The Lambeth Walk
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"The Lambeth Walk" is a song from the 1937 musical Me and My Girl (with book and lyrics by Douglas Furber and L. Arthur Rose and music by Noel Gay). The song takes its name from a road [1] in Lambeth, an area of London, England. "The Lambeth Walk" has the distinction of being the subject of a headline in The Times in October 1938: "While dictators rage and statesmen talk, all Europe dances — to The Lambeth Walk."
The choreography from the musical, in which the song was a show-stopping Cockney-inspired extravaganza, inspired a popular walking dance, done in a jaunty, strutting style. The craze reached Buckingham Palace, with King George and Queen Elizabeth attending a performance and joining in the shouted "Oi" which ends the chorus.
An SA Mann of the Nazi Party declared the Lambeth Walk "Jewish mischief and animalistic hopping" in early 1939 as part of a speech about how the "revolution of private life" was one of the next big tasks of National Socialism.
In 1942 Charles A. Ridley made a short propaganda film, Lambeth Walk - Nazi Style, which edited existing footage of Hitler and Nazi soldiers (taken from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will) to make it appear as if they were marching and dancing to "The Lambeth Walk". The film so enraged Josef Goebbels that he ran out of the screening room kicking chairs and screaming profanities.
One of photographer Bill Brandt's most well-known pictures is ""Dancing the Lambeth Walk", originally published in 1943 in the magazine Picture Post.
[edit] References
- ^ streetmap.co.uk - Location of Lambeth Walk
- Nazis Hold Lambeth Walk is 'Animalistic Hopping', New York Times January 8, 1939 page 26.
[edit] External link
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