The Best Jack Benny Movie

Rating: 8/10 (30 April 2020)

Remarkable as it is, this comedy about an acting troupe that becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy was released in 1942 but filmed in 1941, before the USA entered World War II. The spy has information that would be damaging to the Polish resistance and the troupe must prevent its being delivered to the Germans. Set in Nazi-occupied Poland, the film stars Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, and it is difficult to imagine how they managed to pull it off, but critics continue to site this film as one of the best mockeries of the Nazis ever done. Lombard died in a plane crash along with her mother and twenty others returning from a war bond rally before the film was released. A 1963 remake of the film, directed by and starring Mel Brooks in the Jack Benny role, has always left me wondering why it was necessary to remake a film that was about as good as it was ever going to be the first time around.