To Be or Not To Be **** (1983, Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Tim Matheson, Charles Durning, José Ferrer, James Haake, George Gaynes, Christopher Lloyd) – Classic Movie Review 1,944

The surprisingly entertaining and successful 1983 remake of the classic 1942 wartime comedy drama To Be or Not To Be stars Mel Brooks and his wife Anne Bancroft.

Director Alan Johnson’s surprisingly entertaining and successful 1983 remake of the classic 1942 Jack Benny-Carole Lombard World War Two wartime comedy drama To Be or Not To Be stars Mel Brooks and his wife Anne Bancroft. It is the first time they star-teamed together and proves an ideal vehicle for them. Produced by Brooks for his company Brooksfilms, this is his favourite of his Brooksfilms movies.

They play the ham actor/ manager Frederick Bronski and his wife Anna, who lead a Polish acting troop in an attempt to stop the Nazis from gaining vital information from a traitor spy and help the Polish underground.

With a screenplay by Thomas Meehan and Ronny Graham based pretty faithfully and respectfully on the original 1942  by Edwin Justus Mayer, this wartime comedy is lots of fun, some of it serious fun. Some of the dialogue is taken word-for-word from the original.

It provides an ideal opportunity for allows Brooks to lampoon Hitler and the Nazis in his inimitable way, as heartfelt as it is both zany and funny. There is a good-hearted spirit and a nice sense of fun, as well as many big laughs, along with a couple of pauses for well-judged, poignant moments. Of course the piece has long since lost it topicality but not the potency of its important messages.

It rousingly played by the excellent, manically performing stars and the delicious supporting cast headed by Tim Matheson, Charles Durning, José Ferrer, James Haake, George Gaynes, Christopher Lloyd, George Wyner, Jack Riley, Lewis J Stalden, Ronny Graham, and Estelle Reiner. Charles Durning, who plays SS Colonel Erhardt, was Oscar nominated as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, though does not appear in the first hour of the film.

This is also important as the first Hollywood studio film explicitly to refer to the inclusion of gay men in the groups condemned to the Nazi death camps. The Germans used pink triangles to identify ‘sexual deviants’, predominantly homosexuals.

Brooks served as a corporal in the US army in North Africa in World War Two, defusing land mines before the infantry moved in. A graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944. Charles Durning was also a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, and was at the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald.

Most of the main character names are altered from the 1942 film. Brooks plays the Jack Benny role of Joseph Tura and the Tom Dugan role of Frederick Bronski combined into the single character of Frederick Bronski. Bancroft plays the Carole Lombard role changed from Maria Tura to Anna Bronski. Anna’s dresser has been replaced with Sasha (James Haake), to address the persecution of gay people under the Nazis. And Matheson plays the Robert Stack part changed from Stanislav Sobinski to Andrei Sobinski.

A street sign reads Kubelski Avenue. Jack Benny’s real name is Benny Kubelski.

In their first on-screen pairing. Brooks and Bancroft perform a lively song-and-dance number singing the classic 1925  jazz tune ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ in Polish as the film’s opening sequence. 

Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft were married from 1964 until Bancroft’s death in 2005. This is the only movie they star together in, appearing as husband and wife. Bancroft made a cameo appearance as herself in Silent Movie (1976), in which she dances a tango with Brooks, and appears as a gypsy woman in Brooks’s Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995). Bancroft stars in two movies produced by Brooks: The Elephant Man (1980) and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987).

Release date: December 16, 1983.

Runtime: 107 minutes.

The cast

The cast are Mel Brooks as Frederick Bronski Anne Bancroft as Anna Bronski, Charles Durning as SS Colonel Erhardt, Christopher Lloyd as SS Captain Schultz, Tim Matheson as Lieutenant Andrei Sobinski, José Ferrer as Professor Siletski, Ronny Graham as Sondheim, Stage Manager, Estelle Reiner as Gruba, Jack Riley as Dobish, Lewis J. Stadlen as Lupinsky, George Gaynes as Ravitch, George Wyner as Ratkowski, Earl Boen as Dr Boyarski, Ivor Barry as General Hobbs, William Glover as Major Cunningham, James Haake as Sasha, Marley Sims as Rifka, Max Brooks as Rifka’s son, Larry Rosenberg as Rifka’s husband, Milt Jamin as Gestapo soldier, Wolf Muser as desk sergeant, Henry Brandon as Nazi officer, Tucker Smith as Klotski’s Klown, Curt Lowens as airport officer, Terence Marsh as startled British officer, Paul Ratliff as naval officer, Scott Beach as Narrator.

Alan Johnson (February 18, 1937 – July 7, 2018) was a three-time Emmy Award-winning American choreographer, best known for his work on Mel Brooks films. He choreographed musical numbers in several Brooks films, including ‘Springtime for Hitler’ number in The Producers, the Spanish Inquisition dance number in History of the World, Part I and ‘Puttin’ On the Ritz’ in Young Frankenstein. 

Estelle Reiner, who plays Gruba the wardrobe lady, was the wife of Mel Brooks’s best friend Carl Reiner and the mother of Rob Reiner, Lucas Reiner and Annie Reiner. In 1989’s When Harry Met Sally…, director Rob Reiner cast his mother as a customer in a scene at Katz’s Delicatessen. Approached by a waitress after Meg Ryan finishes faking a very public orgasm, Estelle Reiner says: ‘I’ll have what she’s having’. 

Anne Bancroft (born Anna Maria Louisa Italiano; September 17, 1931 – June 6, 2005)

Anne Bancroft (Anna Maria Louisa Italiano) died from uterine cancer on June 6 2005, aged 73. Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks’s son Max Brooks was born on May 22, 1972, and appears in the film as as Rifka’s son.

Mel Brooks (Melvin James Kaminsky; born June 28, 1926)

Mel Brooks celebrated his 100th birthday on 28 June 2026.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1,944

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