From Ernst Lubitsch's experiences in Sophien Gymnasium (high school) theater, he decided to leave school at the age of sixteen and turn to the stage. He had to compromise with his father and keep the account books for the family tailor business, while he pursued acting in cabarets and music halls at night.
In 1911 he joined the Deutsches Theater of famous director/producer/impresario Max Reinhardt. He was able to move up to leading acting roles in a short time. He took an extra job as a handyman while learning silent film acting at Berlin's Bioscope film studios. The next year he launched a film career by appearing in a series of comedies dealing with traditional ethnic Jewish slice-of- life fare. Finding great success in these character roles, Lubitsch turned to broader comedy, then embarked on writing and directing his own films beginning in 1914.
His breakthrough film came in 1918 with Die Augen der Mummie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy), a tragedy starring future Hollywood star Pola Negri. Also that year he made Carmen, again with Negri, a film that was commercially successful on the international level. His work already characterized his genius for catching the eye as well as the ear in film and not only comedy but historical drama.
The year 1919 found Lubitsch with seven films to direct, the two standouts being his lavish Madame DuBarry (1919) with two of his favorite actors Negri again and Emil Jannings, and, especially, his witty parody of the American upper crust, Die Austernprinzessin (The Oyster Princess). "Princess" was the threshold of the trademark Lubitisch style - or the 'Lubitsch Touch', as it became known: sophisticated humor embedded in inspired staging that economically presented a visual synopsis of storyline, scenes, and characters.
World notice brought him to the shores of America to promote his film Das Weib des Pharao (The Loves of Pharaoh) in 1922 and become acquainted with the US thriving film industry. He returned for good to direct new friend and influential star Mary Pickford in his first American hit, Rosita (1923). The Marriage Circle (1924) began the unprecedented run of sophisticated films that mirrored the American scene (though always relocated to foreign or imaginary lands) and all its skewed panorama of the human condition. T
here was a smooth transition between his silent films for Warner Bros. and the sound movies - usually - at Paramount, now embellished with the flow of speech of Hollywood's greats lending personal nuances to continually heighten the popularity at the box office and the fame of Lubitsch's first rate versatility in crafting a smart film. There was a mix of pioneering musical films and some drama also through the 1930s. The successful formula was such that Paramount made him production manager in 1935, so he could produce his own films and supervise production of others. In 1938 he signed a three year contract with Twentieth Century Fox.
Certainly two of his most beloved films near the end of his career dealt with the political landscape of the World War II ear. He moved to MGM where he directed Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka (1939), the fast-paced comedy of decadent West meets Russian comrades seeking more of life than the mother country can offer. Chock up another one for Lubitsch. During the war he directed perhaps his most beloved comedy - controversial to say the least - dark in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way - but certainly a razor sharp Lubitsch tour de force in smart, precision dialog, scenes, and story. He produced To Be or Not to Be (1942) under his own company Romaine Film Corp.
It was a biting satire of Nazi tyranny that also poked fun at Lubitsch's own theater roots with the problems and bickering-but also the triumph-of a threadbare acting troupe in Warsaw during occupation. `Jack Benny's' perfect deadpan humor joined with the zany, vivacious 'Carole Lombard' and a cast of veteran character actors both from Hollywood and Lubitsch's Germany provided all the chemistry needed to make this a classic comedy, as well as fierce statement against the perpetrators of war.
The most poignant scene was profoundly so - with Jewish Felix Bressart, another one of Reinhardt's students, as the only Jewish bit player in the company. His supreme hope is a chance to someday play Shylock. He gets his chance as part of a ruse in front of Hitler's Nazi body guards. The famous soliloquy was a bold declaration to the world of Axis brutal inhumanity to man - as focused on the Jewry of Europe.
Lubitsch had a massive heart attack in 1943 after having signed a producer-director's contract with 20th Century-Fox earlier that year and completed Heaven Can Wait. His continued efforts in film were severely stymied but he worked as he could. In late 1944 Otto Preminger, another disciple of Reinhardt's Viennese theater work, took over the direction of A Royal Scandal with Lubitsch named as nominal producer.
March of 1947, the year of his passing, brought a special Academy Award (he was nominated three times) to the fading producer/director for his "25-year contribution to motion pictures." At his funeral, two of his fellow directorial emigres from Germany put his epitaph succinctly as they left. Billy Wilder noted: "No more Lubitsch." William Wyler answered: "Worse than that - no more Lubitsch films."