To Be or Not to Be

To Be or Not to Be, American screwball comedy film, released in 1942, that was Carole Lombard’s last film. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, it is set in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II. The film’s comedic skewering of Nazis was particularly controversial at a time when the war was ongoing.

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Lombard and Jack Benny portrayed a married couple who are the leading players in a Warsaw-based company of hammy Shakespearean actors, out of work following the Nazi invasion of Poland. They find a patriotic use for their costumes and acting abilities, however, when they become embroiled in a complicated plot to prevent a double agent from delivering vital information to the Nazis.

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Lubitsch was heavily criticized for a producing a lighthearted film featuring Nazis and such irreverent lines as, “Oh, yes, I saw him in Hamlet once. What he did to Shakespeare we are now doing to Poland.” But Lubitsch, a German refugee, argued that spoofing the Nazis was an act of patriotism. Lombard (who was married to Clark Gable) died two months before the film’s release: she was on a war bond junket when her plane crashed. Mel Brooks produced a 1983 remake of the film, in which he starred with wife Anne Bancroft.

Production notes and credits

• Studio: United Artists
• Director: Ernst Lubitsch
• Writer: Edwin Justus Mayer
• Music: Werner R. Heymann and Miklos Rozsa
• Running time: 99 minutes

Cast

• Carole Lombard (Maria Tura)
• Jack Benny (Joseph Tura)
• Robert Stack (Lieut. Stanislav Sobinski)
• Felix Bressart (Greenberg)
• Lionel Atwill (Rawitch)