A fictional play in Mel Brooks' The Producers, Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp With Eva and Adolf 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% of a play, causing it to fail, and keeping 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 out-of-control hippie named Lorenzo St. DuBois, who calls himself "L.S.D." The name "Springtime for Hitler" has become a trope for when something intended/required to fail actually doesn't.
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 L.S.D. 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.
Differences compared to the musical
In the musical stage version of The Producers and the 2005 movie musical based on it, the part of LSD is not included and Hitler is played by the flamboyant director DeBris, who sings a solo, "Heil Myself", reminiscent of Judy Garland. Author Franz is originally chosen by Max to play Hitler, but due to an unfortunate accident after the "Good Luck" song, he breaks his leg (ironic since the term 'break a leg' is used to mean 'good luck' in the theatre world) and Max then asks DeBris to play Hitler. The swastika choreography at the end is displayed to the audience via a large mirror that is raised, a la A Chorus Line. In the musical version Franz does not interrupt the play, but waits until afterward to confront the producers and then attempts to kill them, but fails. He breaks his other leg running away from the police.
