Kenneth Mars

Kenneth Mars, who just died at the age of 75, played many roles on screen and in voice-over, but I’ll always think of him first and foremost as Franz Liebkind from The Producers, probably the most quotable character in a movie where almost every line is quotable. Amazingly, he was not the first choice for the part: Mel Brooks wanted the young Dustin Hoffman, who had first come to attention in New York for playing a German in an Off-Broadway play. Hoffman got the part in The Graduate (opposite Brooks’ wife Anne Bancroft) so Brooks got Mars, who had done some small theatre parts as well as TV parts, and was either about to or already had done the pilot for the sitcom He & She.