Nothing Sacred

William Wellman, 1937

The first Technicolor film of its generic kind, Nothing Sacred—a masterful screwball comedy starring the comedic talents of Carol Lombard and Fredric March—maintains an air of frivolity that just barely manages to shine despite its overcast tones of tragedy and cynicism. A film produced in 1937, Nothing Sacred begins with two very divergent character portrayals. The first is Wally (Fredric March), a somewhat inebriated and seemingly successful journalist who is honored for the unearthing the exalted “Sultan of Marzipan” (Troy Brown) for whom the opening scene’s banquet is being held. The Sultan, however, is revealed as an imposter shoe-shiner who transitions—much like the Indian seer in the Charlie Chan film Murder Over New York—from being an eloquent foreigner to an unintelligent, sputtering stereotype with a disquieting seamlessness.

The plot, inspired by the revelation of the Sultan’s true identity (delivered by the earnest, uncompromising figure of Hattie McDaniel), centers then around Wally, who becomes the abused obituary editor as a result of his inability to spot a fake. The film’s irony compounds, then, when Wally finally lands another story in the person of Hazel Flagg (Lombard), a tragically radium-poisoned girl. Of course, her illness is not real, but instead due to the misdiagnosis of the alcoholic medical practitioner in Warsaw, Vermont. When Flagg discovers that she does not have a terminal illness, she bemoans her fate, which condemns her to “have been born twice, and both times in Warsaw.” That is, until Wally comes to the rescue, declaring that a girl as brave and tragic as Flagg should be welcomed by New York in a grander fashion than anything she would have supposed possible. And greeted she is, in such a way that when she finally breaks down in front of the society that both worships and commercializes her, they are forced to pretend that she has gone off to die alone (“Like an elephant!”) rather than tell the city the truth. And so Flagg and her new husband, Wally, leave on a ship for a tropical destination, drunken doctor in tow.

Wonderfully humorous though Nothing Sacred can be, it manifests itself as a farcical comedy that is both strikingly laughable, and darkly imagined. Beneath the surface of its many jibes, it paints a portrait of a New York that cannot help itself, a city that loves tragedy only because it makes them feel better that they could feel at all. And by championing the heroism of Hazel Flagg (someone who seeks to use them as decisively as they do her), the joke ends with a cautionary silence. The narrative incites the slow clap, however, by avoiding the particulars of the film’s societal depictions in favor of slapstick humor and delightful witticisms. And yet, with every grim revelation of sentiment or ethics—exemplified by the moment when Flagg mocks the crowd for their lack of true sympathy, only to see a man at a far table crying on her behalf, forcing her to exclaim, “Oh Wally! Look at that man!”—we are given a moment of blissfully ignorant humor—in the same scene, moments later, we are introduced to a great heroine to honor Flagg’s tragic bravery in the painted Pocahontas, who beats her hand to her mouth in the stereotypical “Oh wa wa wa!” For all that, though, the film’s best laugh-inducing moments, such as the scene where Wally punches Flagg in the face so she’ll lose consciousness, are rarely as cutting as the snidest remarks. Remarks that shed light on a very different sort of comedic theme: the satirical portrayal of societal behavior.

Cameron Burson