Flash in the pan in Manhattan

NOTHING SACRED (1937)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There is an implicit strain of odd coolness to "Nothing Sacred," a bitter pill of a screwball romantic comedy that is neither too raucous nor too outrageous despite its subject matter. Directed with a minimum of exaggeration by William Wellman and edited with a relaxed pace, "Nothing Sacred" is often devilishly funny, extremely sardonic and critical of the mainstream newspapers of its time. It is the kind of picture that also manages to be quixotic and quite romantic, well, in ways you least expect.

Fredric March (in one of his more understated roles) plays Wally Cook, a reporter for The New York Morning Star who doesn't exactly triple check the facts of any story he writes. For instance, he has unknowingly perpetrated a hoax about a certain Sultan of Mazipan who is in fact a Harlem bootblack (The Sultan actually shines shoes for a living). Wally is demoted to obituary editor in a tight space next to a water cooler and a ladder. When Wally gets wind that a Vermont girl is dying of radium poisoning, he wants to travel there and get the scoop that could save his job. His anxious editor, Oliver Stone (Walter Connolly), would rather keep Wally editing obits for five years yet caves and gives him another chance.

When Wally arrives in Vermont, everyone speaks to him in one-word sentences. Nobody in the fictional town of Warsaw wants to deal with a hotshot reporter, that is nobody except for Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard) who is the girl dying of radium poisoning. Actually her doctor informs her she is actually healthy and has no poison in her system so when Wally locates her, she lies about her condition so she can get a free trip to NYC! One shot has Wally explaining to Hazel how she will be adored, and this brief exchange is obscured by a tree branch so you can't see their faces! This shot left me a little perplexed so I can't say why it was composed in such a way.

Writer Ben Hecht takes the screenplay's cues from a short story titled “Letter to the Editor” by James Street and the deeply disturbing true-life tale of the Radium Girls and manages to make "Nothing Sacred" into a spirited romantic comedy with a pulse and a purpose. The people of NYC embrace Hazel who is instantly treated like a celebrity and given the keys to the city. Though there is no surprise in Wally inevitably discovering the truth, he still falls deeply in love with Hazel and is forgiving. Hazel keeps up the act, to the point of staging a suicide to save her own skin and Wally's job. They fight each other, they squabble a little, but it is all in the name of love and saving each other from eventual embarrassment.

As I said, there is a coolness to the proceedings in its bitter, quietly savage indictment of the press and of people who buy into celebrity tabloid stories. Why should Hazel be celebrated for dying (Hazel asks this question too). But when you have the dazzling presence of Lombard, who gives Hazel soul, sympathy and perfect comic timing (watch her swing her arms at Wally), and March who keeps himself restrained, then you have got a winning combination of romantic fireworks. There is a radiant glow of warmth underneath its cynicism, especially in the final scene. "Nothing Sacred" is a keeper.