Broadway Tries Two More Classics

Once again, a couple of classic movies are headed for remakes on the Great White Way.

One is Ernst Lubitsch's sparkling To Be or Not to Be, about a Polish theater troupe dealing with the Nazi takeover during World War II. Lubitsch made the sophisticated comedy in 1942 with Carole Lombard and Jack Benny. Another gifted director - Mel Brooks - remade it in 1983, taking the Benny part for himself and casting his lovely wife, the late Anne Bancroft opposite.

To Be Or Not to Be seems a natural for the stage -- nearly every scene takes place in a theater. It's a little harder to see how Stanley Kramer's more dated Guess Who's Coming to Dinner will fare on Broadway.

The domestic drama will adapt well physically to the stage - the question is whether a drama about an interracial couple will work the way it did for Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier in 1967. The turn-about remake Guess Who in 2005 (about a black daughter bringing her white boyfriend home to her parents) did not fare well in the theaters. We'll see.