To Be or Not to Be - Carole Lombard's final film, directed by Ernst Lubitsch

'The Lubitsch Touch' has been dissected and analyzed for decades. Billy Wilder, who had been protégé to director Ernst Lubitsch early on, put it succinctly: "The Lubitsch Touch is a light touch. But there are serious overtones in Lubitsch. He understood life..."

In 1941, Lubitsch signed a three year contract with Paramount Pictures. But first he had another commitment to fulfill with United Artists;To Be or Not to Be was part of that arrangement.

Though the original story for the film was mostly Lubitsch's, the project that evolved was something of a departure for the director. As he later remarked, "I was tired of the two established recognized recipes, drama with comedy relief and comedy with dramatic relief. I had made up my mind to make a picture with no attempt to relieve anybody from anything at any time."

To Be or Not to Be is a comedy both black and broad; it is also a sophisticated and razor sharp satire on the Nazis.

Actors...and Nazis, To Be or Not to Be

Lubitsch chose radio superstar Jack Benny for the male lead. Benny, who later observed that it was "impossible for comedians like me and [Bob] Hope to get good directors - that's why we made lousy movies," considered Lubitsch "the greatest comedy director that ever lived" and was eager to work with him. Though Miriam Hopkins was up for the role of Benny's onscreen wife, she was only interested in taking the part if it was enlarged for her. Jack Benny was meanwhile pushing for Carole Lombard in the role. One night Benny and producer Alexander Korda went out on the town together; much drinking ensued and the upshot was that Korda wired UA and asked the studio to hire Lombard.

Lubitsch and Lombard knew each other from her early days on the Paramount lot. While the director had made pictures with the other great Paramount leading ladies, Claudette Colbert and Marlene Dietrich, he and Lombard had never managed to work together. Lombard's husband, box office king Clark Gable, was not excited about To Be or Not to Be and referred to Lubitsch as "the horny Hun." But Lombard had always wanted to work with the director and signed on; her only special request was that Irene design her wardrobe.

The production had its share of problems. To begin with, Jack Benny was jittery. According to co-star Robert Stack, he was "scared to death." Benny's source of discomfort was that while he knew how to deliver his lines on stage and on radio, he was much less sure of himself on a movie set. This made him very nervous.

Another problem concerned musical director Miklos Rozsa. Rozsa was set to score the film but once he saw the script and realized it was a satire on Nazism, he refused; he just didn't see the humor.

Carole Lombard and Robert Stack on the set

Regardless of these and other difficulties, the atmosphere on the set was a happy one. Lombard developed a habit of driving in from Encino, even when she wasn't scheduled, just to watch Lubitsch at work. According to Jack Benny, "Everyone was in awe of him."

To Be or Not to Be opens in Warsaw, Poland, just before the Nazi invasion. A man who appears to be Adolf Hitler is walking the streets, creating a stir.  The man, it turns out, is not Hitler but a local actor named Bronski (Tom Dugan) who is about to portray Adolf Hitler in an anti-Nazi play; he is testing his believability in public.

The plot centers on the acting troupe Bronski is part of, the Theatre Polsky, and its two stars, Josef and Maria Tura (Benny and Lombard). The troupe is rehearsing an anti-Nazi play, Gestapo, but is forced to revert to a less controversial drama, Shakespeare's Hamlet. A running gag concerns Maria, who is being romanced by a young pilot (Robert Stack). Whenever Josef begins Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy on stage, Maria's eager young man conspicuously shuffles out of his theater seat. The walk-out of an audience member in the midst of this speech completely flusters the actor (who has no idea why the man has left). Josef Tura's Hamlet is heavy on the ham and, as one Nazi character remarks, "What he did to Shakespeare we are now doing to Poland." The troupe eventually becomes involved with the Polish resistance.

Lombard is well-matched with Benny, who would never have a better film role. The two shared exquisite timing and much panache, and their scenes together could be shown in a master class on playing comedy. The fine ensemble cast includes venerable Felix Bressart (as an actor relegated to "spear carrier" roles but who has his moment to quote Shakespeare, eloquently) and Lionel Atwill along with Sig Ruman, Stack and Dugan.

 Criterion Collection trailer

The picture wrapped just before Christmas 1941, and Carole Lombard promised Jack Benny she would guest on his radio show once she returned from an upcoming war bond drive. But on the evening of January 16, 1942, the plane returning Lombard and her mother from the bond drive, along with 20 others, crashed into a mountain west of Las Vegas. All aboard were killed. Apparently the pilot had changed course, flying toward Las Vegas rather than his official destination, Boulder, Colorado. The plane had almost missed the mountain peak, crashing only 120 feet from the top.

To Be or Not to Be premiered on February 15, 1942. It was not a hit. Some critics claimed Lubitsch had suffered a lapse in taste. Churlish Bosley Crowther of the New York Times accused the director of  going for cheap laughs. Robert Stack later said that the press of the time just didn't get it. He noted that Lubitsch was "a Jew from the Old Country himself" and declared that To Be or Not to Be was the best satire on Nazism ever made.

Lubitsch was appalled that his intent and his taste were both misinterpreted and maligned. He acknowledged that he hadn't depicted Nazi terror in the typical way, with outright violence: "My Nazis are different; they passed that stage long ago. Brutality, flogging and torture have become their daily routine. They talk about it the same way as a salesman referring to the sale of a handbag."

Lombard and Lubitsch

It isn't surprising that critics and audiences of early 1942 may not have warmed to or understood Lubitsch's approach. The country had suffered Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and entered World War II just as the production of To Be or Not to Be was coming to an end. Those early days of the war were deeply patriotic times in the U.S. and the outcome of the conflict was still far from certain. Other wartime movies generally presented a more traditional portrait of our enemies and their victims - unequivocal, distinctly unfunny and in stark black and white terms.  Lubitsch's witty satire had arrived in American theaters at the wrong moment. But the passage of time has been kind to To Be or Not to Be. It long ago entered the pantheon of Lubitsch's great masterworks - that very special place where Ninotchka (1939) and The Shop Around the Corner (1940) also reside.

Carole Lombard, a natural as Maria Tura, was never more elegant or disarming. Though her character is clearly 'a woman of affairs,' Lombard endows her with so much warmth, humor and humanity that Maria is never less than entirely sympathetic. Such was Lombard's irreplaceable talent.

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This post is my contribution to Carole & Company's "Carole-tennial (+3)," marking the 103rd anniversary of Hollywood legend Carole Lombard's birth.
To learn more about the blogathon and participating blogs, click here...

Carole Lombard, 1908 - 1942

References:

Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise by Scott Eyman

Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder, A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler