Kenneth Mars, 1936-2011

The Hollywood Reporter’s obituary for Kenneth Mars refers to him as “a farcical character actor best known for playing the police inspector with a creaky prosthetic arm in Mel Brooks’ 1974 classic Young Frankenstein,” which seems crazy: He was and always will be Franz Liebkind, the Nazi playwright of The Producers. I mean, yes, there was plenty of other stuff, but the Churchill v. Hitler monologue in Producers alone is a comic legacy for the ages. Mars was 75.