Carole Lombard is the scatterbrained redhead from rural Vermont who fakes a terminal disease in order to enjoy an all-expenses-paid final fling in New York City, which she says she "couldn't appreciate" during her only other visit (at age three). Discovered by hard-luck reporter Frederick March and sponsored by his headline-hungry newspaper, she becomes an instant human-interest sensation: the doomed but noble innocent on whom the public can lavish all its bogus sympathies. The film may be less madcap than other screwball comedies of the time, but writer Ben Hecht's clearheaded satire of big city (and small town) hypocrisies still provides plenty of laughs, and the restored Technicolor print (I saw this on the big screen in the mid-1980s) is a real treat.
Review of Nothing Sacred
