THE LAMBETH WALK / SHORT PROPAGANDA FILM THAT OUTRAGED ADOLF HITLER 34534b

During WWII, "The Lambeth Walk" was a very popular song. Originally part of the 1937 musical Me and My Girl (where the song takes its name from a local street Lambeth Walk in London) the music was repurposed as the soundtrack to this anti-Nazi propaganda film "Schichlegruber Doing the Lambeth Walk". Made by the British Ministry of Information's Charles A. Ridley and released in the USA by Leslie Winik (who made a popular series of films called "Sportsbeams") this clever short features manipulated newsreel footage of Hitler and his goose-stepping troops. It is said that Nazi officials were enraged by this short clip and that a "furious Fuhrer" was outraged by it. No doubt they would have been, as the film takes deadly serious, impressive and threatening images of Hitler and his war machine and reveals them to be nothing more than pomp, circumstance, and hubris. Incidentally, the reference to "Schichlegruber" may not be clear to a modern audience. Adolph Hitler's father Alois was the illegitimate child of Maria Schicklgruber. She later married Johann Georg Hiedler, and Alois much later changed his last name to the stepfather's name (and at some point, "Hiedler" came to be spelled "Hitler.") The reference by Winik was clearly also meant to be an insult to the Nazi's supreme leader, although whether that would have resonated with contemporary audiences is hard to say!

According to some sources, Charles A. Ridley used this specific music track because members of the Nazi party including Josef Goebbels had called the tune "Jewish mischief and animalistic hopping". The footage used came directly from the film "Triumph of the Will". "Lambeth Walk" was widely distributed through newsreel companies in the US and UK and became wildly popular in theaters. In this sense it can be regarded as one of the first real political remix videos.

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