‎Nothing Sacred (1937) directed by William A. Wellman • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

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 Raymond Scott and His Quintet 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

romance comedy drama

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 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 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 Zā ★★★½

Part of the Classics Film Challenge!
2. Watch a film starring a character actor. (Margaret Hamilton)

Some gender politics aside, this was such a fun movie. To see people so comically upset for a dying woman is so funny and so odd because now people definitely would not care and this comedy would make absolutely no sense in the way it's told, but I guess that's what makes this so good?? Carole Lombard truly is one of the all time greats.
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 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?…

Recent reviews

Review by Liam Ball ★★★

There's no way to properly express how utterly batshit this movie is. The fuck did the squirrel idea come from?!
Review by Sophie ★★★½

Great fun! I really enjoyed this - Carole Lombard is charming, and Fredric March is wonderful.
Review by Zā ★★★½

Part of the Classics Film Challenge!
2. Watch a film starring a character actor. (Margaret Hamilton)

Some gender politics aside, this was such a fun movie. To see people so comically upset for a dying woman is so funny and so odd because now people definitely would not care and this comedy would make absolutely no sense in the way it's told, but I guess that's what makes this so good?? Carole Lombard truly is one of the all time greats.
Review by Bee ★★★ 1

Cut the first unbearable ten minutes from this and you have a pretty pleasant hour-long diversion. It's a quirk of the film - and maybe the screwball(ish?) genre? I haven't seen quite enough - to give each character a long individual scene establishing motive and then basically do nothing with it, preferring instead to play each scene with little regard for the characters moving through it. I don't mind that.

There's something interesting about the idea of a reporter so jaded he can only fall in love with a semi-witting con artist, I don't know that I love it though. Carole Lombard is pretty solid as expected. The appearance of professional wrestling was cute. Also the elephant goof kind of really got me for whatever reason.
Review by Beautifulkiller ★★★★

"Nothing Sacred" has been remade in whole or part many times but no version comes close to the original 1937 screwball comedy starring Frederic March and Carole Lombard.

Directed by William Wellman with a script by Ben Hecht, Nothing Sacred is more topical today than it was then. There's been a good deal written on this board about the political incorrectness of it: racism, drunkenness, physical abuse, stereotyping. It's true, there's something to offend everyone.

Instead of judging everything by today's enlightened standards, I prefer to notice that yes, things were different in the past and then move on to the wonderful, witty script, the very modern topic, the great performances, the early, muted color, Lombard's outfits, the old airplane…
Review by JohnCarlson ★★★

Middling 30s screwball comedy featuring the always enjoyable Carole Lombard and Freddy March. This is mainly notable for being the first technicolor comedy. Unlike the Technicolor fantasies and grand epics typical of the time, this film captures contemporary 1930s New York in living color, adding much dimension to the deco designs and nightclubs so common in other black and white comedies of the time. There's just something about seeing the color on the walls of a 30s penthouse set or a plane in the blue sky over a relatively new Empire State Building that seems truly exciting. Perhaps it doesn't say much about the movie itself that its thin comedic plot about radium poisoning doesn't quite rise above the thrill of its mundane color details, but for this viewer, that specific cinematic thrill made this worth the watch.
Review by Slim_ ★★½

There’s nothing here in Nothing Sacred, which somehow manages to be less than the sum of its parts (namely, Carole Lombard and Fredric March).

A supposedly dying woman swindles all of New York City into celebrating her last few days, and the journalist sent to cover her falls for her along the way. Uncomfortably racist antics and humorous domestic battery included.

Fun to see as an early example of Technicolor, as applied to a standard comedy title, versus a big epic. Gets an extra half star for only being 77 minutes.
Review by Smidvin ★★

Wow, this is shockingly not-good. What a waste of colour. The funniest thing is that the heroine's hometown is called Warsaw, Vermont. And I liked it when Fredric March described his boss as "sort of a cross between a Ferris wheel and a werewolf".
But altogether this seems like a non-effort from a bunch of people who have never worked on a comedy before. Very seldom, Wellman's directorial style peeks through, such as in the first-kiss scene which is framed similar to the one from Safe in Hell.
Or take the moment when "Katinka, who saved Holland by putting her finger in the dike" shows the world said wonder finger. I think the fingering-a-dyke double entendre is historically innocent, but there can't be any doubt about the middle finger defiantly raised to the camera. It's incredibly bizarre touches such as this one which make the movie worthwhile.
Review by Emily ★★

Racism and domestic violence, gross!