To Be or Not To Be

In a world where The Producers is a smash Broadway hit and Hogan’s Heroes a staple of late-night TV reruns, it might be hard to appreciate just how scandalous, irreverent and outright brilliant Ernst Lubitsch’s anti-Nazi farce was when it first opened in 1942. Lubitsch, the great German-Jewish émigré director known for his sophisticated comedic touch, had the audacity to write a low vaudeville farce in which a Polish theater troupe (headed by Jack Benny and Carole Lombard) finds itself embroiled in an espionage caper as they try to foil the invading German army and the Führer himself. The deadpan comedian Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky) plays pompous actor-manager Joseph Tura, intent on performing the greatest Hamlet Warsaw has ever seen. His wife and leading lady (Lombard, in her last screen role before a fatal plane crash) is more interested in carrying on a flirtation with a young Robert Stack. But it is 1939, and the Germans have just invaded Poland. The company swings into a real-life performance as they try to outwit the bumbling Gestapo and aid the Polish underground. Written before the U.S. entry into the war, To Be or Not To Be had the misfortune of opening at a time when Hitler’s armies were savaging Europe, and American lives were about to be forfeited overseas. Lubitsch’s dizzy farce was held to be in poor taste. With the benefit of hindsight, we have the chance to see how ridicule can sometimes be deadly serious.