To Be or Not to Be German
This evening we watched the 1942 version of Jack Benny and Carole Lombard’s film To Be or Not to Be, which actually turned out to be Lombard’s last time on screen before her tragic plane crash. The film was finished in 1941, but its release was delayed because it was too far ahead of it’s time: The US had yet to enter the war, and this film focused on Germany’s invasion of Poland. Thin ice for the stars and the studio - Lombard’s husband Clark Gable tried to talk her out of doing it.
Benny and Lombard are Polish actors who eventually get caught up in a plot to stop an informant and eventually have some run-ins with Hitler himself! The Polish band of actors (with a mix of American and British accents) repeatedly pull off playing German officers in front of a bunch of German officers… who tend to speak with German accents… though the Polish impersonators don’t shift accents… Hmm.
Luckily it’s clever and even rather funny, so who the hell cares?! But it’s another sign of just how unimportant authentic accents used to be in film work. Not so much the case these days… Throw in some good Scottish accents near the end, Carole Lombard’s elevated General American, and Jack Benny’s spot-on California/Polish/Chicago accent, and you’ve got a melting pot of accents!
