NOTHING SACRED: Blu-ray reissue (Selznick, 1937) Kino Lorber

A young woman, aspiring to become a New York debutante, and, a spurious small-town doctor out for revenge, conspire to defraud the whole of Manhattan in their ‘winner takes all’ popularity contest. Is nothing sacred?!? Apparently not, in director William Wellman’s ingenious and silly black screwball comedy – aptly titled, Nothing Sacred (1937). Suggested by James H. Street’s short story, screenwriter, Ben Hecht wastes no time creating a delirious compendium of mishaps and mayhem, stemming from this calculating deception. That reporter, Wally Cook (Fredric March) should be so easily taken in by con/quack, Dr. Enoch Downer (Charles Winninger) and his unwitting accomplice, Hazel Flagg (the luminous madcap, Carol Lombard) is perhaps forgivable; as Cook, used to ambulance chasing for his paycheck (he tries to pass off a local bootblack as the Sultan of Mazupan – the tragically short-lived Troy Brown Sr. as this ‘magnificent potentate of the Orient’),  is nevertheless desperate for a reprieve after Morning Star publisher, Oliver Stone (Walter Connelly) threatens to pulverize Cook’s reputation – such as it is – into the dust. Stone’s first act of contrition, mostly to distance himself from that very public scandal after the Sultan’s true identity is revealed, is to relegate his one-time lead reporter to the morgue of newspapers – the obituary department. There, poor Wally endures the humiliation of trying to write under the most notoriously distracting circumstances; his desk wedged between a reference library and water cooler; a female researcher, burying her butt in his face; another disgruntled writer, casting a discarded Styrofoam cup, with water still in it, into the brim of Cook’s hat.  

In truth, producer, David O. Selznick had little interest in making a comedy, acquiescing to his business partner, Jock Whitney’s interests, but adding “You wanted comedy…boy are you going to get it! After this, I am either the new Mack Sennett or I return to Dr. Eliot (the editor of Harvard Classics).” Indeed, Selznick somehow felt comedy was beneath him, or rather, below the precepts of ‘high art’ he had set for himself since establishing his own production company – Selznick International Pictures. Selznick had already kyboshed plans for a gangster picture pitched to him by Wellman as a follow-up to his monumentally successful, Public Enemy (1931) over at Warner Bros. What went for Warners did not sit well with Selznick. Despite already having spent moneys on sets, cast and a screenplay, and advertised the picture in the trades, Selznick would pull the plug on this project in the eleventh hour because, in the producer’s own words, “…it didn’t have the dignity and good taste that I wanted my name associated with.” Selznick felt similarly about Nothing Sacred. But Whitney had fallen under the spell of Gregory LaCava’s My Man Godfrey (1936) a runaway smash for Universal, co-starring William Powell and Carol Lombard. Moreover, Selznick’s 2-picture deal with Wellman needed a valiant successor to A Star is Born (1937). And so, Selznick, having ascertained Lombard was at least fifty percent responsible for Godfrey’s success, elected to hire her for Nothing Sacred.

This presented Selznick with a dilemma as Lombard’s window to make the picture was narrow and needed to be aligned with Selznick’s ambitions to shoot the movie in Technicolor (its limited cameras then rented out by the Technicolor Corp. on a picture-by-picture basis). I think it is important to note there are no stars in today’s cinema firmament like Carol Lombard. Arguably, there were none in her own time either; Lombard, uniquely situated as tomboy yet somehow stylish, fashionably modern, but with an unaffected sincerity that shone through all the glamor and makeup. She was as beloved within the Hollywood ‘club’ scene, as adored by critics and audiences on the screen: a true raconteur, wit, and all-around sassy ‘good-time’ gal.  Lombard’s career had soared, largely due to the guidance of her agent and mentor, Myron Selznick (yes, David’s brother). In just a few short years, Lombard had gone from a Mack Sennett bathing beauty to one of Hollywood’s highest paid super stars, commanding a salary of $465,000 per picture. To put this into perspective, with inflation factored, in today’s dollars Lombard was worth just a little under $8 million per picture. Very nice work if you could get it…especially in Depression-strapped America! Unfortunately, circa the period, roughly 85% of this monumental outlay was absorbed by personal income taxes. Yet even then, Lombard – ever flippant – could see the forest for the trees, publicly stating “I don’t need all that money for myself…so why not give what I don’t need for the government to improve the country?”  

Selznick placed Ben Hecht on notice. He needed to commit to a screenplay by mid-June to meet Lombard and Technicolor’s deadlines. To this end, Hecht – one of Hollywood’s most prolific and fastest writers – entered a draft for Selznick’s consideration in late April. The plot then involved a small sect of affluent, but vacuous and empty-headed travelers. One of them finds romance in a Havana hot spot with a girl who is never directly referenced, but decidedly inferred to be a prostitute. Whisking her back with him to New York, the girl becomes the man’s mistress until his own finances are wrecked, at which point, still masking her true identity, the man elects to set her up with one of his well-heeled friends. Selznick disliked this treatment immensely. Moreover, its tawdriness presented him with certain insurmountable barriers where the Production Code of Ethics was concerned. With time running out, Selznick instead bought James H. Street’s ‘Letter to the Editor’ outright – a marginal tale of a small-town spinster who offers to sell her story as a victim of radium poisoning to a Manhattan newspaper in exchanged for a whirlwind adventure in the Big Apple. The editor agrees to exploit the girl’s tragedy to sell more copy, unaware she is lying about her illness as part of her own calculated revenge for the editor earlier wrecking her boyfriend’s reputation and life. Hecht liked the basic premise and Selznick bought the rights for a cool $2500, paying Hecht another $30,000 to create an acceptable screenplay from it.

As rewritten by Hecht, the story now inveigled New York newspaper reporter, Wally Cook in the enterprising Hazel Flagg’s false claim she is dying of radium poisoning. Indeed, at the onset of our story, not even Flagg is aware she is well – the unwitting dupe of Dr. Downer’s calculated misdiagnosis. After Downer openly admits to fabricating Hazel’s illness, as he once entered a contest in the Morning Star, only to lose first prize, as this was erroneously awarded to the publisher’s sister – Hazel begrudgingly agrees to follow through with their ruse. However, she is gravely concerned their deceit will come to no good end; particularly for Wally, with whom she has rather desperately, in confrontation, fallen in love. Unaware of her lie, Cook stages a whirlwind tour of Manhattan for Flagg; Stone, manipulating every opportunity to transform this unlikely girl from Warsaw, Vermont, into an international celebrity – befitting of every and all manners of tributes – including an absurd homage to the ‘tootsies of all nations’ at the Casino Moderne, where Hazel’s plight is compared to the garish showgirl likenesses of Lady Godiva and Pocahontas. Eventually, keeping up appearances becomes overwhelming to Hazel who, at first contemplates to fake her own suicide with Downer’s help by leaping off a New York pier at midnight in order to escape the inevitable media fallout, then elects to engage Wally in her second disappearing act – a funeral staged for the public’s benefit; the two, later discovered by gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper, while sailing incognito aboard an ocean liner bound for South America.

Believing Hecht’s portrait of Oliver Stone as a conniving, short-fused, and generally irascible complicit in Hazel’s deception would strain his own alliances with the press, Selznick ordered his screenwriter to tone down Stone’s antics. Hecht willingly complied with this request. But he stood firm on another point of contention. Selznick disliked Hecht’s original finale; Stone, rather gleefully exposes the hoax, merely to sell more newspapers. Putting Ring Lardner Jr. and Budd Schulberg on the payroll, the pair cobbled together the ‘ocean liner’ finale in haste, Hecht openly despising this alteration to his work, though powerless to have it changed back. Mercifully, the movie’s dénouement is brief, barely lasting a minute on the screen, and does not impugn Hecht’s otherwise juicily pert and acidic wit. Completed on time and under budget, at $1.3 million, Nothing Sacred was a smash hit for Selznick, debuting at Radio City for the Thanksgiving rush and selling out six shows a day. Alas, due to its high costs in advertising and distribution it still lost $4000 during its first year of release. Viewed today, Nothing Sacred remains a deliciously slick offering. Given its appeal then, and critical success, it is a small wonder Selznick did not produce another comedy. But Selznick, as his particular brand of old-time mogul was apt to lean, followed his heart and his passions, firmly believing the public would simply follow his tastes and edicts, producing more adult-themed romances and ‘pictorializations’ (Selznick terminology) derived from time-honored, as well as best-selling literary properties of his day. Selznick’s pursuit of excellence would culminate in the banner back-to-back Oscar-winning Best Picture masterpieces, Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940). But being one’s own master would shortly thereafter steadily lead Selznick into financial ruin and bankruptcy by the mid-1940’s. Having already produced a comedy to satisfy Jock Whitney, Selznick preferred to make his own decisions, aligned with the seal of approval of his ‘good name’.

Nothing Sacred gets trundled out a second time on Blu-ray via Kino Lorber. A few years ago, Kino, under its Kino Classics banner, released several Selznick masterpieces to hi-def with less than stellar results; Nothing Sacred, among this batch. The colors then were sorely faded and bore no earthly resemblance to vintage Technicolor. So, now we have Kino’s re-investment; repackaged and reportedly ‘restored’ from a new 2K scan of the original 3-strip elements. Aside: I sincerely wish Kino would spend a little less time trumpeting the image resolution and concentrate a little more on getting someone – anyone – to perform the necessary ‘restoration’ and ‘clean-up’ on what remains a very flawed 1080p transfer. For starters, whole portions of this movie continue to suffer from egregious misalignment of the original 3-strip color negative; the net result, horrendous yellow and green halos that render the image all but un-watchable during these sequences. Honestly, if you are not going to put in the time to perform even this basic – if costly – correction, there really is NO point to releasing or advertising any vintage 3-strip Technicolor feature as ‘restored’! Also, certain scenes appear to have been culled, either from a second-generation master or a very grainy and badly worn fine grain master. Herein, the image is gritty and highly unstable, with age-related dirt and debris on full display.

Overall image quality can best be described as ‘soft’: a pity, as vintage Technicolor was generally razor-sharp and lush. Actors suffer from piggy pink flesh tones set against a spectrum that never look anything better than cartoony and wholly artificial. Contrast also seems just a tad too low, the image becoming sporadically muddy and unattractive. As example, we can barely make out what goes on during Hazel’s failed suicide leap off a New York pier. Finally, the 2.0 mono is strident and, occasionally grating on the ears. Kino has shelled out for a rather tepid audio commentary from William Wellman Jr. It’s okay, but prone to pregnant pauses. The picture is only an hour and thirteen minutes. One would have suspected Wellman had enough material to talk about for this length. Bottom line: in a perfect world, Nothing Sacred’s original film elements would have been archived property and presented in hi-def in a condition befitting a true classic from Hollywood’s golden age (think, Warner Archive quality here, folks). That it neither received such extensive work, nor even the most basic consideration, beyond an amplification of its original hues, is extremely disappointing. Pass and be glad that you did.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

1.5

EXTRAS

1