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Hitler in Concert

When Fenton, Randy, and I were making Hidden Fuhrer, our film about whether Hitler was gay, we scoured the archives looking for any footage we could find that might back up that claim. By the end, I thought we had seen every bit of footage of Hitler in existence. But I'm going to have to have a chat with the archivist, because he obviously missed something HUGE.

– Gabriel Rotello

Das Fünny

WOW veteran and former WOW Report correspondent, Jacques Peretti, is directing Hitler: The Comedy Years, WOW's hourlong rollicking look at the ridiculous Great Dick... er, Dictator, on Channel 4 in the UK. Which is part of what this clipping from London's Mirror is going on about. Fenton says, "As Whitney Houston might sing, 'It's not reich, but it's OK.' " We're pretty sure Nippy's not singing much of anything these days but, meanwhile, take a look at this clip of Hitler as a, yes, Hitler youth, getting lost in and with his "friend" in the woods just before he lost interest in everything but world domination. The clip is from the 2004 WOW documentary, The Hidden Fuhrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality, currently available on DVD. A clipping and a clip. Very tidy. (Watch the clip)

The Softer Side of Hitler

Award-winning filmmaker Laurence Rees spent 15 years tracking down and interviewing the surviving members of the lost tribe of Nazis for a new series on British TV, Inside the Nazi State. But why would the former Nazis talk to him now? Says Rees:

"I think it must be something to do with your life history having a pattern and at the end of it you look back and remember the things that had a real impact on you. You become reflective about what was really important. And, of course, they wanted to explain themselves to their grandchildren, who were looking at them and saying: 'I love you but I can't understand why you became a Nazi.' "

Writes Fenton Bailey: Gabriel Rotello and I had an interesting encounter with a former Nazi when we were making our film about how Hitler might have been – probably was, actually – gay. Gabriel scored an interview with Roland Misch, the phone operator in the bunker in the final days. He lived in the suburbs of Hamburg in a neat little suburban house. (More after the jump)

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Heil Take Berlin

The WOW documentary The Hidden Fuhrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality is out on DVD March 8. We may have mentioned that earlier. Meanwhile, Michael Calleri, the movie editor at altpressonline.com is already debating.

William Shakespeare wrote that politics makes strange bedfellows, but I gotta tell ya, there’s a doozy on the home-viewing horizon. I never thought I’d ever write this sentence, but there’s a movie being released on DVD that offers up the question: was Adolph Hitler gay? For homosexuals and lesbians everywhere, you hope the answer is a sharp NO WAY, JOSE. I mean, come on, bad hair, bad moustache, bad décor. He couldn’t possibly have been gay. Of course, he did have a thing for uniforms. Those SS outfits had a certain style. But if he were gay, take a bit of pity the gay image: with friends like Hitler, who needs enemies. The movie’s called The Hidden Fuhrer: Debating The Enigma Of Hitler’s Sexuality.

(More)

Das DVD

The Hidden Führer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality is out on DVD March 8. Order here or at your favorite retailer.

Manila Ice

On June 9, Imelda opens in selected theaters. The New York Times synopsizes it thusly: "a documentary about Imelda Marcos, former beauty queen, enthusiastic consumer and first lady of the Philippines. The film focuses on her marriage to Ferdinand Marcos (the two of them were in power from 1966 to 1986), their human rights record, her love for the grand life and, of course, her 3,000 pairs of shoes. Ramona S. Diaz directed."

Now, Fenton Bailey, one of two fearless, um, leaders here at WOW, has been nudging me for weeks about Imelda Marcos for this reason or that reason. Why? I don't know, but I think he has a thing for dictators (see The Hidden Fuhrer). Or pumps. I'm just saying. Anyway, this is Bailey's latest missive on the dictator's wife.

At last! The shoe lady and former dictatortrix of the Philippines returns triumphant in a remarkably restrained non-camp fest.

It's a crime no one wants to make a series about the taste of the world's great dictators, since with the current obsession with all things bling bling, they live the largest, and commit the most heinous crimes against good taste. Any totalitarian worth his salt must have an 'edifice complex' aka love of building fab palaces for the edification of the poor--at their expense of course. Imelda was no exception, building a spanking museum cum palace to her royal Evitaness smack in the middle of the ghetto. The shirtless ones lap it up!

And the widow of the Shah of Iran had something profound to say in the Sunday New York Times magazine recently: "People say money doesn't bring you happiness. But it makes it easy to live with misery in comfort." So true.

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Musical Chairs

Fenton Bailey's in London on business (or so he says). And has just seen the award-winning West End musical, Jerry Springer the Opera, which is heading for Broadway in 2005. "If you liked the 'Springtime for Hitler' production number from The Producers, then you will love this," says Bailey in an emailed mini review that assumes we can all afford to see Broadway shows even in their cut-rate LA mountings. "It's Rocky Horror meets South Park, the movie. Wicked, wicked camp."

Notably, the likes of Kelsey Grammer, Rufus Wainwright, and the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant have been caught attending. "I saw Marcus Hu, grande fromage of Strand Releasing," says Bailey. "With his mother. The language is every bit as foul as on any Jerry episode [Ed: check out "Mama Gimmee Smack on the Asshole"] and it's not bleeped, so they left midway through the second act." But they didn't get away before Bailey had a chat with Hu about Strand releasing a DVD of WOW's gay-Hitler doc, The Hidden Fuhrer. Because if you liked "Springtime for Hitler," you're gonna love The Hidden Fuhrer.

Der Maus

Adolf Hitler, the Hidden Fuhrer, may have had a secret that plagued him, but what darkness lurks inside Mickey Mouse that would have children and adults worldwide searching for the Hidden Mickey?

The Wails of August

The Boston Globe reviews tonight's Cinemax premiere of The Hidden Fuhrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality. The review's opening graph reads like European porno. Apt.

Two young men are hiking in the wilderness. Suddenly the skies open up, buckets of rain fall, and they take breathless refuge in a cozy farm hut. August lays a dry cloth on the hay, and his friend strips down and wraps himself in the cloth. "He was highly amused by the whole venture," August recalls, "whose romantic conclusion pleased him greatly. Besides, we were nice and warm by now."

Linda Stasi in the New York Post finds the doc "quite compelling. . . Is it necessary to know what his sexuality was all about? It's probably good to know as much as we can about anyone who's made such a dent in history."

When Hitler was arrested early on in his career, he shared a cell with Rudolph Hess (known at the time as "Frueline Anna"), who became one of his closest allies. They were reprimanded by the prison warden for running around naked and not maintaining decorum. One scholar maintains that they were merely shirtless.

Nazi Party Monster

Was Hitler gay? In The Hidden Fuhrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality, based on German historian Lothar Machtan's book, The Hidden Hitler, the evidence would seem to say ja. PlanetOut.com says the WOW documentary, which includes numerous interviews, recently discovered archival documents, and rare footage and photos of Hitler, including his artwork, is perhaps WOW's most academic work to date. Heil drink to that. The doc airs on Cinemax April 20, Hitler's birthday.

[The film digs] up an extensive amount of evidence, including a report from an eyewitness from the trenches of World War I who said he caught Hitler having sex with a fellow soldier, a top secret file from Munich's vice squad that alleges Hitler paid young men for sex and accounts from several of Hitler's closest friends -- some of whom were gay -- insisting that he was a homosexual.

Der Fuhrer Furor

In the WOW documentary The Hidden Fuhrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality, airing on Cinemax April 20 (don't worry, we'll remind you), a very persuasive case is made for Adolf's homosexuality. Rare footage, archival documents, and surprising interviews reveal Hitler's coolness toward women, his youthful affairs with men, his romances in the trenches of WWI, his non-sexual relationship with mistress Eva Braun, and his close friendship with Albert Speer, chief architect of the Nazi party. Oh, and there's an awful lot of storm troopers and shirtless youth. The doc suggests the theory that the Fuhrer's desperate attempts to cover up his sexual history and shield himself from blackmailers was at least partly responsible for some of his most infamous crimes. Call him the Nazi party monster.