Dick Shawn makes self-absorption funny by giving it a song and an audience. We like his broad, physical comedy in The Producers, where Mel Brooks gives its excess a purpose; weaker material can leave him looking merely pleased with himself.
Fi1m perspective
Dick Shawn's L.S.D. sings 'Love Power' in The Producers (1968) as though his own pleasure in the performance ought to be sufficient for everyone present. His hippie actor, Lorenzo St. DuBois, treats the number as an opportunity to admire himself, and Shawn does not underplay a second of it. We laughed at his vanity, particularly the assurance with which he turns a song about love into an occasion for self-worship. Mel Brooks gives this broad performance somewhere to belong. Here, the excess is useful.
His notable supporting parts in the 1960s placed him among other large comic personalities. In It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), he plays Sylvester Marcus, Ethel Merman's pleasure-seeking, mother-obsessed son. These characters leave Shawn plenty of room to be unreasonable, and he is willing to push them towards caricature. In The Producers, though, we would still give Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder most of the credit for holding the film together. Their friction earns our recommendation; Shawn adds to the musical excess without becoming the reason the whole thing works.
The later career kept moving between supporting film parts, television and solo performance rather than settling into leading roles. He voiced Snow Miser in The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974). On stage, The Second Greatest Entertainer in the Whole Wide World (1977) mixed comedy, music and jokes about performing. The solo format suited an entertainer who worked through song, dance and pantomime, and liked to unsettle an audience's expectations.
There is a limit to our enthusiasm for that insistence. Shawn can seem smarmy when the material gives him too little to do beyond being pleased with himself, and his later film parts were not consistently rewarding. A performer this broad needs a director who can make the exaggeration serve a scene. Brooks does that in The Producers, even if the film itself has some heavy-handed stretches. Start there, with the caveat that enjoying Shawn does require a tolerance for a man who seems certain he is being enjoyed.
Biography
Dick Shawn (born Richard Schulefand) was an American actor and comedian. Born on 1 December 1923 in Buffalo, New York, he died on 17 April 1987 in San Diego, California. He began performing comedy while serving in the US Army during the Second World War, later winning a talent contest at the University of Miami and moving to New York to pursue stand-up and stage work.
Shawn appeared in a range of supporting roles in 1960s comedies. He played Sylvester Marcus in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and Lorenzo St. DuBois (L.S.D.), the hippie actor cast as Adolf Hitler, in Mel Brooks's The Producers (1968). He also provided the voice of the Snow Miser in the animated television film The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974).
On stage, Shawn replaced Zero Mostel in the Broadway musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He made frequent television appearances, including on The Ed Sullivan Show, and performed one-man stage shows combining comedy, song and satire.
