Springtime for Hitler
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A fictional play in Mel Brooks' The Producers, Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp With Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden is a musical about Adolf Hitler written by fictional Nazi Franz Liebkind.
The play is chosen by producers Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom in their fraud scheme to raise substantial funding by selling several multiples of a 100% stake, fail the play, 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.
Synopsis
The play starts out with a musical number, Springtime for Hitler which contains the memorable chorus "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, and one audience member 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, and the remaining audience starts to laugh, thinking that it is a satire and the audience returns to the theater.
Franz, disgusted, goes behind 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 show.
In the real 2001 Broadway version of The Producers and its subsequent 2005 movie, the part of LSD was not included and Hitler was played by the director, Roger DeBris, who sang a flamboyant solo Heil Myself.
Quotes
- "Springtime, for Hitler, and Germany / Winter, for Poland and France"—The opening number
- "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 never said 'baby'"—Franz, grieving about LSD's way of talking (using words like "baby" and "groovy")
- "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 dubbed by writer/director Mel Brooks.