{"id":37560,"date":"2022-07-29T16:59:37","date_gmt":"2022-07-29T20:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=37560"},"modified":"2022-07-29T17:14:42","modified_gmt":"2022-07-29T21:14:42","slug":"the-bootleg-files-lambeth-walk-nazi-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/29\/the-bootleg-files-lambeth-walk-nazi-style\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Lambeth Walk \u2013 Nazi Style"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>BOOTLEG FILES 809:<\/strong> \u201cLambeth Walk \u2013 Nazi Style\u201d (1942 short that riffs on \u201cTriumph of the Will\u201d with a soundtrack featuring an instrumental version of \u201cThe Lambeth Walk\u201d). <\/p>\n<p><strong>LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> In public domain anthologies.<br \/>\n<strong><br \/>\nREASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> Unauthorized use of Leni Riefenstahl\u2019s film coupled with music clearance issues.<br \/>\n<strong><br \/>\nCHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> It is out there, rights clearance be damned. <\/p>\n<p>Some humor is timeless \u2013 think of Shakespeare\u2019s comedies, Mark Twain\u2019s novels and the Three Stooges\u2019 knockabout. But with some humor, time is not an ally and it can difficult for later generations to appreciate what their predecessors were laughing about.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>One example of humor that isn\u2019t quite as funny today as it was yesteryear is a two-minute short film that goes under a variety of titles but is perhaps best known as \u201cLambeth Walk \u2013 Nazi Style.\u201d When this was first shown in 1942, it created a mild sensation on both sides of World War II. Viewed today, however, it is difficult to appreciate its value without understanding the context behind its creation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Lambeth Walk\u201d was a jaunty song-and-dance number from the 1937 British stage musical \u201cMe and My Girl.\u201d The dance was a walking strut while the accompanying tune was a celebration of the Cockney London culture. If you\u2019ve never heard it, here is the number from the 1939 film version of \u201cMe and My Girl.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Mc6XUus5IC4\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In class-conscious England, the song was an unlikely hit \u2013 and even King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth were fans. The Cockney cultural resonance was not as impactful on the other side of the Atlantic, but the song\u2019s playful lyrics and melody caught the fancy of various big bands, including Duke Ellington\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>The song also created something of a craze across the European continent, which was on the verge of rupturing into war. In Germany, the song was retitled \u201cLambert\u2019s Nachtlokal\u201d and the dance was popular in clubs that focused on swing music. But when a Nazi Party official denounced the song and accompanying dance as \u201cJewish mischief and animalistic hopping,\u201d it had the opposite effect on the German public \u2013 they kept singing and dancing to it, even during World War II. <\/p>\n<p>In 1942, while the war was still raging, \u201cThe Lambeth Walk\u201d was still playing on radios on both sides of the conflict. As a propaganda tweak, an official in the British Ministry of Information named Charles A. Ridley decided to adapt the sprightly dance associated with \u201cThe Lambeth Walk\u201d and use it to ridicule Hitler\u2019s Nazi military. Ridley took a print of Leni Riefenstahl\u2019s \u201cTriumph of the Will\u201d without the filmmaker\u2019s knowledge \u2013 hey, it was wartime and intellectual property concerns were the last thing on anyone\u2019s mind \u2013 and re-edited the work to fit an instrumental version of \u201cThe Lambeth Walk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ridley re-edited the film to show marching Nazi soldiers parading to the tune, but he played around with the footage and had the soldiers marching backwards as well as forwards. Hitler was shown giving manic hand gestures and facial emotions to the song\u2019s jolly melody. For audiences in 1942, the sight of the Third Reich\u2019s military power being reduced to pompous figures worthy of ridicule was a happy distraction for British moviegoers who were already into their third year of a grueling war.<\/p>\n<p>The British Ministry of Information released the film without credits to U.K. theaters. In the U.S., producer Leslie Winik picked up the film and retitled it \u201cSchichlegruber Doing the Lambeth Walk\u201d \u2013 the \u201cSchichlegruber\u201d reference was a slur used by Americans in reference to Hitler\u2019s father Alois, who was the illegitimate child of Maria Schicklgruber. (She later married Johann Georg Hiedler, with Alois taking on his stepfather\u2019s surname that would be reconfigured from Hiedler to Hitler.) Winik put his name on the film\u2019s credits as producer (which was dishonest, to put it mildly) and claimed the \u201cGestapo \u2018Hep-Cats\u2019\u201d assisted in the presentation.<\/p>\n<p>Amazingly, prints of the film wound up in Nazi-controlled Europe. German propaganda chief Josef Goebbels allegedly saw the film and was enraged to see his Master Race reduced to buffoonery. Reportedly, prints of the film were smuggled into Nazi-occupied Denmark and resistance fighters managed to get the footage seen in the nation\u2019s cinemas. Today, however, the film isn&#8217;t anywhere as effective as Chaplin&#8217;s &#8220;The Great Dictator&#8221; or the Three Stooges&#8217; anti-Nazi romps with Moe Howard as Hitler, and &#8220;The Lambeth Walk&#8221; is mostly unknown to anyone who is not a classic theater buff, but back in the day it offered a much-needed lift to war-weary audiences.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLambeth Walk \u2013 Nazi-Style\u201d is sort of in a grey area today. The film was always in the public domain, and the footage has been featured in home entertainment releases offering copyright-free wartime films. But the \u201cTriumph of the Will\u201d footage is copyright protected and it is not likely that the creators \u201cThe Lambeth Walk\u201d signed away the rights to their song forever to aid the British war effort.<\/p>\n<p>However, this two-minute bit of nonsense can easily be found online. And while it may not seem particularly uproarious by contemporary standards, there was a time when it gave a much needed stab at a vile regime while providing free peoples with a smile during their grimmest hours.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gYdmk3GP3iM\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Listen to Phil Hall\u2019s award-winning podcast <a href=\"http:\/\/www.soundcloud.com\/onlinemovieshow\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud and his radio show <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nutmegchatter.com\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cNutmeg Chatter\u201d<\/a> on WAPJ-FM in Torrington, Connecticut, every Sunday. Phil Hall\u2019s new book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Jesus-Christ-Movie-Star-Phil\/dp\/162933698X\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cJesus Christ Movie Star\u201d<\/a> is now available from BearManor Media. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BOOTLEG FILES 809: \u201cLambeth Walk \u2013 Nazi Style\u201d (1942 short that riffs on \u201cTriumph of the Will\u201d with a soundtrack featuring an instrumental version of \u201cThe Lambeth Walk\u201d). LAST SEEN: On YouTube. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: In public domain anthologies. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Unauthorized use of Leni Riefenstahl\u2019s film coupled with music clearance issues. CHANCES [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":37565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[2977,219,2976,800,1371],"class_list":["post-37560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-charles-a-ridley","tag-comedy","tag-lambeth-walk-nazi-style","tag-propaganda","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37560"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37564,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37560\/revisions\/37564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}