Nothing Sacred
Director: William Wellman
Year Released: 1937
Rating: 2.0
A satire of journalism and, I'm taking it, the public's desire to think it cares for its own: Fredric March stumbles on a story of a woman allegedly dying from radiation (it was actually a misdiagnosis) and brings her to New York to be serenaded before her eventual demise. For being a 'screwball comedy' it seems to lack any real 'zaniness' or comedic flourish - if My Man Godfrey was a pinnacle of suave, carefree fun, this is the opposite. Why Carole Lombard was chosen to be given the royal treatment is puzzling - you mean there were no other people with fatal diseases around back then? no cancer? did everyone who developed a disease get put in the paper? - and the fanatical reception by the people of N.Y. - no, the world! - is pushing it a little too far. I haven't gotten a chance to read Molly Haskell's From Reverence to Rape, but I would bet money there's something in there on March's 'boxing bout' with Lombard.
