NOTHING SACRED is today regarded, if not exactly ‘sacred’, as certainly essential when appreciating the screwball comedies of the Golden Age. Back in 1937 it was considered, if not exactly ‘nothing’, but as ‘not all that much’, tagging just 62nd at the box office and absent any awards recognition. Odd, considering that it stars Fredric March and Carole Lombard, was directed by hit maker William A. Wellman, had a host of ace writers and was shot in Technicolor. Lombard, 28, was fresh off a triumph with My Man Godfrey. March and Wellman had a big win that year (in color) with A Star Is Born. Another Lombard lark from ’37, Swing High, Swing Low, was better attended. Today that one’s a trivia stumper for buffs while also-ran Nothing Sacred bowls over everyone who sees it.

“I’ll tell you briefly what I think of newspaper men. The hand of God, reaching down into the mire, couldn’t elevate one of them to the depths of degradation!”

Dejected and demoted after a story subject is revealed as a faker, reporter ‘Wally Cook’ (March) begs his truculent publisher ‘Oliver Stone’ (Walter Connolly) for a shot covering a Vermont woman dying of radium poisoning. Wally brings ‘Hazel Flagg’ (Lombard) to the Big Apple where her courage is feted from the gutter to the governor. Hazel and her hometown friend and physician ‘Dr. Enoch Downer’ (Charles Winninger) know something that Harry, Oliver and New York City don’t: she’s not on death’s door, she’s just dying to get out of Warsaw, Vermont.

Ben Hecht got sole screen credit for the hypocrisy hammering script, but a slew of A-list wits had chipped in their swipes: Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, Ring Lardner Jr., Budd Schulberg, Dorothy Parker, Sidney Howard and Robert Carson. Also kicking in were director Wellman and producer David O. Selznick.

While it’s funny from start to finish, the relatively mild reception may have been because slyness sailed over “da masses” and its eye-poking of public phoniness was more figurative than literal. The script infers there were a lot more than 3 stooges out there, full of beans in a ‘wised-up’ town where swells swilled champagne. March didn’t do many comedies, but here (as in Design For Living and I Married A Witch) he proves as adept in farce as he was in drama. Connolly boils with palpitating exasperation and Winninger puffs mock outrage. But fittingly, since the show & tell revolves around slaphappy Hazel, the prime slice of performance pie is served by Lombard. Good as she was in My Man Godfrey and To Be Or Not To Be, she’s a notch better here, at her most disarming with fleeting expressions and minute vocal intimations precisely capturing Hazel’s swooping moods, winning us over as surely as the fibbing Miss Flagg swept can’t-be-fooled Manhattan. Plus she’s in color, for the first and only time; those bright eyes sparkle. No wonder Clark felt like ‘The King’.

“Well, he’s got a different quality of charm. He’s sort of a cross between a Ferris wheel and a werewolf. But with a lovable streak–if you care to blast for it.”

Further blessed by choice moments from Frank Fay, Sig Ruman (‘Dr. Emil Eggelhoffer’, ‘from Vienna’), Maxie Rosenbloom, Troy Brown Sr. (“that fabulous and magnificent potentate of the Orient, the Sultan of Marzipan”), Olin Howland, Margaret Hamilton (19 parts down, six more before The Wizard Of Oz), John Qualen (exclaiming “Yumpin’ Yiminy!”, twice), Hattie McDaniel (59 parts down, 11 more before Gone With The Wind), George Chandler, Monica Bannister (‘Pocahontas’), Billy Barty (the kid who bites March’s leg), Leonid Kinskey (‘Ferdinand Roassare’, ‘poet’), Hedda Hopper (about to switch from actress to gossip maven/witch), Ann Doran, Monty Wooley, Charles Lane.

Scored by Oscar Levant, though Alfred Newman and Max Steiner also pitched in. Whisking by in 77 minutes. Price tag, $1,300,000: pocket money, $3,400,000.

* Sacred comedy company in ’37—The Awful Truth, A Day At The Races, Stage Door, Topper, Way Out West, One Hundred Men and a Girl.