To Be Or Not To Be

This film is not a story about Hamlet although the story about Hamlet appear in the film or rather his famous soliloquy and other phrases from Shakespeare's plays.

Instead the film starts with a panorama over Warsaw before WWII and the invasion of Poland, with a speaker voice informing us about some of the things we see.
All of a sudden people stop, looking either terrified or extremely surprised. What is it?
It's Adolf Hitler, wandering the streets in Warsaw all by himself, without any other military or escort. How is this possible?

It's possible through the fact that a theatre group is rehearsing a satire about 'Der Führer' and the actor doing him - Bronski (Tom Dugan) - is questioned concerning his resemblance, whereby he leaves the theatre, walking the streets of Warsaw, "like an ordinary Führer". Unfortunately for him, a young girl approaches him, asking for the autograph of "Mr Bronski".
We get to meet more members of this touring theatre company and not least the always fighting couple Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) and his wife Maria (Carole Lombard, who died in a plane crash two months before the première of the film).

They perform 'Hamlet' and Bronski and his colleague Greenberg (Felix Bressart) are both tired of only doing small roles, they want to be in the spotlight - where Tura is. Greenberg says he always wanted to do Shylock ('The Merchant of Venice') and his monologue "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases...". He will be given the chance to do the role but not on stage.

Maria Tura has received a bouquet of flowers from a handsome young pilot - Sobinski (Robert Stack) - and he comes to her dressing room, leaving the stalls during Josef Tura's Hamlet-monologue. Before anything happens Sobinski has to leave for an assignment as they are reached by the message that Hitler-Germany has occupied Poland. In a PUB he meets a professor by the name of Siletsky (Stanley Ridges), who he suspects being a Nazi allied although he pretends being the professor of the young men now being engaged in the war.
Sobinski gets a message through to Maria who will pass it on but Siletsky invites her to dine with him, hoping to win her over on 'his side' in order to use her as a spy for the Nazis.
Maria Tura returns home to think it over and on the same time she contacts the theatre group in order to find a way to get hold of the list over the names of the Polish pilots, Siletsky is going to deliver to a certain Col. Erhardt (Sig Ruman).
They decide to lure Siletsky by disguising themselves as nazi's, knocking on his door inviting him to a Gestapo headquarter. This headquarter is the theatre, remade and there Joseph Tura awaits him pretending to be Erhardt (as Siletsky doesn't know what he looks like). Tura gives himself away but when Siletsky tries to flee he is shot by Sobinski.
From now on the actors are forced to do different roles in order to save the pilots and their families and help the resistance movement. They need to be both Hitler and many others and Greenberg gets to recite Shylock's monologue. Tura takes on the role as professor Siletsky.
Of course everything ends well.

This is a typical screwball comedy with a lof of quick cue's from the different characters and a rather rapidly told story, although not so rapid that we can't follow the different movements in the film.
We've both seen this film before and even if films making fun of Hitler and 'The Third Reich' are legio, it has quite a lof of charm, not least thanks to the fact that it's made in a way where we, as viewers, continuously ask ourselves if they will be in time for this or that, be able to fool the nazi's with their acting etc etc.
Most actors are very good and they are among those being known for their performances in this kind of comedies. This goes of course not least for Carole Lombard.
She was actually, a time during the 1930's, the best payed actress in Hollywood, earning 500 000$ per year, five times more than the President of the USA at the time.
As noted above she died not long after the making of this film in a plane crash, after having participated in a war bond rally.

(Photo Carole Lombard/Maria Tura and Jack Benny/Joseph Tura copied from: http://images.telerama.fr/medias/2010/08/media_59085/cette-semaine-lubitsch-a-paris-peplum-a-arles-et-les-caraibes-a-douarnenez,M41285.jpg)

(Photo Tom Dugan/Bronski/Hitler copied from: http://louvreuse.net/images/stories/simidor/tobeornottobe_01.jpg)
(Photo Felix Bressart/Greenberg copied from: http://images.telerama.fr/medias/2009/11/media_49258/revision-de-classique-to-be-or-not-to-be-d-ernst-lubitsch-2,M29350.jpg)