To Be or Not to Be (DVD)

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Young people may not recognize Jack Benny at all, and for those old enough or interested enough the comedian is probably best remembered for his long-running radio and television shows. What folks sometimes forget is that he also starred in over a dozen full-length motion pictures, among them "Artists and Models" (1937), "Buck Benny Rides Again" (1940), "Charley's Aunt" (1941), "George Washington Slept Here" (1942), "The Horn Blows at Midnight" (1945), and his very best film, the minor comedy classic considered here, "To Be or Not to Be."

Yet it's Carole Lombard who gets top billing, and she, too, is at her best. It would, tragically, be her last film, released a few months after her death in a plane crash in January, 1942. She was only in her early thirties when she died, but she had been a star for well over a decade and had been in pictures since her early teens. She perfected her craft, and it shows, her character in "To Be or Not to Be" a subtle, sophisticated, sexy, and seductive woman who charms everyone around her.

Things begin in Warsaw, Poland, in 1939, just before the Nazi invasion. An acting troupe, which features Benny's character and Lombard's, is producing a Nazi parody, filled with hammy actors. At one point in the rehearsals, the troupe's production manager, Dobosh (Charles Halton), looks at the makeup on the actor playing Hitler and complains, "It's not convincing. To me, he's just a man with a little mustache." To which someone replies, "So is Hitler." This exchange sets the tone for the story to come; not only is the play within the movie a parody, the whole movie mercilessly lampoons the Führer and his murderous flunkies.

But before the main plot commences, there is a semi-romantic subplot that must be developed, which eventually becomes essential to the goings on. Benny plays Joseph Turu, a very bad and very conceited stage star who heads the acting company. He's so egotistical, he demands not only that his name be placed first in the billing but that it be bigger than the title of the play itself. Benny's mastery of the slow, dramatic pause was never used to better effect than when a single person in the audience keeps walking out on his "Hamlet" soliloquy.

The person walking out is young Lt. Stanislaw Sobinski (a young Robert Stack, who was in movies before Adam), a Polish aviator with a crush on Turu's wife, Maria (Lombard). Maria loves her husband, mind you, but he is something of a bore, and she is looking for a little adventure, so a possible indiscretion takes place. Anyway, Turu's "To be or not to be" line is Sobinski's cue to get up from the audience and conduct his private trysts with Mrs. Turu while the husband is away. Maria's maid, Anna (Maude Eburne), says of the young lieutenant, "What's he want you to do, adopt him?" I mean, he is a bit younger than Maria.

When her husband complains about this guy getting up and walking out, we get a wonderful exchange between him and his wife:

Tura: "It happened. What every actor dreads. Someone walked out on me."
Maria: "Maybe he had a sudden heart attack."
Tura: "I hope so."
Maria: "If he stayed, he might have died."
Tura: "Maybe he's dead already. Oh, darling, you're so comforting!"

But when Poland is attacked by Germany, the play is closed, the Nazis take over the city, and Lt. Sobinski joins the Polish Squadron of the RAF. It's here, and about time, that the main plot kicks in. Sobinski learns that a German spy, Prof. Siletsky (Stanley Ridges), is in Warsaw with papers that name members of the Polish underground. Siletsky must be stopped, and it's up to the acting troupe to come back into the picture and save the day. To get to Prof. Siletsky and his secret papers, the players pretend to be uniformed Nazis and fool him into a trap. Benny's Turu must put on the performance of a lifetime, first as Col. Ehrhardt, the Chief of the Gestapo, and then as Prof. Siletsky himself. As one member of the troupe puts it, the fate of a country is left "in the hands of a ham."

"So they call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt? Well, well...." --Jack Benny

The movie gets funnier and more biting as it goes along, turning from its romantic-dramatic beginnings to something far more farcical. Possibly the most uproarious scene is between Benny, pretending to be Prof. Siletsky, and the real Col. Ehrhardt, played by Sig Ruman. You may remember Ruman from the Marx Bros.' "A Night at the Opera" and "A Day at the Races," here playing the same sort of officious stuffed shirt. Believe it or not, Ruman is one of the most amusing guys in the picture, and the scene is a riot.