To Be or Not To Be ***** (1942, Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack) – Classic Movie Review 1,943

Set during the Nazi occupation of Poland, Ernst Lubitsch’s controversial 1942 wartime comedy drama film To Be or Not To Be is incredibly daring, funny and poignant. Jack Benny and Carole Lombard (in her last movie) lead the choice cast in delightful performances.

Set during the Nazi occupation of Poland, director Ernst Lubitsch’s controversial 1942 World War Two wartime comedy drama To Be or Not To Be is incredibly daring, funny and poignant. It was completed in 1941 just as the United Sates joined the war, but was held back for release until 1942.

Jack Benny and a high-spirited Carole Lombard, in her last movie before her death in an air crash, lead the choice cast in a series of delightful performances, especially from revered character actors Sig Ruman (Colonel Ehrhardt), Felix Bressart (Greenberg), Stanley Ridges and Lionel Atwill (Rawitch).

Benny stars in his most famous role as an old-school ham actor/ manager, whose acting troupe of stage players in Warsaw tries to outwit the Nazis after the Germans invade Poland and the country falls into subjugation. Benny really grabs hold of his scintillating chance to shine in a brio turn as the Shakespearean actor Joseph Tura, whose true virtuosity is put to the test in having to play both Hamlet and Adolf Hitler believably.

The title of course refers to the ‘To be, or not to be’ soliloquy in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.

Robert Stack plays the Polish soldier Lieutenant Stanislav Sobinski who gets Tura and his wife Maria (Benny and Lombard) and their troupe of ham stage actors to masquerade as Gestapo chiefs to try to stop spy and traitor Professor Siletsky (Ridges) from delivering the damaging information he has about the Polish Resistance to the Germans.

The film was generally not well received by the public or critics. Based on a story by Lubitsch and Melchior Lengyel, Edwin Justus Mayer’s daring screenplay was attacked at the time for poor taste in raising laughs and making an entertainment from the Nazis and the Germans invading Poland. But its serious points come over loud and clear through its hilarious humour, as with Charles Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). It shows just how good To Be or Not To Be is that, now its topicality is embalmed in the vaults of history, the film has a freshness and appeal that are still very much alive and kicking.

Also in the cast are Stanley Ridges, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill, Sig Ruman, Helmut Dantine, Charles Halton, Tom Dugan, Peter Caldwell, Miles Mander, George Lynn, Henry Victor, Maude Eburne, Halliwell Hobbes, Frank Reicher, Charles Irwin, Leyland Hodgson, Roland Varno, James Finlayson, John Kellogg and Alec Craig.

Lubitsch wrote the lead role with Benny in mind. The film was also to have starred Miriam Hopkins but Hopkins and Benny did not get along and Hopkins quit. Carole Lombard, who had never worked with Lubitsch and was eager to, asked to be considered instead. The film was shot at United Artists, and so Lombard could say she had worked at every major Hollywood studio.

It was selected for preservation in the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1996 as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. It is all three of those things.

To Be Or Not To Be is directed by Ernst Lubitsch, runs 102 minutes, is a Romaine Film Corp production, is released by United Artists, is written by Edwin Justus Mayer and Ernst Lubitsch (uncredited), based on a story by Ernst Lubitsch and Melchior Lengyel, is shot in black and white by Rudolph Maté, is produced by Alexander Korda and Ernest Lubitsch, is scored by Werner Heymann, and is designed by Vincent Korda.

It was remade as To Be or Not To Be in 1983 starring Mel Brooks.

Carole Lombard died on 16 January 1942, aged 33.

To Be or Not to Be was in post-production when tragic Carole Lombard died on January 16 1942, aged just 33. She was returning from a war bond drive in her home state of Indiana, when her plane crashed outside Las Vegas in 1942, also killing her mother and all 20 other passengers. Her last words to all the people of Indiana just before boarding the plane were: ‘Before I say goodbye to you all – come on – join me in a big cheer- V for victory!’

The producers decided to leave out a part that had her character ironically saying: ‘What can happen in a plane?’

Lombard married William Powell on 26 June 1931 and then Clark Gable on 29 March 1939. Gable was in the middle of making Somewhere I’ll Find You when she was killed.

The cast are Carole Lombard as Maria Tura, Jack Benny as Joseph Tura, Robert Stack as Lt. Stanislav Sobinski, Felix Bressart as Greenberg, Lionel Atwill as Rawitch, Stanley Ridges as Professor Alexander Siletsky, Sig Ruman as Col Ehrhardt, Tom Dugan as Bronski, Charles Halton as Dobosh, George Lynn as an actor, Henry Victor as Capt. Schultz, Maude Eburne as Anna, Halliwell Hobbes as Gen. Armstrong, Miles Mander as Major Cunningham,James Finlayson as Scottish farmer, Olaf Hytten as Polonius in Warsaw, Maurice Murphy as Polish RAF Pilot, Frank Reicher as Polish Foreign Office official, Helmut Dantine, Charles Irwin, Leyland Hodgson, Roland Varno, James Finlayson, John Kellogg and Alec Craig.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1,943

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