Springtime for Hitler
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A fictional play in Mel Brooks' The Producers, Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp With Eva and Adolph at Berchtesgaden is a musical about Adolf Hitler written by Nazi Franz Liebkind.
The play is chosen by the washed-up producer Max Bialystock and his neurotic accountant Leo Bloom in their fraud scheme to raise substantial funding by selling 25,000 percent of a play, cause it to fail, and keep all the remaining money for themselves. In order to ensure the play is a total failure, Max picks the worst director he can find, Roger DeBris, a stereotypical homosexual/transvestite caricature, and gives the part of Hitler to an uncontrollable hippie named Lorenzo St. DuBois, who calls himself LSD.
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[edit] Synopsis
The play starts with a musical number, Springtime for Hitler, which contains the memorable chorus "Springtime for Hitler and Germany / Deutschland is happy and gay/We're marching to a faster pace/Look out, here comes the Master Race/ Springtime for Hitler and Germany/ Winter for Poland and France / Springtime for Hitler and Germany/ Come on Germans, go into your dance."
Accompanied by dancing stormtroopers who at one point form a Busby Berkeley-style swastika, the play immediately horrifies everyone in the audience except the author, an unbalanced ex-Nazi named Franz Liebkind, played by Kenneth Mars, and one lone viewer who breaks into applause—and is pummelled by other disgusted theatregoers. As the audience is storming out of the theater, the first scene starts, with LSD dressed up in full Nazi uniform and talking like a beatnik. The remaining audience starts to laugh, thinking that it is a satire, and the spectators return to the theater.
Franz, disgusted, goes behind the stage, unties the cable holding up the curtain and rushes out on stage explaining that this is not how it should go. One of the actors hits him with a pipe through the curtain, and he falls over. The play continues, and the audience thinks that his performance was part of the act.
[edit] Differences Compared To The Musical
In the musical stage version of The Producers and the 2005 movie musical, the part of LSD was not included and Hitler was played by the gay director, Roger DeBris, who sang a flamboyant solo Heil Myself. Franz was originally chosen by Max to play Hitler, but due to an unfortunate accident after the Good Luck song when he broke his leg (the irony here is that the term 'break a leg' is used to mean 'good luck' in the theatre), Max asked Roger to play Hitler. The swastika choreography at the end is maintained through a large mirror that is raised to show the swastika to the audience. In the musical version, Franz does not interrupt the play, but waits until after the play to confront the producers and attempts to kill them, but fails. He breaks his other leg running away from the police.
[edit] Quotes
- "Springtime for Hitler and Germany / Deutschland is happy and gay / We're marching to a faster pace / Look out, here comes the master race!"—Lead Tenor Stormtrooper in beginning of song
- "Springtime for Hitler and Germany / Winter for Poland and France / Springtime for Hitler and Germany / Come on, Germans, go into your dance!"—The opening number
- "Springtime for Hitler and Germany / Goosestep's the new step today / Bombs falling from the skies again / Deutschland is on the rise again! / Springtime for Hitler and Germany / U-boats are sailing once more / Springtime for Hitler and Germany / Means that soon we'll be going / We've got to be going / You know we'll be going to WAR!"—Sung while the actors are in a large Swastika formation
- "You're German. We're all Germans. That means...we cannot attack Germany."—LSD in a briefing room scene
- "Vat is zis 'baby, baby'? Ze Führer has never said this 'baby'"—Franz, grieving about LSD's way of talking (60's Beatnik slang)
- "You are the victims of a hoax!"—Franz to the audience after letting down the curtain
- "Don't be stupid, be a smarty / Come and join the Nazi Party!"—line from the opening number sung in a vocal only cameo appearance by writer/director Mel Brooks. (Brooks also re-recorded the line for the musical and the film based on the musical.)
- "I am the author! You are the audience! I outrank you!"—Franz to an audience member in the film.
- "You will please be unconscious"
- "Heil myself / Watch my show / I'm the German Ethel Merman, don'cha know?"—Roger as Hitler
- "Heil myself / Heil to me / I'm the kraut who's out to change our history / Heil myself / Raise your hand / There's no greater dictator in the land!" - Roger as Hitler
- "I vos born in Dusseldorf / und zat is vhy zey call me Rolf!—Springtime for Hitler
