NOTHING SACRED is a look at modern celebrity at it's worse and most bathetic. And God bless it for taking it all apart.<br /><br />Wally Cook (Fredric March) is an able newspaper reporter, who when plastered (which appears to be frequently) creates hoaxes at the expense of his newspaper and his boss Oliver Stone (yeah, really - only he's played by Walter Connolly here). At the start of this film, Wally has an African-American named Ernest Jones (Troy Brown Jr.) pretend to be "the Sultan of Marzepan" a wealthy far eastern potentate who is planning to donate millions to build some kind of multi-cultural center in Manhattan*. At the last moment his wife shows up with their children (the wife is Hattie MacDaniel), and she wrecks the hoax just as Connolly is taking credit for the donation for his newspaper. <br /><br />*Oddly enough there has recently been a two part news item in the New York Times about the plans (in Abu Dhabi) for a cultural center and university on a large scale. But this seems to be a legitimate scheme. <br /><br />From the start Ben Hecht's script follows the idea of how we, the sophisticates who live in cities (especially New York) are far more gullible than we would imagine. Wally is first banished to the obituary column of the paper (Ernest is given a janitorial job - this film is from the 1930s, by the way, so some stereotyping is going to be here). After a month Wally begs for a chance to resume his old job. Oliver, somewhat reluctantly, ends up giving Wally a scoop to interview a young woman in a New England town named Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard). Hazel worked in one of those factories where they used radium based paint on watches, so she has been diagnosed by the local doctor (Enoch Downer - Charles Winninger) as dying of radium poisoning. <br /><br />Wally goes to the town of Warsaw, and finds the natives nosy, secretive, and hostile (one little kid even bites Wally on the leg). He finds Hazel and makes the offer that Oliver has for her - if she will come to New York City, the newspaper will give her first rate hotel accommodations, fine dining, take to all the sites, and have the city lay out the official red carpet to her - until the day she dies. Hazel gleefully accepts - she hates being stuck in her town. Of course she fails to mention that Dr. Downer (who is a heavy drinker) botched up her test, and the lab has now revealed that she is healthy as a horse and will not die. She takes Downer with her and Wally to make sure he keeps quiet.<br /><br />The film then follows her rise to international celebrity trumpeted by Oliver's newspaper, the Mayor's office, and other interested parties. She is invited to all sorts of events (when she attends a wrestling match, the two wrestlers - supposedly killing each other - stop to greet her with smiles). A collapse at a nightclub (due to drinking too much) is mistaken for an early sign of her mortal illness (sentimental Oliver begs Dr. Downer not to spare him the worst - the next edition is going out in half an hour!). In the meantime Hazel and Wally have fallen in love - but Hazel does not know how to break the bad news to Wally: that she may live to a fine old age!<br /><br />Many of the screwball comedies of the 1930s don't work so well today, due to changes in our perspectives. Certainly the jokes at the start concerning Ernest Jones are not so funny now - although Hecht did work in a scene where Ernest gets some back (having been called a fake by Oliver and others at the newspaper, Ernest stumbles into the truth about Hazel - and when he sees the others is swallowing it doesn't give a word of warning). But for the most part NOTHING SACRED works pretty well to this day, and showcases Lombard in her best screwball performance, ably supported by March in a comic turn for a change.