Nothing Sacred

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Nothing Sacred ★★★½ 1937

Slick, overzealous reporter takes advantage of a small-town girl's situation. As a publicity stunt, his newspaper brings her to the Big Apple to distract her from her supposedly imminent death in order to manipulate the public's sentiment as a means to sell more copy. Innocent young Lombard, however, is far from death's door, and deftly exploits her exploitation. Scathing indictment of the mass media and bovine mentality of the masses. Both hysterically funny and bitterly cynical; boasts Lombard's finest performance as the small-town rube who orchestrates the ruse. Remade in 1954 as “Living It Up.” DVD version includes home movie footage of a Lombard-Gable hunting trip and two Mack Sennett shorts—”Campus Vamp” (1928) and “Matchmaking Mama.” 75m/C VHS, DVD . Fredric March, Carole Lombard, Walter Connolly, Sig Rumann, Charles Winninger, Margaret Hamilton; D: William A. Wellman; W: Ben Hecht; C: William Howard Greene; M: Oscar Levant.