Carole Lombard was an American actress. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Lombard 23rd on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Ninotchka is a 1939 American romantic comedy film made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by producer and director Ernst Lubitsch and starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas. It was written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch, based on a story by Melchior Lengyel. Ninotchka marked the first comedy role for Garbo, and her penultimate film; she received her third and final Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1990, Ninotchka was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2011, Time also included the film on the magazine's list of "All-Time 100 Movies".
The Great Dictator is a 1940 American anti-fascist, political satire, and black comedy film written, directed, produced, scored by, and starring British filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. Having been the only Hollywood filmmaker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, Chaplin made this his first true sound film.
My Man Godfrey is a 1936 American screwball comedy film directed by Gregory La Cava and starring William Powell and Carole Lombard, who had been briefly married years before appearing together in the film. The screenplay for My Man Godfrey was written by Morrie Ryskind and Eric S. Hatch, with uncredited contributions by La Cava, based on Hatch's 1935 novel, 1101 Park Avenue. The story concerns a socialite who hires a derelict to be her family's butler, and then falls in love with him.
The Producers is a 1967 American satirical black comedy film. It was written and directed by Mel Brooks, and stars Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn, and Kenneth Mars. The film is about a con artist theater producer and his accountant who scheme to get rich by fraudulently overselling interests in a stage musical designed to fail. To this end, they find a playscript celebrating Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and bring it to the stage. Because of this theme, The Producers was controversial from the start, and received mixed reviews. It became a cult film, and found a more positive critical reception later.
The Shop Around the Corner is a 1940 American romantic comedy-drama film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart and Frank Morgan. The screenplay was written by Samson Raphaelson based on the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László. Eschewing regional politics in the years leading up to World War II, the film is about two employees at a leathergoods shop in Budapest who can barely stand each other, not realizing they are falling in love as anonymous correspondents through their letters.
Twentieth Century is a 1934 American pre-Code screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Barrymore, Carole Lombard, Walter Connolly, and Roscoe Karns. Much of the film is set on the 20th Century Limited train as it travels from Chicago to New York City. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur adapted their 1932 Broadway play of the same name—itself based on the unproduced play Napoleon of Broadway by Charles Bruce Millholland—with uncredited contributions from Gene Fowler and Preston Sturges.
Nothing Sacred is a 1937 American Technicolor screwball comedy film directed by William A. Wellman, produced by David O. Selznick, and starring Carole Lombard and Fredric March with a supporting cast featuring Charles Winninger and Walter Connolly. Ben Hecht was credited with the screenplay based on the 1937 story "Letter to the Editor" by James H. Street, and an array of additional writers, including Ring Lardner Jr., Budd Schulberg, Dorothy Parker, Sidney Howard, Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman and Robert Carson made uncredited contributions.
Siegfried Carl Alban Rumann, billed as Sig Ruman and Sig Rumann, was a German-American character actor known for his portrayals of pompous and often stereotypically Teutonic officials or villains in more than 100 films.
Confessions of a Nazi Spy is a 1939 American spy political thriller film directed by Anatole Litvak for Warner Bros. It was the first explicitly anti-Nazi film to be produced by a major Hollywood studio, being released in May 1939, four months before the beginning of World War II, and two and a half years before the United States' official entry into the war.
To Be or Not to Be is a 1983 American war comedy film directed by Alan Johnson, produced by Mel Brooks, and starring Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Tim Matheson, Charles Durning, Christopher Lloyd, and José Ferrer. The screenplay was written by Ronny Graham and Thomas Meehan, based on the original story by Melchior Lengyel, Ernst Lubitsch and Edwin Justus Mayer. The film is a remake of the 1942 film of the same name.
Ludwig Donath, was an Austrian actor who appeared in many American films.
Rudolph Anders was a German character actor who came to the United States after the rise of Hitler, and appeared in numerous American films in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
The Tin Drum is a 1979 internationally co-produced magical realistic dark comedy anti-war film adaptation of Günter Grass's novel of the same name, directed by Volker Schlöndorff from a screenplay co-written by Schlöndorff, Jean-Claude Carrière, and Franz Seitz. It stars Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler, Katharina Thalbach, Daniel Olbrychski, and Charles Aznavour, with David Bennent in the lead role of Oskar Matzerath, a young boy who willfully arrests his own physical development and remains in the body of a child even as he enters adulthood.
Richard Ryen was a Hungarian-born actor who was expelled from Germany by the Nazis prior to World War II.
Star Spangled Rhythm is a 1942 American all-star cast musical film made by Paramount Pictures during World War II as a morale booster. Many of the Hollywood studios produced such films during the war, with the intent of entertaining the troops overseas and civilians back home and to encourage fundraising – as well as to show the studios' patriotism. This film was also the first released by Paramount to be shown for 8 weeks.
None Shall Escape is a 1944 war film. Even though the film was made during World War II, the setting is a post-war Nuremberg-style war crimes trial. Alexander Knox plays Wilhelm Grimm, a Nazi officer who is on trial, and the story unfolds through the eyes of several witnesses, including a Catholic priest, Father Warecki, Grimm's brother Karl and Marja Pacierkowski, a woman to whom he was once engaged.
Martin Kosleck was a German film actor. Like many other German actors, he fled when the Nazis came to power. Inspired by his deep hatred of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, Kosleck made a career in Hollywood playing villainous Nazis in films.
To Be or Not to Be is a play written by Nick Whitby, based on the 1942 film To Be or Not to Be. The play, described as a "black comedy" was produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club, and ran on Broadway in 2008.
Hitler's Madman is a 1943 World War II drama directed by Douglas Sirk. It is a fictionalized account of the 1942 assassination of Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich and the resulting Lidice massacre, which the Germans committed as revenge. The film stars Patricia Morison and Alan Curtis and features John Carradine as Reinhard Heydrich. Sirk intended the film to function more as a documentary, but after Louis B. Mayer acquired the film in February 1943, he required reshoots to increase the drama. According to TCM, “Added material included Heydrich's deathbed scene with "Himmler" and university scenes featuring M-G-M starlets, including Ava Gardner.”
