The Martyrdom of Carole Lombard and the Release of To Be or Not to Be (1942)
Sophia Podolsky
Vanderbilt University
Keywords: Ernst Lubitsch, Carole Lombard, Celebrity studies, World War II, Patriotic entertainment, Fan culture
Abstract
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 film in the decades since its release for its erudite deconstruction of the performativity of fascism. This essay departs from the previous literature by examining how the death of star Carole Lombard shortly before the film’s release may have impacted the film’s reception. Evidence from archival documents, including fan magazine articles and the film’s pressbook, illuminates how advertisements for To Be obscured the film’s overt politicization in favor of an “apolitical” patriotism that Lombard exemplified through her participation in state-sponsored defense bond rallies. The incongruence between advertisements for To Be and the film’s content itself only serves to illuminate the film’s questions of what political entertainment should be, a debate that Hollywood industry executives hoped to suppress.
