Charles Wooley: Please, no more Nazi surprises

Public figures should remember that they need to dress to impress and not dress to distress, writes Charles Wooley

WHEN Charles Chaplin dressed as a Nazi for his 1940 movie The Great Dictator he was lionised (as opposed to being thrown to the lions) in Britain and America.

In Europe, the UK was isolated, alone at war with Hitler.

In the isolationist United States there was no appetite for a repeat of World War I, but in both countries there was massive approval for Chaplin’s dark and satirical comedy about the Nazi dictator and the evils of fascism and antisemitism.

It was a risky venture. Although hilarious on screen at the time, those subjects should in fact have been no laughing matter.

But social mores were decidedly different back when “PC” stood for nothing more than an English copper on a bicycle.

Silent film actor Charlie Chaplin in a scene from the 1940 film 'The Great Dictator', his first film with dialogue, which at the time was hailed as a “truly superb accomplishment” would not be greeted with the same enthusiasm today, according to Charles Wooley.

The producers of The Great Dictator were surprised that the film made money, initially $3.5m in America and $5m worldwide.

The New York Times hailed Chaplin’s movie as “a truly superb accomplishment by a truly great artist”. The paper’s film critic was unstinting, suggesting the work was “perhaps the most significant film ever produced”.

Much later another attempt to poke filmic fun at fascist tyranny once more delved deep into the Nazi dress-up box. I remember in 2005 laughing at Mel Brooks’s hilarious big musical number, Springtime For Hitler.

Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp With Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden is a fictional musical in Brooks’s 1967 film The Producers, as well as the stage musical adaptation of the movie, and the subsequent 2005 movie was an adaptation of the musical.

The plot involved a duo of shonky impresarios deliberately setting out to make a tax loss on a New York musical. They sought out the worst theatrical script ever written: Springtime for Hitler, by an ex-Nazi named Franz Liebkind.

US filmmaker Mel Brooks poses during the photocall of The Producers, in Rome, in 2005. The controversial film was widely regarded as a commercial failure, earning $38m from a $45m budget. Picture: Tiziana Fabi/AFP Photo

In the film’s plot everything goes wrong. Against all odds the New York audience, including the Jewish community, laugh uproariously, and the show becomes a financial success.

That’s quite unlike the Mel Brooks movie itself, which was a financial flop. The production cost was about $10 million more than the box-office returns.

A hard lesson had been learned.

By 2005 comedians cavorting in Nazi uniforms were clearly no longer as amusing as they had been back in 1940.

Which, of course, is why Prince Harry and NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet are in so much trouble today over their youthful dress-up indiscretions of two decades ago.

Before I presumed to write about this stuff, I consulted an old mate from my Uni Revue days at the Sandy Bay campus.

No, I never dressed up as a Nazi. A holy-roller evangelist, yes.

James Bond, when I was much younger. And yes, even an ancient Roman. But in mitigation, the Roman Empire was so long ago we have quite forgotten their historical transgressions. Roman legions routinely wiped out whole populations, slaughtering and crucifying their way to genocide across the known world.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet outside the Sydney Jewish Museum on January 12, after meeting with local Jewish community leaders, following his confession to wearing a Nazi uniform to his 21st birthday fancy dress party. Picture: John Appleyard

But it does seem after a couple of thousand years there is a historical statute of limitation on even the worst behaviour. Today dressing as a Roman centurion is OK.

In 2003, in the West Pennant Hills garage of his family home, Dominic Perrottet, the third of 12 children, celebrated his 21st birthday with university friends, including his mates from the Young Liberals.

It was a fancy-dress party and young Dom thought it would be funny to dress up as a Nazi.

“It was a terrible mistake, and I am incredibly sorry for the hurt,” he repeated in various abjectly grovelling apologies over the past week. “Hopefully it will lead to young people never making the same mistake that I did.”

Churchill once said that humble pie was “a most nutritious and instructive diet”, though it is unlikely today’s young people, even privileged prats from the Young Liberals at Sydney Uni, would dress as Nazis.

Certainly not now.

Speaking of privileged prats, two years later in London at some posh Hooray Henry fancy-dress party the 20-year-old Prince Harry outraged the UK press by dressing as a Nazi.

He too was forced to make a meal of humble pie.

“I am very sorry if I caused any offence or embarrassment to anyone,’’ Harry said.

“It was a poor choice of costume and I apologise.”

Front page of London tabloid The Sun newspaper, in 2005, featuring a photograph of Prince Harry wearing a Nazi shirt and swastika while attending a fancy dress party.

Harry went further than Dom. He flew to Berlin and spoke to a Holocaust survivor. “I could have just ignored it and gone on and on and made the same mistakes over and over again in my life, but I learned from that,” he said.

Harry told all to the cameras during the filming of his and Megan’s recent Netflix mini-series, which netted him more than US$100m.

A most nutritious diet, indeed.

As an Australian Republican (there’s a lost cause if there ever was one), I have no enthusiasm for the English royal family.

But I am feeling a little sorry for Harry. He is not the sharpest tool in the Windsor shed, but nor is he the worst of that dysfunctional bunch.

He

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet addresses the media at Parliament house in Sydney on January 12, as he admits to the public that he wore a Nazi costume to his 21st birthday. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Seb Haggett

has survived an awful childhood and the cold indifference of his family, managing to get himself off the public payroll and become a very wealthy man in his own right.

In that sense at least the British taxpayers are better off without him.

Meanwhile, the Tasmanian government will introduce legislation to criminalise the display of Nazi symbols, including the swastika, “when used for hate and fear”.

It is not clear exactly what has prompted this action from an ultra-conservative government, which often tends towards the most illiberal legislation prohibiting dissent and protest.

Could it be simply that the Tassie Libs are moving to prevent any future Perrottet embarrassments?

Sealing the lid on the Nazi Party dress-up box should ensure that future Tasmanian Right-wing conservative leaders, now in the Young Liberals, are never tempted to “do a Dom”.

The question is: Has it already happened in the remote past?

Ours is a small town, and although I am as discreet as a Blue Lagoon oyster, it could be fortunate that a recent bout of Covid seems to have completely fogged my memory.

Charles Wooley is a journalist, writer and former reporter with news and current affairs TV show 60 Minutes.