While Ernst Lubitsch’s Nazi satire To Be or Not to Be (1942) was not well-received at the time of its release, scholars and critics have embraced the !lm in the decades since its release for its erudite deconstruction of the performativity of fascism. "is essay departs from the previous literature by examining how the death of star Carole Lombard shortly before the !lm’s release may have impacted the !lm’s reception. Evidence from archival documents, including fan magazine articles and the !lm’s pressbook, illuminates how advertisements for To Be obscured the !lm’s overt politicization in favor of an “apolitical” patriotism that Lombard exempli!ed through her participation in state- sponsored defense bond rallies. "e incongruence between advertisements for To Be and the !lm’s content itself only serves to illuminate the !lm’s questions of what political entertainment should be, a debate that Hollywood industry executives hoped to suppress. Aisthesis Volume 14, 202385 !e Martyrdom of Carole Lombard and the Release of To Be or Not to Be (1942) by Sophia Podolsky A woman walks into the Gestapo headquarters from stage right, dressed in a white gown with her hair beautifully coi#ed. As the men around her argue, she makes herself known to the director, a Mr. Dobosh, by strutting into his line of sight. A$er a beat, Dobosh realizes that something is amiss, for this elegantly dressed woman was supposed to be a concentration camp detainee. "e woman insists that her out!t makes for “tremendous contrast,” primed to provoke visceral reactions from the audience. In response, Dobosh laments how the great actress Maria Tura (portrayed by the renowned Carole Lombard in her !nal !lm role) could be so “inartistic.” A$er all, Gestapo is supposed to be a “document of Nazi Germany,” and this out!t would have no place there. "is scene takes place at the beginning of Ernst Lubitsch’s World-War-II-era Nazi satire To Be or Not to Be (1942), released just a$er three months following the o%cial entry of the United States into World War II. A war e#ort the United States supported from afar took on greater signi!cance as American soldiers entered combat overseas. As both the Americans and the Nazis bolstered their cinematic propaganda apparatuses, public debate raged in Hollywood’s guilds on the best way to handle the Nazi threat in cinema (Webb 751). Coinciding with increased United States engagement with the Second World War, “an emerging patriotic decorum” enforced by both government censorship and within-industry censuring—by non-governmental regulators (the Production Code Administration, or PCA,) studios, and !lmmakers themselves—provided a hostile environment for To Be’s release (Webb 754). "e !lm’s sharp satire—Lubitsch’s Nazis are incompetent, blundering bureaucrats who prove to be no match for a group of unlikely heroes in a Warsaw-based theater troupe—was not well received by many critics (Crowther 1; Martin 15). Even in a favorable review of the !lm, Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune notes that the sociopolitical context of To Be or Not to Be’s release makes the humor set in Nazi-occupied Warsaw harder to digest than in Lubitsch’s preceding Ninotchka (1939), which was set in an at-the-time free Paris (8). In Brandon Webb’s analysis of the PCA’s treatment of anti-Nazi parody !lms during World War II, he notes that the PCA did not attempt to censor (or explicitly condone) To Be’s lampooning of Hitler (754). "e timing of the PCA’s review of To Be (dated October 10, 1941) is signi!cant considering it predates the United States’ entry into World War II (Webb 766n26). On the other hand, the !lm was “retroactively” criticized at the Hollywood Writers Mobilization’s 1943 Writers’ Congress “for failing to take Nazism seriously” (Webb 754). Conversely, the PCA attempted to block the release of the realist drama Confessions of a Nazi Spy (dir. Anatole Litvak, 1939; Lewis 11), while the 1943 Writers’ Congress hailed the !lm “as a model of anti-fascist !lmmaking” !e Martyrdom of Carole Lombard and the Release of To Be or Not to Be (1942) Aisthesis Volume 14, 202386 (Webb 751). A$er 1939, once the distribution of American !lms under Axis regimes was banned (Webb 752), within-industry support for “realistic” portrayals of Nazis increased, given these !lms need not appeal to Nazi-allied markets. Yet, satirical !lms like To Be did not enjoy these same bene!ts. To Be may have passed through industry censors, but that did little to curb the negative reactions of critics and Lubitsch’s industry compatriots. "e critical dialogue surrounding To Be mirrors conversations (including the one described previously) that occur throughout the !lm, which take on questions of what political entertainment is and should be. Within the !lm’s comedy lurks an astute and timely examination of how fascism derives its power from spectacle (Melehy 27). However, audiences looking at advertisements for To Be (which have thus far been little examined in the literature) would be prepared for patriotic entertainment in a di#erent vein. Complicating the !lm’s advertising campaign was the death of star Carole Lombard just before the !lm’s March 1942 release. On January 16, 1942, Carole Lombard and 21 others died in a plane crash on their way back to Los Angeles from a War Bond drive in Indianapolis (Motion Picture Herald 327). "ough she did not serve in a combat role, Lombard’s star persona nevertheless became synonymous with service in the months preceding her death as a !xture of state- sponsored entertainment supporting the war e#ort (“Lombard’s Tragic End” 2). "e rallies and shows that stars like Lombard highlighted during World War II were expected to be apolitical events, in the sense that these events avoided discussing speci!cs of the war in favor of boosting morale around a more general American “war e#ort.” As I will demonstrate in this essay, attempts to memorialize Lombard within press materials for To Be present the !lm as thematically analogous to these “apolitical” shows, in the process suppressing the !lm’s (perhaps controversial) arguments. Lombard’s publicized activities preceding To Be were in service of a purely pro-American (rather than an explicitly anti-Nazi or anti-Fascist) ideology. Hailed for her eager volunteerism and love of country, she headlined rallies that raised millions of dollars in defense bonds and stamps (“Lombard’s Tragic End” 2). Some of the last photographs taken of Lombard before her death depict her active on the home front: participating in a publicity campaign for stamp sales (Carruthers 26) and leading a crowd in the National Anthem (Romayne 32). "e outpouring of grief over the death of Carole Lombard in fan magazines framed her as something unprecedented for an entertainer on the home front: a war hero (“"e Movies Go…” 14). In the April 1942 edition of Photoplay, writer William French, who, by his account, had an established relationship with Lombard (357), states that it was “Lombard’s Greatest Wish” to die in service of her country. Multiple industry !gures, including Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America chairman Will Hays, referred to Lombard as Hollywood’s !rst active-duty casualty (“Hays Hails Patriotism” 38; “Lombard’s Tragic End” 2). President Roosevelt himself celebrated Lombard’s service (“Roosevelt Lauds Carole…” 15). As such, expectations for To Be, as Lombard’s last !lm, were remarkably high. "e !lm’s pressbook leans into the intrigue of the !lm being Carole Lombard's last as an aspect of why To Be was ""e Picture Everyone Wants to See" (2). Lombard receives !rst billing for the picture, above co-star Jack Benny (who arguably has a bigger role in the !lm) and the title of the !lm itself (Studio Press Book 1). Headlines for some reviews of the !lm do not mention the !lm’s title at all, focusing purely on Lombard’s involvement (i.e., Mildred Martin’s “Last Lombard Picture Opens on Stanley Screen”). "e byline-less Life review characterizes Lombard as “play-acting part of the world disaster which cost her life” (“Carole Lombard’s Last…” 63). "ough the text of the review itself is quite brief, the captions of the pictures are particularly interesting, referring to Benny and Lombard by their names rather than the names of their characters. "e result includes statements like, “Carole is nabbed by Nazi soldiers” (64), seemingly positioning this !lm as part of Lombard’s wartime service. Yet, for an audience who loved Lombard for her role boosting troop morale and raising money for an amorphous “war e#ort,” the physical scope of which did not include the American mainland, her participation in an overtly anti-Nazi !lm like To Be could be somewhat unexpected. To Be, regardless of its faith to the source text of Hamlet invoked by its title, promotes the ethos of one of Shakespeare’s most memorable quotes: “the world’s a stage” (Gemünden, "Space out of !e Martyrdom of Carole Lombard and the Release of To Be or Not to Be (1942) Aisthesis Volume 14, 202387 Joint" 64). Much of the previous literature on the !lm addresses the opening scene (before Lombard’s entrance), in which Hitler seemingly gets caught wandering the streets of Warsaw pre-invasion. "is man is not Hitler but Bronski, who is to portray Hitler in the play Gestapo at the Teatr Polski. "e audience learns of Bronski’s true identity through a &ashback to “the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin,” where a cascade of Heil Hitlers leads to Bronski exclaiming: “Heil, myself!” "is statement catalyzes a debate between the play’s director, Dobosh, and his actors, over the merits of comedy versus “realistic drama” for depicting the Nazis, one that pre-empts the contemporary critical debates surrounding the !lm. "is scene not only serves as an introduction to the dysfunctional theater troupe who are to be our heroes but also establishes the !lm’s interrogation of the performativity of fascism (and the best way to deconstruct it). "e exodus of one of Gestapo’s actors onto the streets of Warsaw subsumes these streets into the play’s set. "ough the voiceover narration situates the action in Warsaw, the establishing shots are on cookie-cutter sets di#erentiated only by names with the su%x -ski. Placing a stage actor onto this set emphasizes the purpose-built nature of the location; this is Poland through Hollywood’s machinations (Melehy 25). Adding to the spatial disorientation are the accents of the !lm’s “Poles,” which are indistinguishable from those of Americans apart from Greenberg, whose German accent indexes his “foreign” nature (McCormick 288). By establishing the un-reality of the !lm from the outset, Lubitsch emphasizes that the world is indeed a stage, laying the groundwork for his examinations of political performance (see Gemünden, "Space out of Joint" 65). In other words, farce reveals farce. Gerd Gemünden, a scholar of German exile cinema, views To Be as an “essential” text of the movement for how it encapsulates the liminality of the exile experience (Performing Resistance 81). Lubitsch was one of Hollywood’s !rst émigré directors and Hitler’s “Archetypal Jew,” “un-German” in Germany but “too German” for America (Gemünden, "Space out of Joint" 61-62). Lubitsch’s exile status informs his aesthetic decisions, including his use of “double encoding,” a practice enacted by Jews in the Weimar Republic (McCormick 297). For German Jews, the !$een-year period of the Weimar Republic was a time of great uncertainty and psychological instability borne from simmering antisemitism, leading Jewish !lmmakers like Lubitsch to suppress signi!ers of Jewish identity in their !lms behind general symbols of the “other” (ibid). According to McCormick, before To Be, Lubitsch’s last !lm with an “overtly Jewish” character was released in 1919, before Lubitsch le$ for America in the 1920s (ibid). Operating within a framework of “anticipatory self-censorship” of Jewish identity to ensure widest possible distribution and commercial success for his !lms (Rosenberg 204), Lubitsch’s Americanized Poland allows him to covertly comment on the plight of the Jews without alienating distributors (see Melehy 24). "is setting makes the emergence of Greenberg, the !lm’s sole “overtly Jewish” character (McCormick 295), as the hero of the !lm even more striking, as I will address later in this essay. Preceding the United States’ o%cial entry into World War II, a series of hearings in the United States Senate during Fall 1941 convened by Sens. Burton Wheeler and Gerald Nye attacked seventeen !lms the pair deemed “war-mongering… propaganda” (Lewis 10-11), including !e Great Dictator (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1940). "ough not explicitly mentioning Lubitsch, Senator Nye argued the problematic !lms catered to “the agenda… of foreign-born Jews” (Lewis 11), whom he alienated from the general American public. Ultimately, no sanctions resulted from these hearings, and the United States government did not overtly &ex its power over the !lm industry again until a$er the war (see Lewis). However, these hearings— and the political climate that enabled them—elucidate the !lm industry’s willingness to censor politicized messages in anti- Nazi !lms. Lubitsch’s status as a foreign-born Jew within Hollywood’s upper echelons arguably made To Be a likely target for government scrutiny, only strengthening the rationale for the !lm’s sanitized press campaign. Accordingly, the pressbook sketches the !lm’s plot in vague terms (“An exciting, romantic comedy, keyed to an ever-mounting tempo of suspense”— Studio Press Book 1) and emphasizes Lombard’s involvement above all else. “"e America which was moved with deep pride at her last magni!cently performed assignment for her country’s Defense Bond Drive” is the target audience for the !lm (Studio Press Book 2). "e pressbook argues that a !e Martyrdom of Carole Lombard and the Release of To Be or Not to Be (1942) Aisthesis Volume 14, 202388 screening of To Be would be as natural as Lombard at a defense bond rally (6). Naturally, organizers of these events could honor Lombard and help ful!ll her “un!nished business” in the war e#ort by celebrating her !nal performance in a patriotic !lm (French 406). However, the “apolitical” government wartime entertainment apparatus, which disavowed the joke “the Russian Army has the Germans by the Balkans” at a USO Camp Show (Lebovic 272), would not dare to circulate a !lm in which a Nazi colonel asserts, “What [Joseph Tura] did to Shakespeare we are doing now to Poland.” "e pressbook boasts a unique and timely tie- in for To Be: a recording of a song called "Bless 'Em All" as sung by RAF's Polish squadron in the !lm (4). "e song itself is a variant of a soldiers’ song that emerged during World War I called “Fuck ‘Em All” (Cleveland 82), a sordid title that would lead to immediate exclusion from a Camp Show. "e song as performed in the !lm echoes the !lm’s overt anti- Nazi politics, including lines like: “"ere’s one [a bomb] for old Hitler… [and] an especially big one for old Hermann G” and “We’ll never be seated till Hitler’s defeated.” In the !lm, this song serves to introduce the Polish squadron, shown gathered around the piano, laughing even in the shadow of unspeakable evil. "e pressbook volunteers three previous recordings of the song for advertisers to use in a promotional campaign for To Be, including one by Barry Wood and the Four King Sisters (4). However, the lyrics in this version (recorded in 1941) talk not about Hitler’s defeat, but about missing the comforts of home (more speci!cally, the comforts of women) as a soldier at camp. Rather than blessing the bombs on their way to Germany, this version “bless[es] all the Blondies and all the Brunettes” and chides “no ice cream or cookies for &at-footed rookies.” Where the version sung in To Be or Not to Be has a darkly humorous bite, this version has a jovial innocence (complete with cutesy complaining) untouched by the horrors of war. Highlighting this latter version of the song rather than distributing the version from the !lm bolsters the pressbook’s positioning of the !lm within the mainstream wartime entertainment Lombard was a key participant in, hiding the !lm’s subversive qualities behind palatable advertising. However, this incongruence between !lm content and press copy reinforces the signi!cance of the political statements Lubitsch makes through To Be, ultimately serving to illuminate rather than obscure the !lm’s comparatively radical nature. "e characters of Maria Tura (as portrayed by Lombard) and Lombard herself share many similarities: both line the pages of fan magazines, are married to famous actors (Joseph Tura—portrayed by Jack Benny—and Clark Gable, respectively), and are widely regaled for their feminine wit and charm. In the eyes of the public, Carole Lombard could do no wrong. In the fan magazine Screenland, Romayne, director Wesley Ruggles’ secretary, memorialized Lombard as the kind, hard-working, and generous standard of comparison for any other actress and a devoted wife (86). She worked the !elds and “hunt[ed] like a man” (Carruthers 490). Maria Tura’s introduction, on the other hand, establishes her as vain and appearance-obsessed; why else would she insist on wearing an elegant gown to play the role of a concentration camp detainee in Gestapo? Fans of Lombard &ocking to theaters to see their idol in all her glory for the !nal time would likely be unsatis!ed by the character of Maria Tura. Yet, her &awed character provides a crucial vehicle for Lubitsch’s deconstruction of patriotic entertainment. "rough the character of Maria Tura, Lombard enacts a parody of the conception of the secret- country-girl starlet, implicating Lombard’s real- life public persona. As she entertains the &irtation of the handsome young pilot Lieutenant Sobinski, he infers that she must want to run away to live a simple life with him. A$er all, the fan magazines that he has read at length talk about how Tura is a farm girl at heart. However, when Sobinski vocalizes what he sees as Tura’s desires to her, she seems confused and even a bit amused, though news of Hitler’s invasion of Poland cuts her o# before she can react. "e pressbook does not let on that To Be is not a memorial to Lombard’s outstanding character. "rough Sobinski’s relationship with Maria Tura, as facilitated through fan magazines, Lubitsch draws attention to the role that stars play in the construction of national identity, especially pertinent during wartime. "ough there is no physical evidence of a print campaign within the !lm hailing Maria Tura’s patriotic bona !des like there was for Lombard, Tura’s star persona nevertheless bolsters the war e#ort (though unbeknownst to her). As the Polish Squadron pilots give messages for home to !e Martyrdom of Carole Lombard and the Release of To Be or Not to Be (1942) Aisthesis Volume 14, 202389 Professor Siletsky, presumably a friend of the Warsaw Underground, Sobinski passes a note with “to be or not to be” on it. To Sobinski’s shock, Siletsky expresses a lack of familiarity with Maria Tura, which Sobinski reasons would be unfathomable for any true Pole. As such, Tura’s connection with Polish national identity identi!es Siletsky as an outsider, prompting Sobinski to return to Poland to thwart Siletsky and setting o# a chain of events leading to Siletsky’s death. Key to the mythmaking surrounding Lombard a$er her death were the dynamics of her relationship with her husband Clark Gable, a massive star himself. In the fan magazine Modern Screen (April 1942), a memorial to Lombard functions as her biography through the lens of her relationship with Gable. Lombard pre-Gable was a typical starlet (closer to Maria Tura), who frequented all the best parties and enjoyed the trappings of stardom (Carruthers 441). Gable is represented as a paternalistic !gure in Lombard’s life; by multiple accounts she called him “pappy” (Carruthers 490; Romayne 86). Under Gable’s tutelage, she learned the joys of a modest country life, and “overnight, the lusty, swearing, striding, arrogant girl became a woman” (489). In contrast, much of the humor of To Be stems from Joseph’s inability to control his wife’s antics. "is man is not Clark Gable reproduced in narrative form, a man capable of bringing his wife down to Earth from the high of stardom. "ough Sobinski references Maria’s interviews with fan magazines that demonstrate a desire for a simple life, Joseph is not the type of man who can hold her accountable like a Gable-esque !gure could. Even war cannot humble Maria; the end of the !lm illustrates a return to the status quo (albeit in a new locale), as Maria invites a new man into her dressing room while Joseph attempts in vain to complete his “To Be or Not to Be” monologue uninterrupted. As characters, neither Joseph nor Maria Tura meet the viewing publics’ expectations for how stars of the period should act, those standards established by Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, that is. "e vain Joseph and the disloyal Maria remain morally ambiguous to the end (Webb 755). "e characterization of the Turas bolsters the radical nature of the !lm; To Be or Not to Be bucked convention by making its protagonists &awed (ibid). While this decision enhances the !lm’s narrative complexity, it further undermines the pressbook’s positioning of the !lm as an uncomplicated morale-booster. One of the pressbook’s more astounding claims is that Jack Benny is “playing straight” in his portrayal of Joseph Tura. “No Zany Antics, No Slapstick For Hero In Lubitsch's ‘To Be Or Not To Be’” boasts the title of a publicity piece included in the pressbook (15). "is assertion does not ring true with some of Joseph Tura’s de!ning gags in the !lm; as critic Mildred Martin remarks, “Benny, though presumably playing straight, is still Benny” (15). Joseph’s reaction to the interruption of his monologuing as Hamlet by Lieutenant Sobinski on his way to Maria’s dressing room, Joseph discovering Lieutenant Sobinski curled up in bed, Joseph shaving the face of a Nazi spy to boost the credibility of his disguise: all these moments have an irreverent humor that depends on Jack Benny’s physicality. To characterize Joseph Tura as the “hero” of To Be also ignores how his delusions of grandeur seem to prevent him from fully digesting the gravity of his situation. As Sobinski and Maria discuss the implications of Nazi spy Professor Siletsky giving up RAF pilots' family members, Joseph cannot look past his jealousy of Sobinski and reframes the discussion in the context of their domestic con&ict. When preparing to impersonate Siletsky, Joseph remarks to his wife that the scene "has a lot of dynamite.” Earlier in the !lm, as Siletsky sees through Joseph's Gestapo o%cer facade and starts shooting in the theater, Joseph grabs his back as if he has been shot on stage. Melehy argues that Jack Benny, under Lubitsch’s direction, perfectly embodies his role of a “ham” actor whose exaggerated a#ect blurs onstage and o#stage divides (23). In this sense, he asserts that the character of Joseph Tura “calls attention to the fact that one is viewing a simulation” (ibid). As such, Benny’s performance provides another mechanism for Lubitsch to challenge his audience to consider power as performance, which is accordingly ignored by the !lm’s press materials. For someone who many scholars argue is one of To Be’s key !gures (see Bronfen, Gemünden, McCormick), Greenberg, portrayed by German Jewish character actor Felix Bressart, receives little attention in the pressbook, with publicity on Bressart instead spotlighting his proli!c cheese- eating and lack of mustache (14-5). Greenberg occupies many roles throughout the !lm: a bit-part actor (like Lubitsch himself at the beginning of his career—Oya 100), a stand-in for Lubitsch, both in !e Martyrdom of Carole Lombard and the Release of To Be or Not to Be (1942) Aisthesis Volume 14, 202390 terms of biographical similarities and in his repeated insistence of the importance of a “good laugh,” and an unexpected hero. "roughout the !lm, Greenberg declares his a%nity with Shylock, the Jewish villain of !e Merchant of Venice, and recites one of the character’s monologues at three separate points. "e last time he recites this monologue is to a parade of Nazis; the troupe’s escape from the occupied Teatr Polski depends on their ability to disrupt the Nazis’ order by both blending in and standing out. Greenberg’s recitation of the monologue, his “coming out” as a Jew (McCormick 299), allows for the rest of the troupe to carry out their roles in facilitating their plot. He is taken away by two “Nazis,” a$er which “Hitler” (Bronski) has an excuse to leave the unsecure building. Ironically, !e Merchant of Venice, where this monologue originates, was removed from the Camp Show circuit that provided entertainment to soldiers abroad “for fear it would insult Jews” (Lebovic 278). "e reappropriation of this play within To Be by Lubitsch as enacted by Felix Bressart, the collective act of two German Jews (McCormick 297), thus contributes to the !lm’s overt (and arguably radical) politicization. "e last time Greenberg appears on screen is when he is detained; he is not shown with the rest of the troupe upon their arrival in Scotland. All the credit for the troupe’s escape goes to Joseph Tura, who is lauded by reporters as “the real hero in this amazing play” and thanks his colleagues for what “little” they did. "is dialogue counters what viewers saw just minutes before, a disjunction between words and images that draws attention to how powerful entities (in this case, the troupe’s leading man) manipulate images and narratives to best suit their purposes. We, as viewers, know not to trust Tura’s words based on the evidence of Greenberg’s contribution, as this !lm has taught us to see through constructions including Maria Tura’s public image and the might of fascism. However, this sequence, in the shadow of Carole Lombard’s death, also suggests questions of who gets memorialized for their sacri!ce, and why? Someone with big star power with legions of fans, a Joseph Tura or a Carole Lombard, will naturally garner larger tributes than a bit actor of marginalized identity like Greenberg. Yet, how can we reconcile this reality with the fact that Greenberg’s contributions were arguably larger than Joseph Tura’s, but Tura was allowed to take sole credit? "ough To Be or Not to Be was released on schedule in March 1942 despite rumors of delays a$er Carole Lombard’s death (“UA Scrapping Entire…” 2), the pressbook and associated advertising copy for To Be or Not to Be were reinvented (ibid). "e original “ad campaign was along humorous lines” while the extant pressbook and ads “eliminate all humor [and] are completely digni!ed” (ibid). "e mismatch between !lm and pressbook warrants the question: what would the publicity campaign for To Be look like had Lombard not died before the !lm’s release? Was the initial “humorous” campaign one that leaned into the !lm’s incendiary Nazi satire? Would the publicity team still err on the side of ino#ensive patriotism if they did not have to walk the !ne line of “tastefulness” in paying their respects to Lombard? Would they still pretend that Jack Benny plays Joseph Tura “straight?” Or would To Be be too radical for its circumstances even out of the shadow of the war- attributed death of its star, a !lm whose only hope for box o%ce success would reside in the promises of an innocuous ad campaign? Even if, as Mildred Martin states, what “casts a pall” over the !lm is not Lombard’s death but the !lm’s subject matter itself (15), Lombard’s martyrdom and the advertisement for To Be or Not to Be remain inextricably linked. !e Martyrdom of Carole Lombard and the Release of To Be or Not to Be (1942) Aisthesis Volume 14, 2023 Works Cited “Airplane Crash Kills Lombard and 21 Others.” Motion Picture Herald. 24 January 1942, p. 55. Barnes, Howard, "On "e Screen: "To Be or Not To Be,"—Rivolt Carole Lombard."'New York Herald Tribune, 7 March 1942, p. 8.' Barry Wood & "e King Sisters. “Bless ‘Em All.” Tell Me Pretty Maiden/Bless 'Em All, Victor, 1941. Bronfen, Elisabeth. “Lubitsch’s War: Comedy as Political Ploy in To Be or Not to Be.” Lubitsch Can’t Wait: A !eoretical Examination, edited by Mladen Dolar et al., Columbia University Press, 2014, pp. 131–50. “Carole Lombard’s Last Film: To Be or Not to Be.” Life, 9 March 1942, pp. 63-66. Carruthers, Daphne, “Good-Bye, Carole.” Modern Screen, April 1942, pp. 441-2, 489-91. Cleveland, Les. "Soldiers' Songs: "e Folklore of the Powerless." New York Folklore, vol. 11, no. 1, 1985, pp. 79-97. Crowther, Bosley, “"e Screen.” !e New York Times, 7 March 1942. French, William, “Lombard’s Greatest Wish.” Photoplay, April 1942, pp. 357, 406. Gemünden, Gerd. “Performing Resistance, Resisting Performance.” Continental Strangers: German Exile Cinema, 1933-1951. Columbia University Press, 2014, pp. 77-101. Gemünden, Gerd. “Space out of Joint: Ernst Lubitsch’s ‘To Be or Not to Be.’” New German Critique, no. 89, 2003, p. 59. “Hays Hails Patriotism: He Says Carole Lombard Gave Life in Service of America.” New York Times, 18 January 1942, p. 38. Lebovic, Sam. “‘A Breath from Home’: Soldier Entertainment and the Nationalist Politics of Pop Culture during World War II.” Journal of Social History, vol. 47, no. 2, Dec. 2013, pp. 263–96. Lewis, Jon. “‘We Do Not Ask You to Condone "is’: How the Blacklist Saved Hollywood.” Cinema Journal, vol. 39, no. 2, Winter 2000, pp. 3–30. “Lombard’s Tragic End; Saga of Small Town Girl Who Rose to Screen Heights.” Variety, 21 January 1942, p. 2. Martin, Mildred, “Last Lombard Picture Opens on Stanley Screen.” !e Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 March 1942, p. 15. McCormick, Rick. “Coming out as Jewish: To Be or Not to Be, 1942.” Sex, Politics, and Comedy: !e Transnational Cinema of Ernst Lubitsch, Indiana University Press, 2020, pp. 282–307. Melehy, Hassan. “Lubitsch’s “To Be or Not to Be”: "e Question of Simulation in Cinema.” Film Criticism, vol. 26, no. 2, Winter, 2001-2002, pp. 19-40. Oya, Reiko. “"e Comedy of Hamlet in Nazi- Occupied Warsaw: An Exploration of Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942).” Shakespeare Survey 72: Volume 72: Shakespeare and War, edited by Emma Smith, vol. 72, Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 98–111. Romayne, “A Letter to Heaven” Screenland, April 1942, pp. 32-33, 86. “Roosevelt Lauds Carole Lombard: In Message of Condolence to Gable He Hails Service of Actress to Nation.” New York Times. 20 January 1942, p. 15. Rosenberg, Joel. “"e Good, the Bad, and the Fatal: Ben Urwand on the Hollywood Moguls and Hitler.” Jewish Film & New Media, vol. 1, no. 2, 2013, pp. 190-214. Studio Press Book, To Be or Not to Be. “"e Movies Go to War!” Movieland, February 1943, pp. 13-14. 91 !e Martyrdom of Carole Lombard and the Release of To Be or Not to Be (1942) Aisthesis Volume 14, 2023 To Be or Not to Be. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, performances by Carole Lombard and Jack Benny, United Artists, 1942. “UA Scrapping Entire Ad Campaign on ‘To Be’ in View of Lombard Tragedy.” Variety, 21 January 1942, p. 2. Webb, Brandon. “‘Hitler Must Be Laughed At!’: "e PCA, Propaganda and the Perils of Parody During Wartime.”' Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, vol. 39, no. 4, 2019, pp. 749–67. 92