Nothing Sacred (film)
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| Nothing Sacred | |
|---|---|
 Original Spanish film poster |
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| Directed by | William A. Wellman |
| Produced by | David O. Selznick .... |
| Written by | Ben Hecht Budd Schulberg Ring Lardner Jr. James H. Street Budd Schulberg |
| Starring | Carole Lombard Fredric March |
| Music by | Oscar Levant |
| Cinematography | W. Howard Greene |
| Editing by | James E. Newcom |
| Distributed by | Selznick International Pictures United Artists |
| Release date(s) |  25 November 1937 |
| Running time | 77 min |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Nothing Sacred is a 1937 screwball comedy film made by Selznick International Pictures. It was directed by William A. Wellman and produced by David O. Selznick, from a screenplay by Ben Hecht, Ring Lardner Jr. and Budd Schulberg, based on a story by James H. Street. The music score was by Oscar Levant with additional music by Alfred Newman and Max Steiner. The film was shot in Technicolor by W. Howard Greene. The costume design for Carole Lombard's gowns was by Travis Banton.
The film stars Carole Lombard and Fredric March. The cast also includes Walter Connolly, Charles Winninger, Margaret Hamilton, Hattie McDaniel and Max Rosenbloom. It is considered a classic of the genre, and is filled with over-the-top satire of movie expectations and American culture.
Tagline: See the big fight! LOMBARD vs MARCH! Selznick International's sensational Technicolor comedy.
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[edit] Plot summary
March plays Wally Cook, a New York newspaper reporter who tries to pull a scam by passing off an ordinary African-American (Troy Brown) as an African nobleman hosting a charity event. The original cut had some gross ridicule added to the simple comeuppance that remains when the man's wife appears to ruin his scheme, but this was removed. Wally Cook is demoted to the epitaph department, from which he is sent to Vermont to interview Lombard's character Hazel Flagg, a woman supposedly dying of radium poisoning, though radium is not mentioned in the film, just that she works in a watch factory.
The supporting cast also includes Walter Connolly, who plays Oliver Stone, Wally Cook's boss, and Charles Winninger, who plays Hazel Flagg's doctor. The audience learns early on that Hazel Flagg is not really dying, and the movie is one comedy gag and ridiculous situation after another. What is most satirized is the pattern of emotions of the general public in the movie who are so moved by the story of her dying - and how quickly they will forget when it has to be published only a short time later that has recovered.
[edit] Background and notes
- This was Carole Lombard's only Technicolor film.
- Max Rosenbloom, who appears briefly in the film, gave Lombard boxing lessons to prepare her for her fight scene with Fredric March.
- The first screwball comedy filmed in color, Nothing Sacred also represents the first use in a color film of process effects, montage and rear screen projection. Backgrounds for the rear projection were filmed on the streets of New York and Paramount later refined this technique in their subsequent color features.
- Ben Hecht is credited with writing the screenplay in two weeks on a train. He adapted the story Letter to the Editor by James H Street which had been first been published in Hearst's International-Cosmopolitan. Hecht wrote a role for his friend John Barrymore in the film, but David Selznick refused to use him as Barrymore had become by then an incurable alcoholic. This caused a rift between Hecht and Selznick and Hecht walked off the picture. Budd Schulberg and Dorothy Parker were called in to write the final scenes and several others also made contributions to the screenplay, including: David O. Selznick, William Wellman, Sidney Howard, Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman and Robert Carson.
[edit] Remakes
Ben Hecht's screenplay was also the basis of a 1950s Broadway musical called Hazel Flagg, as well as Living It Up, a 1954 movie starring Dean Martin in the Charles Winninger role, Jerry Lewis in the Carole Lombard role, and Janet Leigh in the Fredric March role.
