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…

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…

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…

William A. Wellman’s Nothing Sacred is what happens if Ace in the Hole is turned into a screwball comedy set during the Golden Age of Tinseltown, filmed in glorious Technicolor, and produced by head honcho David O. Selznick. It’s a satirical take on the media circus and the vertiginous celebrity culture that goes with it. The movie is also a delightful study of the nature of phoniness and the veracity of news journalism in modern society, with a curiously morbid fascination for death which adds an intriguing dark element to the story. Carole Lombard, forever the classy and chic movie star, is the focal point of the film, mixing comedy and elegance in a way only she can achieve. Her…

Part of My 1930s Challenge

This screwball comedy from director William A. Wellman features Fredric March as disgraced newspaperman Wally Cook. He's been on the outs with Morning Star editor (Walter Connolly) since he mistakenly reported on an alleged African nobleman who was really an impostor -- a Harlem bootblack named Ernest Walker (Troy Brown).

To get back into the editor's good graces, Cook pitches a story about a woman in Vermont who has been diagnosed with fatal radium poisoning. He manages to get the assignment, meets the woman's physician Dr. Enoch Downer (Charles Winninger) and gets the victim Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard) to come to New York at the paper's expense, unaware that there had bee a misdiagnosis and…