A True Classic in Every Respect. Yes, Jack Benny Can Act!

Rating: 10/10 (24 January 2014)

I ran into this little film on TCM and spent a good hour finding a reasonably-priced copy on the Internet (WB-2005 slightly used). The Mel Brooks 1983 remake is not as good as the Lubitch 1942 original. A poor Jewish thespian troupe in Poland struggles to continue it's meager livelihood by producing plays, but The Nazis take over Poland and blow up the entire neighborhood. A brilliant mixture of comedy, satire, and melodrama which includes a love triangle between "ham" actor Josef Tura (Jack Benny) his actress wife Maria Tura (Carole Lombard) and a Polish RAF flier (Robert Stack). The classic line: "Tura is doing on stage what Hitler is doing to Poland". Throw in a fanatically-crazy Nazi spy, stupid, bumbling Germans and a bit of cloak-and-dagger action and you have quite a unique production. Probably the inspiration for "Hogan's Heroes" decades later. While the real Hitler is waiting for the play to begin, the fake Hitler causes a riot, and the entire madcap cast hijacks the "Fuhrer's" car and airplane and escapes to Scotland. It's both a screwball comedy and a serious comment on the Nazi menace, as it was filmed in 1941, during the war. For the full (and complicated) plot synopsis, go to TCM.com and "Google" the title. Jack Benny plays his finest movie role of all time and it is Carole Lombard's last film, as she died tragically two months later in an airplane crash near Las Vegas. The running gag: Every time Tura (Jack Benny) recites Hamlet's famous "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy, somebody in the audience gets up and leaves.