Nothing Sacred is an American Technicolor screwball comedy film directed in 1937 by William A. Wellman, produced by David O. Selznick, and starring Carole Lombard and Fredric March. with a supporting cast featuring Charles Winninger and Walter Connolly. Ben Hecht was credited with the screenplay based on a story by James H. Street, and an array of additional writers, including Ring Lardner, Jr., Budd Schulberg, Dorothy Parker, Sidney Howard, Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman and Robert Carson made uncredited contributions.
The lush, Gershwinesque music score was by Oscar Levant, with additional music by Alfred Newman and Max Steiner and a swing number by Raymond Scott’s Quintette. The film was shot in Technicolor by W. Howard Greene and edited by James E. Newcom, and was a Selznick International Pictures production distributed by United Artists.
IMDb Rating:7.4/10
Watch Classic Movie Nothing Sacred an 1937 classic.
Summary: Hazel Flagg of Warsaw, Vermont receives the news that her terminal case of radium poisoning from a workplace incident was a complete misdiagnosis with mixed emotions. She is happy not to be dying, but she, who has never traveled the world, was going to use the money paid to her by her factory to go to New York in style. She believes her dreams can still be realized when Wally Cook arrives in town. He is a New York reporter with the Morning Star newspaper. He believes that Hazel’s valiant struggle concerning her impending death is just the type of story he needs to resurrect his name within reporting circles after a recent story he wrote led to scandal and a major demotion at the newspaper. He proposes to take Hazel to New York both to report on her story but also to provide her with a grand farewell to life. She accepts. Wally’s story results in Hazel becoming the toast of New York. In spending time together, Wally and Hazel fall in love. Hazel not only has to figure out what to do about her relationship with Wally, but also how to conclude her now very public story, which all of New York expects will be a public and imminent death. Others, however, may conclude the story for her.
Starring: Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Walter Connolly
Director: William A. Wellman
Producer: David O. Selznick
Writer: Ben Hecht (screenplay)
Based on Letter to the Editor 1937 short story Cosmopolitan by James H. Street
Music: Oscar Levant
Cinematography: W. Howard Greene
Editor: James E. Newcom
Production Company: Selznick International
Distributor: United Artists
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** Film Critics often commit injustices. One is Nothing Sacred not be on the list of the 100 best ever restrained the Americn Film Institute. The painstaking production of David O. Selznick (… With the Wind), launched in 1937, has several merits, especially the cast, script, direction and technical quality. Nothing Sacred was the first screwball comedy, called screwball, filmed in color.
Time has shown that Hecht was right to adapt the story "Letter to the Editor", deJames H. Street which had been first been published in the International-Cosmopolitan Hearst. Current remain critical to the press and indulgent cynicism of the authorities with their tributes focused on who's evidence. The most hilarious sequence takes place in a stripetease club where the "sentenced to death" is compared to the most important women in history.
As the title says (,Nothing Sacred), a reporter in search of a hot news. And that's how the journalist (Fredrich March) explores in newspaper headlines imminent death of a girl (Carole Lombard) accidentally contaminated by radio in a Vermont factory, located inside the US. It turns to celebrity overnight, but then begins to stop being attracted to take to die.
Thanks so much for these movies-
Are we supposed to stare at that "Please Subscribe" banner obscuring the screen for the full 113 minutes? I'm about ready to UNsubscribe and find another movie.
Thanks for this post… as always, CL is wonderful and Chs. Winninger is always wonderful too. Another Selznick masterpiece.