Alternate Best Supporting Actor 1967: Donald Pleasence in Will Penny, Kenneth Mars & Dick Shawn in The Producers & Results

Donald Pleasence did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Preacher Quint in Will Penny. 

Will Penny is an off-beat and effective western about an aging trail hand (Charlton Heston).

Donald Pleasence takes up the role of the heel required for the western and a very peculiar one. Pleasence after all isn’t necessarily an actor you’d instantly envision as a western actor given his Englishness is readily evident. The atypical nature of the casting plays effectively into the weirdness of his character. A character who suddenly appears as the ranch hands try to claim an elk only to be suddenly advanced upon by Pleasence’s Preacher Quint and his family. Pleasence as per usual, and not too surprisingly given that he is playing in a western setting, fashions a new accent for himself, something that isn’t quite American or English but completely works for the character. It is a strange ramshackle quality that denotes a man who has lived much of his life in very low circumstances but strives yet fails to present himself as some strange learned man of God. It is instantly ear catching as is his whole physical performance, where there is a scavenger like energy that Pleasence exudes as he peers upon the men whose only crime was to come across the same elk. Pleasence delivers a raw intensity and insanity though tempered with a particularly devious edge. Pleasence plays into the whole idea of the “Preacher” as very much a fire brimstone center of town square type preacher, although Quint is just in some random places trying to harass people who aren’t part of his family. Pleasence’s sermons are magnificent bits of performance from him as they are full bodied in just announcing himself as though he is about to leap out of his body as he implores some kind of divine intervention for his hideous actions. 

Every time Pleasence speaks it. It is as though he is trying to call upon the forces beyond nature to destroy his enemies with the mania in his piercing eyes. There’s a bit of subversion by Pleasence though, just a bit that is a brilliant little touch where kind of between the overtures there’s like a glint in his eyes of a knowing or just a moment where his voice falls a little where he suggests that even the preacher bit is nothing more than a game that Quint plays around with as part of a madcap act to lead his family. Pleasence has a great hideousness within his character as initially Will saves his friends by killing one of Quint’s family, where we get a standout moment of Pleasence praying to God to wreak vengeance on them where he makes the words sing as this blinded madness. Pleasence comes in and out of the film after this confrontation as this unwanted parasitic force of evil. Pleasence creates a vicious terror in his menace that isn’t so much defined by confidence but rather the rabid madness of the character. Pleasence creating almost a darkly comic quality to the character by playing into the grotesquery with such glee. Something that is particularly unnerving after a long loving sequence of Will helping and falling in love with a fatherless family, where Pleasence storms in with his delivery of “Merry Christmas” being as though the devil has come to call. Followed by one of his most disturbing acts as forces the widow to choose between his sons, while also disparaging his sons, the energy Pleasence brings creates such incredible distress by how much he seems within this moment to the point of a true demented hysteria. My only complaint about the character would be he doesn’t really have a great final moment to really let Pleasence sink his teeth into one more time, as the confrontation is relatively quick. But that is a case of only wanting more of a good thing, and really this is an amazing turn by Pleasence through the impact he makes. As he takes a germ of the false preacher and runs with it for his relatively limited screentime, making a tremendous impact, and in a role that I think many lesser actors would’ve made some forgettable rote heavy, Pleasence turns him into something more unique and impressive. 

Kenneth Mars did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Franz Liebkind nor did Dick Shawn receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Lorenzo St. DuBois but his friends call him L.S.D. in The Producers. 

Maybe The Producers as a film is a bit like the old Beatles or Elvis or Beatles or Rolling Stones debate where either you’re a Max (Zero Mostel) or a Leo (Gene Wilder) person, or you’re a Franz Liebkind or an LSD person. Not that you don’t like them all, but there is some degree of preference, although I think this largely speaks to the treasure trove of comedy evident within the film regardless. In terms of the supporting competition each play the broadest of the characters perhaps with Mars first to appear as the author of the play, “Springtime for Hitler” chosen by the titular producers as a surefire flop. A character who is patently absurd from the get go as we meet him pretending to be a proper “good American” going so far as two terribly sing Yankee Doodle Dandy, while of course also donning a German war helmet that might confuse the issue just a bit. Mars’s performance very much plays into this ridiculousness in many ways playing his role as an over the top German soldier in a war auctioneer just with different ends. As his German accent is just as over the top thick with the emphasis on that particular harshness used for more villainous characters, however something he instantly subverts with his silliness from the outset. An idea that expands when the producers surprise him with wanting to actually put on his play where Mars begins to espouse his views more openly though his exact perspective on Hitler and the whole Nazi regime seems a bit tilted even as ridiculous Nazis go. Mars's performance as the drunken Liebkind brings to it this combination between a lost love’s adoration towards Hitler against his unbridled, though wholly hilarious, rage against Winston Churchill as a comparison. Going off on all the ways Hitler was better based mostly on their paintings (though maybe a little mixed up on what type of painting Hitler did exactly), their dancing of course and Chruchill’s way of pronouncing Nazi. Mars’s performance of playing between basically what is best described as lovey dovey towards Hitler, then a sourpuss to Churchill is a magnificent silly dance of switching expressions and physical manner as he goes from wistfully dancing for Hitler to become ogre-like as he looks down upon Churchill. It’s a grand bit of ridiculousness.

Unfortunately for the Producers, they perhaps go too all in with their scheme and instead of just choosing the worst play they seem intent on choosing the worst of everything including the worst possible Hitler. Leading us to the introduction of Dick Shawn as Lorenzo St. DuBois aka LSD played by Dick Shawn where I’ll actually start with the later scenes of his performance, where his star turn as Hitler turns Liebkind’s straightforward adoration to that of a satire. Shawn is absolutely hilarious in pulling off basically proving the concept that this swerve would make the play a success as he brings his specific beatnik energy to the dictator. Where Shawn is outrageous through every swing of his performance as he opens with his anxiety over losing the war by serenading himself by piano, and using the word “baby” far more than Liebkind or history would support. Shawn’s portrayal of that specific distress is particularly funny by just how weirdly distressed he is in such a bizarre yet perfectly funny way. But his Hitler expands on that as we also get him with his troops, where Shawn once again is great in just playing up the stupidity as he so earnestly delivers the line that “we can’t attack Germany, we’re Germany”. But we also get the marvelous scene of his whole sequence of dealing with his “Little Joey” to cheer him up, Joey being Joseph Goebbels, we’re they’re best buds, proper beatnik best buds however in every overly chummy interaction, with even an all important high five, that is pure comedy gold as they “man” and “baby” each other in such joy as Joey lays out his new track, that being a propaganda piece where they beat England. 

Something that gets interrupted by Liebkind, whose distress at seeing the play matches the comedy on stage wonderfully well, playing it with this sincerity of his distress close to crying baby in every bit of being distraught at seeing “his Fuhrer” saying “Baby”. Leading to two great bits as Franz first dresses down an audience member for interrupting his bemoaning by noting that he’s the author and “outranks her” with all the same billowing as his Churchill rant, followed though by his knocking out of stage hand where Mars is hilarious by being frankly so silly in his “you please be unconscious” so gently before physically assaulting a man. And honestly where Franz goes through the last bits of the film are more looney tunes than anything, not a criticism mind you as Mars delivers it with aplomb from coming in to shoot the producers like Yosemite Sam as sneers his way through trying to kill them to a more Elmer Fudd pathos as he admits his failures and attempts suicide, which while about suicide still wholly funny through the silliness of Mar’s over the top somberness as he decides his own fate…only to be thwarted by his own lack of bullets. Even that continues though as we get him to try to blow up the theater to stop the show, where we get Mars’s portrayal of attempted intelligence, which is Franz being particularly stupid, as he analyzes his fuses. The sudden insightful manner in his eyes and the way he stares so intently as he discovers his short fuse for dynamite, by naturally lighting, before the great reaction of realizing his error, is a most pleasant cherry on the top of the performance. 

Now I held off on LSD’s audition because for me it just might be my favorite scene in a hilarious film. Although I think this brings up something about “dated” and whatever it really means because the character of Lorenzo St. DuBois is specifically a sendup of Beatnik/Hippie types, yet despite being so specific it doesn’t really matter because what he is doing is funny regardless if you connect to specificity or just enjoy the insanity of it. Well I enjoy the insanity of thanks in large part due to everything that Shawn does in the part, particularly the swings of the part in the audition scene. From as he strolls in with such casual ease asking if the Hitler auditions were the auditions for Boomerang, only to be told of his error leading to Shawn’s immediate and strangely natural switch to such anxiety as he seems to ridicule his own, one would assume, drug addled brain. Combined with his perfect hat in hand demeanor when admitting to his six months in prison and his insistence that he’s clean. But he gets the audition where somehow LSD summons a band to play his performance of “Love Flower”. A performance that is amazing every second of it. From his initial intensely hippie loving everyone manner as he opens the song about giving people his love flower, before switching to a more hostile love flower to cops and landlords, where Shawn’s switch to such raging intensity of a man hating the “man” of society to such a degree and in such a contrast to his “loving” side it is absolutely beautiful comedy. Only perhaps topped as he continues that intensity to such comedy genius to one of my all time favorite bits of physical comedy as he announces that he will dance in song, leading to Shawn’s somehow frozen yet free bodied movement of everything but his legs in this singular form that is utterly ludicrous yet utterly amazing. Followed again by his switch to suddenly some existential fear around the love flower, where Shawn is intense now through that terror rather than anger before collapsing to the floor, where he peels a banana peel like it is a life line before dismissing it to instead suckle his mini cymbals instead with a face of best described as wacky contentment. After such a display one can only say “THAT's OUR HITLER!”. Or really this is just an incredibly funny performance that never ceases to make me laugh despite how many times I've seen his bit. 

(Mars)

(Shawn)

UPDATED OVERALL

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