Despite the accolades for his other endeavors, my favorite memories of Wilder center on his role in The Producers which I saw first run in December 1968. When I left the theater, I had to sit in my car for a half hour because I couldn't stop laughing hysterically*, replaying certain scenes in my head — in particular, the one where Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and Leo Bloom (Wilder) find themselves in Brooklyn looking for the playwright of "Springtime for Hitler":
Stopped before a brownstone, they ask a stereotypic Jewish bubbe (grandmother) sticking her head out a window if she knows of him, to which she replies (in stereotypic Yiddish accent), "Oh, you mean the Nazi. He's up on the roof with his pigeons." They climb the stairs to the roof where they encounter an extremely paranoid Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars), wearing a WWII-vintage SA helmet with a big blob of pigeon dropping on it, guarding his pigeons which he has been using to send messages back to the home front (Nazi Germany).
Not to be outdone are the numerous vignettes of Bialystock's dalliances with the elderly ladies qua marks.
As film critic Leonard Maltin points out, the film gets better with every viewing ... and I must be up to number 20 by now.
"If you got it, baby, flaunt it!"
FYI: The movie review in The New York Times back in the day did not exactly go into raptures about the movie; they seem to have changed their tune over the past 5 decades.
* EDIT: I left out the bit that due to my tears of laughter and paroxysmal breathing, all the windows in the car misted up; even though it was Xmas time, the mist didn't freeze. And the theater was located in a mall in Hartsdale, NY.
Last edited by grelber; 08/30/1606:38 PM. Reason: Additional info
