wolfson's Universal Marion Cot
poration, as one of 12 new films
made under the guidance of Sid-
ney Glazier.
The latter produced Brooks'
first feature, "The Producers,"
a brilliantly conceived spoof
executed in dubious taste, for
which Mel received an Academy
award for original story and
screenplay and Gene Wilder
(portraying the sidekick of Zero
Mostel) a "Best Supporting Ac-
tor" Oscar nomination.
Before "The Producers," Brooks
netted the coveted Ac a demy
Award Statuette for the cartoon
'The Critic," which he conceived,
wrote and narrated—but didn't
direct.
"The Critic," "The Producers"
and "The Twelve Chairs" are pure
comedy, retaining Mel Brooks'
offbeat outlook on life heretofore
felt in his contributions to the legit
theater, to television, records and
radio, and in odd TV advertising
commercials.
Born in, Brooklyn, Mel made
his first appearance as an actor
in a ' modest production of
"Golden Boy" in Red Bank,
N.J. After a turn as a director
of amateur shows in the Cat-
qkills "Borscht Belt," he be-
came associated with Sid Caesar
in the late 1940s, contributing
dialogue and sketches to "Broad-
way Revue" and "Your Show
of Shows."
When the latter show left the
air after, almost 10 years, Brooks
teamed with Carl Reiner, another
"Show of Shows" graduate, on
the now-legendary "2000-Year-Old
Man."
Teaming with Buck Henry,
Brooks developed the television
series "Get Smart," which made
Don Adams a star. Mel went on
to Broadway, contributing to "Neiv
Faces" and writing such musicals
as "Shinbone Alley" and "All-
American," the latter of which re-
turned Ray Bolger to the theater.
"The Twelve Chairs" is Brook.;'
first try at adaptation of a novel
for the screen. It also is his first
appearance in a feature film es-
saying Tikon, a Russian muzhik
who, when kicked in the face, is
concerned only that his blood
should not soil his master's boots.
• • •
Fritz Lang, the Austrian-born
film director, a giant of the screen
on two continents, celebrated his
80th birthday in Beverly Hills,
Calif., Dec. 5 as both the Cin-
ematheque in Paris and Berlin's
Kinemathek held retrospectives of
his work spanning a half century.
Lang started long before our
time as a screen writer in Berlin
during the aftermath of World War
I, collaborating with the late Joe
May. In 1919, Lang became a film
director for Erich Pommer's
Decla-Bioskop and later for Ufa.
With "Metropolis," he foresaw the
industrial conflict within Germany
in a futuristic canvas of gigantic
proportions; in "Spies," he set the
pattern for the first master-spy
yarn of international flavor; with
"The Woman in the Moon," he
pointed at the space explorations
and prophetically foretold the first
lunar landing.
When sound was added to the
silent image, Lang startled the
cinema with two of the greatest
dramatic works of the earlier
talkies: "M," the tragic acount of
a child-killer that catapulted Peter
Lorre to stardom and set new
standards of precision for a scien-
tifically developed crime detection;
and "The Testament of Dr. Ma-
buse," foreshadowing the regime
of terror then being prepared by
the Nazis.
Both of these films were made
for the late Seymour Nebenzal,
head of Nero Films. When
Hitler rose to power, "DI" Was
confiscated by the state and
shown only as a blueprint of
"Jewish-Marxistie" perversion.
The German-language print and
the negative of "The Testament
of Dr. Mabuse" were destroyed,
yet Lang smuggled out the
French version when he fled to
Paris in April of 1933.
Among the pictures he directed
in exile, the filmization of Ferenc
Molnar's "Liliom" is noteworthy
for a new leading man, Charles
Boyer. In Hollywood since 1935
and long an American citizen,
Lang introduced himself to the
American public with "Fury," an
indictment of lynch hysteria, with
Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sidney
sharing star billing. "You Only
Live Once," with Henry Fonda and
Miss Sidney, followed.
During World War II, Lang ex-
celled with two powerful anti-Nazi
epics: "Man Hunt," story of a man
dedicated to kill Hitler, with Walter
Pidgeon in the leading role; and
"Hangmen Also Die," the account
of the Heydrich assassination in
Czechoslovakia, written by Berton
Brecht.
JERRY BIELFIELD, president
of the Detroit Auto Dealers Asso-
ciation and a Ford dealer for 21
years, has been named by the
DADA as its Qualified Dealer
Award Winner for 1971. Bielfleld
is a director of the Jewish Welfare
Federation.
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