On KFJC (Foothill College radio station) a few minutes ago, the song “Springtime for Hitler”, which never fails to crack me up, but also produces a world-class earworm for me; I’ll have it in my head for the rest oif the day.
Here, let me infect you with it: the song from the original film of Mel Brooks’s The Producers:
From Wikipedia:
Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp With Eva and Adolf at Berchtesgaden is a fictional musical in Mel Brooks’ 1968 film The Producers, which has been remade as a stage musical and a film of the musical. [Other sources date the movie to 1967 and still others to 1969. Puzzlement.] It is a musical about Adolf Hitler, written by Franz Liebkind, an unbalanced ex-Nazi played by Kenneth Mars.
In the film, the play is chosen by the producer Max Bialystock and his accountant Leo Bloom in their fraudulent scheme to raise substantial funding by selling 25,000% of a play, causing it to fail, and keeping all of the remaining money for themselves. To ensure that the play is a total failure, Max selects an incredibly tasteless script (which he describes as “practically a love letter to Adolf Hitler”), hires the worst director he can find (Roger DeBris, a stereotypical homosexual and transvestite caricature), and casts an out-of-control hippie named Lorenzo St. DuBois, also known by his initials “L.S.D.”, in the role of Hitler (after he had wandered into the wrong theatre by mistake during the casting call — “That’s our Hitler!”).
The play starts with a musical number, “Springtime for Hitler.” 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, and one lone viewer who breaks into applause — only to be pummelled by other disgusted theatergoers.
But as the play-within-the film goes on, through a series of accidents, it delights the audience and the play becomes a smash hit.
Wonderful stuff. Like so much Brooks, inspired tastelessness.
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