Nothing Sacred

1937 Directed by William A. Wellman

SEE THE BIG FIGHT!

When a small-town girl is diagnosed with a rare, deadly disease, an ambitious newspaper man turns her into a national heroine.

Carole Lombard Fredric March Charles Winninger Walter Connolly Sig Ruman Frank Fay Troy Brown Sr. Maxie Rosenbloom Margaret Hamilton Olin Howland Billy Barty Nora Cecil George Chandler Ann Doran Claire Du Brey Emily Fitzroy Bess Flowers Tenen Holtz Hedda Hopper Leonid Kinskey Charles Lane Edwin Maxwell Hattie McDaniel Aileen Pringle John Qualen Cyril Ring Monty Woolley

Alternative Title

Ingenting är heligt

comedy drama romance

77 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Travis Lytle ★★★

A technicolor curiosity from 1937, "Nothing Sacred" is comedy that satirizes media and fame while serving up charismatic performances from Carole Lombard and Fredric March. The film is short and might have contemporary audiences cringing at its near-but-not-quite sexism, but it is a worthy watch for its stars' chemistry, interesting execution, and fresh-feeling themes.
Revolving around a newspaper man and his unintended relationship with a woman at the heart of a story, "Nothing Sacred" combines romance and satire for some high energy hijinks. Fredric March's reporter, looking to break free of the obituary desk where he toils, takes on the job of profiling a young woman claiming to have radium poisoning. It is all a hoax, but, by the time…
Review by eely ★★★

carole lombard soaking wet in a fireman’s hat in
🌈TECHNICOLOR🌈
Review by Owen ★★★★½ 3

I came across a David Thompson review of this earlier today that both stressed its short run time and was so totally at odds with my own lukewarm take on the movie that I felt I might as well spare an hour or so and see if I'd misjudged it. Before I put it on I had a quick glance on here and saw one unimpressed review after another, all of which seemed to have come to the same conclusions about it's flatness that I did when I first saw it and felt cheated of the classic screwball comedy I'd been promised.
I'm really not sure what had changed with this viewing but it just clicked . The sheer Hechtiness…
Review by Peter Labuza ★★★

A weird meshing of great talents that just seem somewhat unsuited for each other: the talky cynicism of screenwriter Ben Hecht and the rough and tumble casualness of director William Wellman. Fredric March's plays too much of a stern type here to make the laughs stick, and a lot of his lines just kind of drop there; Lombard fairs much better, especially the chemistry with Charles Winninger. She feels looser and more manic than March's single track performance. Hecht's best films (the Hawks comedies, though it's also in his Hitchcock thrillers) are built on the fact that every line/action is hit on a very specific beat, a sort of rhythm that demands a not necessarily limited visual/performative delivery, but one…
Review by Bryce Receveur ★★★½ 1

I wish I loved someone so much that I would beat them up so I could be with them.
Review by Bre ★★★★

I forgot how ridiculously good some of the shots in this movie are.
Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★★

77/100
[originally written on my blog]
Lacks the passionate wallop of the truly great screwballs, which have an undercurrent of genuine pain beneath the fast-talking breeziness. It does however bring the funny and the biting, playing for comedy more or less the same idea that Billy Wilder would make grotesque a decade and a half later in Ace in the Hole. Hecht's witty script speaks for itself, but Wellman, pace his reputation as something of a journeyman hack, contributes a beguiling (if somewhat mystifying) formal playfulness, repeatedly placing obstacles between his actors and the camera. Are we being chided for voyeurism, in keeping with the film's patent disgust at the public craning its collective neck to see Hazel bravely dying?…
Review by trolleyfreak ★★★½

*Trolley's Retro Reviews #10*
Ben Hecht, a one-time newspaperman, gave us two of the movies' greatest newspaper comedies: The Front Page - later remade as His Girl Friday - was the first, and this is the second. Dazzling screwball comedienne Carole Lombard stars as a small-town woman who's said to have only six months to live as a result of radium poisoning and is exploited by a small newspaper with big ambitions, who milk the story for all its worth and drum up publicity by sending her to New York accompanied by an ambitious reporter (Fredric March) with the aim of turning her final days on Earth into a money-spinning extravaganza... only to belatedly discover that the diagnosis was incorrect, a fact known all along by crafty Carole. William A. Wellman keeps the pace brisk, Hecht's acidic dialogue is cutting, the early Technicolor is rich, Oscar Levant's score is delectable, and the film as a whole should be cherished.
Review by Bre ★★★★½ 4

There is something about this that really just caught me by my heart and soul and I loved it. Maybe it is the early technicolor, which always has such a magical quality for me, especially with such gorgeous cinematography. Or maybe it is the incredible dynamic between Fredric March and Carole Lombard that makes this whole thing so delightful. That fight scene is spectacular. Carole Lombard is ethereal. I never really cared for her before, but this film completely changed that. She is effortless in everything she does. This film is not necessarily laugh out loud funny. It is dark, it is subtle, and it is not traditional screwball. Yet I loved everything about it. Sometimes a movie just hits you when you aren't expecting it and you can't even really pinpoint why.
Review by Ken Coffelt ★★★★

In contemporary cinema, films boasting a gaggle of screenwriters often suggest a Frankensteined and dubious script. Maybe that’s always been the case.
1937’s Nothing Sacred, primarily written by Ben Hecht contained uncredited work by seven other folks. Those folks, however, are, per Wikipedia, listed as Budd Schulberg, Ring Lardner Jr., Dorothy Parker, Sidney Howard, Moss Hart,George S. Kaufman, and Robert Carson, a pretty nice litany of notables.
Enlivening this script are Carole Lombard and Fredric March, the gamest of comic actors, in their prime. And they’re fab.
A screwball comedy from the heyday of the era, William A. Wellman’s Nothing Sacred is a hoot and a holler. Whatever melange of authorship, the humor bears a definite Tex Avery bent: fast,…
Review by Cassandra ★★

Carole Lombard in technicolor was lovely, but that's about the only positive comment I can make about this movie. It was mediocre and not very funny for a screwball comedy.
Review by AuteurTheory ★★★½

At first I assumed it had been colorized, but no, it was filmed in Technicolor in 1937. It’s interesting, but I honestly think the color looks a bit sickly. I would prefer black and white, but color had to start somewhere.
Even though the color was oddly distracting, there was some hilarious dialogue (intended and otherwise):
“He’s sort of a cross between a Ferris wheel and a werewolf.”
“Katinka, who saved Holland by putting her finger in the dyke.”
“My editor, Oliver Stone.”
Of course there’s the moment where an actress (I don’t think it was Lombard) directly gives the camera the middle finger. I have no idea how they got away with some of these gags.
This is a…

Recent reviews

Review by psaxt ★★½

Lombard's pretty good but this one hasn't aged crazy well for a couple of reasons, one is the racism. Direction felt a bit lifeless to me, as well. The moment that made me laugh out loud hardest was the "--like an elephant" on her fake farewell note to New York at the end.
Gotta mention the "Katinka, who saved all of Holland by putting her finger in the dike. Show 'em the finger, babe!" moment. Worth watching just for that.
Also, considering Lombard's best role was Maria Tura in TO BE OR NOT TO BE, it's funny that she's from a town called Warsaw here, and has the line, "It's kinda startling to be brought to life, and each time in Warsaw."
Review by Samuel Spencer ★★★

The original fake news movie. A fun romantic comedy about a girl who fakes radium poisoning to get a trip to New York, with a great turn from Carole Lombard, and all in glorious techicolor.
That technicolor, however, is the major issue with the movie. There is no reason at all for this film to be in color, and the process makes the movie look very visually flat. It is also very at odds with the streak of black humour that runs through this movie – a streak so wide that it makes jokes about radium poisoning just a few years after the death of Marie Curie.
Review by Ryan Cowper ★★

Not very screwball and not very comic.
Review by 𝒂𝒍𝒆𝒙𝒂 ★★★★★

carole is so cute 🥺🥺 and the technicolor is gorgeous. the overall movie is fun and sweet
Review by garytokyo

I’m not always a fan of screwball comedies, which often seem to be trying too hard. But I loved Carole Lombard in her immediately preceding My Man Godfrey, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
A flailing newspaper reporter Wally Cook seeks to make his name with a human interest story on a small-town girl named Hazel Flagg who is dying of radium poisoning. Unbeknownst to him, Hazel has discovered that she was misdiagnosed and is not dying after all, interrupting her plans to whoop it up for her final weeks (she moans about being “brought to life twice – and each time in Warsaw”). She thus jumps at the chance when the reporter offers her an all-expense-paid trip…
Review by dan ✦ ★★★

Carole Lombard in colour is all i needed today.
Review by Andrea Thompson ★★★★

Limited by its time of course, but what an incredible, cynical view of the public which seeks to exploit. I thought it being in color rather than black and white would detract from the experience, but thankfully that wasn't the case.
Review by Maxim DeSpring ★★★★

It's like Capra, but inversed. I was caught off guard by how funny it was and Lombard is really superb I gotta say
Review by Eric Suchyta

Pretty rough feeling, doesn't flow very well, and is only occasionally funny. Dime a dozen 30s Romance.
Review by cori ★★★

movie buoyed by the fact i find carole lombarde absolutely charming she can do no wrong in my eyes i understand how katherine heigel movies think i should feel about katherine heigel
Review by Matthew Jones ★★★

As much as I love Lombard, this didn't work for me. March is, unfortunately, quite the plank here, with his every attempt at a laugh line landing with a resounding thud. Lombard fares better, of course she does; she's a one-of-a-kind screen presence. Perfectly at home within the texture of the silver screen. Speaking of which, the early Technicolor is pretty pleasing to look at.
Review by nicolas1810 ★★★★

Δαιμόνιος ρεπόρτερ που έχει πέσει σε ανυποληψία από τον διευθυντή του εξαιτίας εξευτελιστικής γκάφας στην οποία οδήγησε την εφημερίδα του, παίνρει μια τελευταία ευκαιρία για νέους αναγνωστικούς θριάμβους όταν ανακαλύπτει λαβράκι στο πρόσωπο επαρχιώτισσας νεαρής, η οποία μετράει λίγες ημέρες ζωής εξαιτίας σοβαρής ασθενείας. Τραβιέται 'κει χάμω για να την κουβαλήσει στο Νιου Γιορκ και να την κάνει Αμερικάνα ηρωίδα, αλλά η δεσποινίς δεν πρόκειται να πεθάνει σύντομα μιας και η διάγνωση του τοπικού μπάρμπα γιατρού ήταν λίιιιιγο λάθος. Πάντα όμως ήθελε να δει τη Νέα Υόρκη και αν είναι και τζαμπέ ολέ ακόμα καλύτερα! Απολαυστική σκρούμπολ κόμεντι η οποία αποτελεί την πρώτη έγχρωμη του είδους και φουλ πρωτοποριακή ως προς την τεχνική των γυρισμάτων της. Το πρώτο εικοσάλεπτο της…