Two Classic (and somewhat unknown) Gems

TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942) with Jack Benny and Carole Lombard Decades before Mel Brooks’ “The Producers”, Ernst Lubitsch directed this backstage comedy about Nazi-occupied Poland.  Not your typical idea for a light-hearted comedy, especially in 1942 (production hadn’t even quite finished when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor).  But Lubitsch (a German-born Jew who…