Nothing Sacred (1937)

James McLain

A screwball comedy with a political twinge of social commentary, Nothing Sacred is a film I would normally avoid being that I have never been a fan of screwball comedies. Yet I knew the movie would be an enjoyable one with a message to boot after reading in the credits that one of my favorite authors, Ben Hecht, penned the screenplay.

The story of the brave Miss Flagg (Carol Lombard) and the reporter on the story (Frederic March) begins with a potentate boot black whose ruse threatens the newspaper. Hattie MacDaniel of Gone with the Wind arrives with her children to the fund raising event and blows the cover of the “potentate” at the head table. This minor scandal lays the foundation for the way scandals are handled in this corner of Ben Hecht’s world.

Flagg is something of a hypochondriac who has been misdiagnosed with fatal radium poisoning who meets Cook in her small hometown and sees a chance to cash in when Cook offers her a trip to New York in exchange for the chance to tell her human interest story. Though she knows she’s really healthy, Flagg sees a chance to escape her provincial life.

Every attempt to deceive is tackled with gusto by all of the characters involved. There’s the Flagg character passing out due to booze, later to be attributed to her wrecked health. Then there’s the failed attempt to fake her suicide. Later Flagg and Cook wind up punching each other silly in order to better feign her current bout of pneumonia. And finally there’s the fictitious suicide that allows Flagg and Cook to slip away to what is assumed to be the South Seas.

The solution in the opening is to admit the mistake and keep the con artist on the payroll. Yet the brave Miss Flagg is a far bigger scandal in the works. And the solution this time? A bigger scandal requires a greater silence, and therefore Miss Flagg takes a last leap in the river and the city enjoys one last good cry.

Here is Ben Hecht visiting a familiar narrative he has written of before in his 1928 hit play The Front Page. The truth is not only something to be painfully confronted, but can also be the enemy of all that is desired with everyone involved. The truth is something that at best gets in the way. Flagg and Cook have no use for the truth. Flagg’s doctor and Cook’s editor have no need for the truth. Most of all New York City has little need for open honesty. All of the civic organizations agree with the mayor and those involved that Flagg did in the end commit suicide. Finally there’s the Flagg admirer in the final scene espousing the genuine virtues of the late Hazel Flagg. And so with sunglasses on facing the darkening sky, our heroes Cook and Flagg in the end face a darkening obscurity in their final victory over the truth.