Top 10 Posthumous Film Roles

In honor of Bernie Mac's last performance, in Soul Men, TIME looks back at the most memorable posthumous movie performances of all time.

Carole Lombard in To Be or Not To Be

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Lombard was just doing her patriotic duty. Barely a month after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, she was selling war bonds in her home state of Indiana. Wanting to get home quickly to husband Clark Gable, Lombard convinced her mother and several others to board a plane back to California. It crashed outside of Las Vegas, killing the screwball comedy bombshell at the age of 34. Her final role, in Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not To Be, is considered to be one of her finest.

See TIME's 1942 dispatch on the death of Carole Lombard

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