Nothing Sacred

Wally Cook is a journalist. A story he wrote turns out to be false and he loses his standing at the paper. To save himself he looks for a story. He finds a girl in Vermont: Hazel Flagg has radium poisoning and has been told she will die. Wally brings her to New York. The city takes her up; there are ceremonies, the papers run headlines and everyone weeps. But Hazel is not going to die. The diagnosis was wrong and she learned it before coming to New York. She does not say. At some point Wally works it out, and he does not say either. William A. Wellman directs; Ben Hecht wrote the screenplay. Carole Lombard plays Hazel and Fredric March plays Wally; Walter Connolly is in the cast. It was shot in colour, which was unusual for a comedy at the time. The matter it treats is the manufacture of feeling by the press; the film takes aim at the journalism and the public in equal measure. Ben Hecht had been a journalist himself and knew the business from inside. There is a scene in which the two leads punch each other, and it was found hard for the period. The narrative gives no character a clean way out; everyone finds advantage in keeping the lie going. It runs short and lingers nowhere. Its limit is form; the pace drops in places and the last section is rushed. Who it is for: viewers who like classic American comedy and satire of the press. Who it is not for: the humour is dated, the shape familiar, and the ending weak.