Mel Brooks’ 1967 directorial debut, The Producers, is the story of two con men trying to win by losing. In this arch satire of show business, the once-successful Broadway producer Max Bialystock (played brilliantly by blacklisted fellow traveler Zero Mostel), has fallen on hard times.

To make ends meet, the venal and sleazy Bialystock has resorted to exchanging sexual favors with an exhausting rotation of widows who are as wealthy as they are insatiable. The ladies, in turn, fund the plays that he never actually intends on making, instead pocketing the money. When Bialystock’s anxious accountant Leo Bloom (a maniacally tense Gene Wilder playing a man who carries around his baby blanket to soothe his erratic nerves) discovers a small but obvious discrepancy in the books, Bialystock persuades him to hide the fraud.

Bloom then off-handedly mentions that a flop could actually make Bialystock more money than a successful play; Bialystock could simply oversell shares. On a large enough scale, this kind of failure would allow him to keep investors’ money and hide it all from auditors, who wouldn’t think to investigate what appeared to be a disastrous loss. Bialystock runs with the idea, cutting in Bloom on the con, and they decide on the show they’re sure will bomb: Springtime for Hitler, a Busby Berkeley–style musical extravaganza written by an actual Nazi, a “love letter” to the Führer himself.