The Great Dictator noted Chaplin's use of Wagner's "Lohengrin" prelude when Hynckel dances with the globe-balloon. Chaplin repeated use of the "Lohengrin" prelude near the conclusion, when the exiled Hannah listens to the Jewish barber's speech celebrating democracy and freedom. The music is interrupted during the dictator's dance but it is heard to complete and climax in the barber's pro-democracy speech. Commenting on this, Lutz Peter Koepnick writes in 2002, Chaplin's film was released nine months after Hollywood's first parody of Hitler, the short subject "You Nazty Spy!" by the Three Stooges, which premiered in January 1940. Chaplin had been planning his feature-length
The Great Dictator Chaplin himself brought up his own brother's "King, Queen, Joker" of the silent era. The case, "Bercovici v. Chaplin", was settled, with Chaplin paying Konrad Bercovici $95,000. Bercovici claimed that he had created ideas such as Chaplin playing a dictator and a dance with a globe, and that Chaplin had discussed his five-page outline for a screenplay with him for several hours. But Chaplin insisted in his autobiography that he had been the sole writer of the movie's script. He agreed to a settlement, because of his "unpopularity in the States at that moment and being under such court pressure,