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Nothing Sacred

Nothing Sacred

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ON LIFE, LOVE, AND DEATH BY RADIATION..
Review: ...YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS MOVIE. After this movie was over, I longed for nothing more than to go away quietly and soak up its deep truths - just go away, like an elephant, and disappear. After all, there's always a way to come back to society. It's very simple, actually - Hazel Flagg has proved it. Just put on a pair of sunglasses. Not only will you look highly suspicious, but chances are people will recognise your mouth or your voice - or maybe just the aura of courage and nobility that emanates from your very presence.

I learned so many other valuable things from this fascinating movie as well. First of all, I found out what the residents of Vermont are really like, hidden away as they are amongst all that scenery. They have an expansive vocabulary that many Americans would do well to imitate. There are only two words to remember: Yep and Nope. It's very contagious, and even New York reporters find themselves picking it up after only a brief stay. Only slightly alluded to, but equally important, is the fact that Vermont must a state of high radiation level, otherwise how did poor Miss Flagg contract the fatal stuff?

Another thing that must never be forgotten is, if you want free publicity, just find a doctor in Vermont who insists you have radiation poisoning. Then your name will be posted abroad. You will be forever remembered as a strong, courageous victim of unfortunate circumstances. There will be silence at boxing rings, nightclubs, and city streets at the sight or sound of your name. You will be compared with such great, heroic personalities as Pocahontas and Catherine the Great (who, by the way, rode pastel-coloured horses and headresses both fearfully and wonderfully made). Schoolchildren will sweetly serenade you with ballads on the subject of your impending demise.

Besides all this, you will be duly blessed with a newspaper reporter who is not only dashingly handsome, madly in love, and prostrate with grief over the radiation which is stealing the very life and soul out of you. (Can such a rosy, sparkling complexion as you have possibly be a mere mask?) He's willing to fish you out of the river, marry you immediately, and all sorts of other noble things, but he'll find out you're a fake and kick you about like a bearskin rug, just to convince the doctors that your radiation isn't put up - even though it is. Perhaps he thinks that is a manifestation of his profound adoration for you, but in reality it causes you to faint away in despair at his utter cruelty to you. It's always helpful to remember that if your handsome newspaper reporter wishes you to fake a fever, and the means to the end involves a fight, you'd better turn away and disappear. Like an elephant. Elephants are the key here. From beginning to end, this movie is a grey haze of stampeding elephantine nonsense, pointlessness, and incredibly pathetic humour.

I do so enjoy learning experiences of any kind. Thanks to this film, I now know everything. Everything there is to know in the world about life, love, and death by radiation is in the depths of that brave name, Hazel Flagg, which is indelibly printed in my mind. In blue neon letters.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 1937 SCREWBALL CLASSIC.
Review: A screwball satire that was a huge success in 1937. Ben Hecht, who wrote the script, has the "little people" dripping crocodile tears over a girl they think is dying of radium poisoning (and enjoying every minute of it). There are classic sequences: March, the New York City sophisticate, arrives in a small New England town and learns how the natives feel about strangers when a little boy runs up and bites his leg - the swozzled Lombard passes out while showgirls (impersonating the heroines of history) parade in her honour - plus the terrific slugging match between March and Lombard. Walter Connoly is great as the dyspeptic big-city editor as is Charles Winninger as the alcoholic small-town doctor. William Wellman's direction is more leisurely than usual; he has such good material here, that he takes his time. This marvelous black comedy classic was originally filmed in Technicolor and the DVD print is clear and sharp! Lombard is priceless in her interpretation of Hazel Flagg; her zestful playing is freshly modern and one can see what all the fuss concerning her comedic gifts was about!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Carole Lombard #1 Comedian of the 30's !!! Great DVD xfer!
Review: Carole Lombard was an intelligent beautiful natural blonde, the greatest female Screwball comedian , highest paid actress, wife of Clark Gable and one of the most powerful woman in Hollywood during the 1930's until her untimely death in 1942. This beautifully restored DVD gives us a taste of Carole Lombard and the effect she had to audiences of the 30's. This was her only Technicolor movie she ever made. So sit back and watch her natural beauty and acting genius evolve on the screen. Fredric March as her co-star adds to this adorably humorous film.

In Summary: A Vermont girl Hazel Flagg (Lombard) in diagnosed in having radium poisoning (terminal). A hot shot New York Jounalist (March)reads about this in a newspaper and wants to use this event to raise his magazines popularity by sponsoring Hazel. Bringing her to New York City and presenting her with the "Keys to the City" and VIP status raises great public awareness. All the time using public sympathy to raise magazine sales.

Hazel finds out she was mis-diagnosed and reluctantly continues on with the scam. In the meantime March starts falling in love with Hazel and he wants her to rest and be comfortable until her end comes. As you can see this has a strange twist of events which is the main ingredient to the "SCREWBALL COMEDIES" of the 30's. Proving "Nothing's Sacred"!!!
The extras include: 2 early silent Lombard movies and Gable & Lombard home movies. This is a collectable "LIMITED EDITION" DVD to have.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: funny, endearing.
Review: Carole Lombard, in her best role aside from Irene in MY MAN GODFREY, gives an inspired performance in the classic NOTHING SACRED.

She plays a young woman who, exposed to radiation, is given the prognosis that she will die within the year. So begins the national outpouring of grief for the young waif that is about to meet her maker at a premature age.

She is wisked from gala to ball to party to benefit, all of the crowd there sobbing and sighing for the girl's sad fate, and at one gala, where they are comparing her to the likes of Joan of Arc, she is asked to go on stage to join her "comrades in bravery"....well she is so sloshed from champagne she cannot give a decent speech.

Soon, she hears word that the prognosis was wrong, that she is perfectly well and will not die. The girl has started to like the lime-light however, and this is where the fun begins......

A spirited performance by Lombard makes up for the sometimes creaky proceedings, and the otherwise lacklustre supporting cast, but this is a fine production, which is one of Lombard's finest.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Classic Comedy
Review: First of all: the five stars are for the movie, because the DVD P.D. (Public Domain) transfer is pretty bad, with washed-out colors (this one was one of the few technicolor movies made in the '30s), so it hardly deserves 2 stars on that account. Anyway it was great to have the chance of watching two of my fave stars: Carole Lombard and Fredric March.

Here they're in peak form, and team up very well together, as a reporter (March) who falls for this small-town girl (Lombard) who's supposedly goin to die of radium poisoning, then taking her to New York, where she becomes the "toast" of the city.

Grand performances by Walter Connolly as March's Editor and Charlie Winninger as the small-town doctor who diagnosed the disease. Deft direction from William Wellman.

Great fun!!

Remade in 1954 as "Living it Up" with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.


Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sensationalistic journalists should see this one
Review: Frederic March is the hard-boiled newspaperman who'll do anything for a story. Carole Lombard is the Vermont small-town girl who'll do anything to get out of that small town. I'm sure the French prefer the Jerry Lewis remake of this, but Sacre Merde!, how could they! March is tough and tender here, and is especially excellent in the scenes in which he goes to that small Vermont town to get the exclusive interview with the girl he thinks is dying of radium poisoning. Watch for the little tyke who takes a bite out of March's tuchas. Lombard is Lombard, or in other words, she's glorious, silly, sexy, and I'd have loved to have seen her play Lucy Ricardo!! This is one that deserves to be remastered, before the early color becomes too murky.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: You'll never look at raw eggs the same way again....
Review: Hazel Flagg did something I never have seen anyone do with an egg before...suck the raw innards out!! This really grossed me out, but I guess back then it was the A #1 cure for a hangover. That was the most memorable moment in this movie...does that say anything??

I really like Fredric March, and while he was cute and sweet here, I just didn't care for this movie at all. I found it too silly and shallow. But maybe I'm just not into comedy such as this. It was one of those movies, where midway thru you are thinking....will this be over soon??? I give it 2 stars only because Fredric March's handsome face graced this celluloid wonder. I recommend only renting this video...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I Absolutely Adore This Movie!
Review: I consider Nothing Sacred to be one of the best screwball comedies of the 1930's. What is amazing is that the themes so nastily betrayed in this film are so relevant today! Nobody is safe from the director's (William Wellman) and screenwriter's (Ben Hecht) acid observations of the human race. Everybody is corrupt in this movie! This is a film that deserves "classic" status! The performances are wonderful and the dialogue has more memorable one-liners than most films being released today! Watch this movie!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: LOMBARD perfect, but this movie is a little bit overrated...
Review: I found this movie a little bit overrated (whereas M. Leisen's delicious "HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE" is really underrated). I am a great fan of Carole Lombard and I expected this movie to be perfect, but it was just OK. Director W. Wellman had not the satirizing touch of such masters like Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges or Ernst Lubitsch, and was not a comedy specialist. You can try it and you will be enjoyed, but not surprised as if you discover Lombard in "20th century", "My man Godfrey" or "To be or not to be".

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A dark, satirical look at media hype
Review: Jason Blair, eat your heart out! Frederick March stars as an unscrupulous newspaper reporter who uses a maudlin tragedy -- a young woman who's dying of radium poisoning -- as a way to revive his shaky career. The trouble is, the gal is actually faking her ailment, using it as a way to escape her dull life in a provincial Vermont village. Carole Lombard plays the faker, Ms. Hazel Flagg, who becomes the toast of the town when brought to see the bright lights of New York City. Ben Hecht's tart, cynical script skillfully juxtoposes the sensationalized sentimentalism that Hazel attracts with the business-as-usual media hype and casual crassness of the Big Apple. While the film has its weak points (poor sound design, rushed production values, some ethnic humor that hasn't aged well), Hecht's merciless portrayal of flavor-of-the-week media "events" proves once again that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Recommended.

(PS - A scene involving an airplane ride also provides a nice aerial view of Depression-era NYC.)


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