Carole Lombard makes rapid dialogue sound like quick thinking, and never lets elegance get in the way of being ridiculous. Her assurance is a chief pleasure of To Be or Not to Be, where comedy has to survive beside danger.
Fi1m perspective
In To Be or Not to Be (1942), Carole Lombard gives a romantic exchange the air of a negotiation she has prepared for. As Maria Tura, she meets male self-importance without letting it set the pace. We laughed at the certainty in her timing: she seems to have considered the reply before the man has made it. The pleasure is in watching someone think quickly, rather than merely hearing someone speak quickly. It is a substantial comic gift, and Ernst Lubitsch knows what to do with it.
Her breakthrough came opposite John Barrymore in Howard Hawks's Twentieth Century (1934), after silent films and Mack Sennett comedy shorts. The screwball roles of the mid-to-late 1930s made use of fast speech, physical comedy and a willingness to look absurd without giving up her elegance. My Man Godfrey (1936), with William Powell, and Nothing Sacred (1937) are central to that stretch. These parts gave her more to do than stand looking composed while other people supplied the jokes. Her madcap heiresses and quick-witted women could determine how fast a scene moved.
She also took dramatic roles, while the comedies included Alfred Hitchcock's marital farce Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), in which she played Ann. The work with Lubitsch calls on the more restrained side of her acting. Maria needs enough confidence to keep the romance convincing when the film's tone changes. Lombard supplies it without making those shifts look like hard work.
Jack Benny and Lombard give To Be or Not to Be its comic assurance, and her role as a counterweight to the men is essential. The romantic comedy never feels like something inserted to make the danger easier to bear. Its early stretches do take too long to find their pace, which even timing this secure cannot entirely repair. For Lombard, start here, with a little patience for the opening.
Biography
Carole Lombard (born Jane Alice Peters) was an American actress. She was born on 6 October 1908 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and died on 16 January 1942 near Las Vegas, Nevada.
She began her screen career as a child in A Perfect Crime (1921) and appeared in short comedies for Mack Sennett before signing with Paramount Pictures. Lombard became known for leading roles in screwball comedies including Twentieth Century (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936) and Nothing Sacred (1937). She also starred as Maria Tura in Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942), her final film.
Lombard was married to actor William Powell from 1931 to 1933 and to Clark Gable from 1939 until her death. She was one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood in the late 1930s.
