Jacobowsky & The Colonel (Aired September 16, 1945)
Jacobowsky and the Colonel (adapted by S. N. Behrman from a play by Franz Werfel; produced by the Theater Guild in association with Jack H. Skirball) uses one of the grimmest moments of the war—the fall of France—for half-satiric, half-fantastic comedy. Its comic thesis is that flight from the Nazis makes strange carfellows. A swaggering, snooty Polish colonel with "a perfect 15th-Century mind" (well played by Louis Calhern) and a rueful, humorous, clever Jewish refugee (delightfully played by Oscar Karlweis) both have to bolt from Paris on the run. The colonel cannot find a car; Jacobowsky finds one but cannot drive. Grandly tossing out Jacobowsky's luggage, the colonel condescends to take the wheel, and off they go—smack toward the Nazis in order to fetch the colonel's pretty mistress (Annabella—see p. 62). From then on, while the colonel remains majestically helpless, Jacobowsky gets the party out of tight squeezes, ferrets out food, locates gasoline. As the colonel's lady becomes more & more admiring of Jacobowsky, the colonel becomes more & more jealous, issues a challenge, creates an opéra-bouffe atmosphere that makes the trip as much a flight from reality as from the Nazis.
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