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Podcast: The Projection Booth Podcast
Episode: Episode 399: To Be or Not To Be (1942)
Description: We conclude our discussion about Ernst Lubitsch with a discussion of his 1942 film To Be or Not To Be, the story of Joseph and Maria Tura (Jack Benny and Carole Lombard), two actors in Poland who are in a current run of Shakespeare’s Hamlet though working on a new play called Gestapo. The new play never happens on stage but they’re able to act it out in real life after Poland falls to the Nazis. The film is one of the first films to openly lampoon Nazis, made in a time before Pearl Harbor -- though released afterward -- i...