Mill Creek Comedy Classics #77: "Made for Each Other" (1939)

Jimmy Stewart's mother faints when she meets her new daughter-in-law, Carole Lombard.

The flick: Made for Each Other (Selznick International Pictures/United Artists, 1939) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 6.5

Director: John Cromwell (Dead Reckoning, Of Human Bondage, Since You Went Away; acted for Robert Altman in A Wedding and 3 Women)

Lucile Watson

Actors of note: 

• James Stewart (popularly known as Jimmy, he appeared in Hitchcock's Vertigo, Rear Window, Rope, and The Man Who Knew Too Much; Capra's It's a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; much, much more; the AFI ranked him the #3 male star of all time, behind only Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant)

• Carole Lombard (Nothing Sacred; Swing High, Swing Low)

• Charles Coburn (Colonel Effingham's Raid)

• Lucile Watson (appeared in Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith along with Carole Lombard; also acted in Song of the South, The Women, The Razor's Edge, etc.)

• Eddie Qullian (The Grapes of Wrath, Mutiny on the Bounty; episodes of TV's Batman, The A-Team, Moonlighting, Columbo)

• Alma Kruger (Hitchcock's Saboteur; Hawks' His Girl Friday)

• Raymond Bailey (best known as Milburn Drysdale on TV's The Beverly Hillbillies, but also appeared in Vertigo, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Tarantula, Picnic, The Absent-Minded Professor, etc.)

• Ward Bond (Three Broadway Girls)

• Milburn Stone (Heading for Heaven)

• Louise Beavers (Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus, Palooka, Three Broadway Girls, Never Wave at a WAC)

• Donald Briggs (After the Thin Man, Captains Courageous)

Other notables: The film was produced by legendary movie mogul David O. Selznick, the man largely responsible for the Oscar-winning film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. That movie, Selznick's signature production, was released the very same year as Made for Each Other. According to multiple sources, the medical drama that constitutes the third act of this film is derived from a real-life incident involving David's brother, Myron.

Weaselly Donald Briggs

The gist of it: Young New York attorney John Mason (Stewart) returns to the Big Apple from a brief business trip to Boston, bringing with him a surprise new bride, Jane (Lombard), a woman he wed impulsively after their first meeting. John's boss, crotchety, hard-of hearing Judge Doolittle (Coburn), is a little peeved at the news. After all, everyone expected John to marry Doolittle's daughter, Eunice. (John claims never to have had any interest in Eunice.) John's rather snooty, old-fashioned mother, Harriet (Watson), faints when she hears the news. John and Jane, however, insist that Mrs. Mason will continue to live with them.

The two lovebirds soon encounter problems. First, their honeymoon is canceled due to John's work obligations. Then, John is passed over for partnership at his law firm in favor of scheming, brown-nosing Carter (Briggs). Several housekeepers either quit or are fired. John and Jane then have a baby, which only makes their financial problems worse. Bills go unpaid, and John worries that he's never going to make it as a lawyer, despite his talent for the profession. Jane and Harriet's relationship is also quite strained, with the young wife enduring a constant barrage of criticisms from her interfering mother-in-law.

Just as the Masons' marriage seems to be falling apart, a tragedy occurs. Their infant son contracts pneumonia, and his only hope is a serum that has to be flown in from Salt Lake City in a very dangerous snowstorm. Only Conway (Quillian) is brave and/or insane enough to attempt the mission of mercy. Meanwhile, the baby's life or death struggle brings John, Jane, Harriet, and even Doolittle closer together.

Just shy of a classic.

My take: The makings are here for a classic. After all, Made for Each Other boasts two iconic leading actors, an obviously talented director, above-average production values, and an excellent supporting cast. The performances here, especially by put-upon everyman Stewart, are engaging and believable, and the film is quite impressive from a technical standpoint, too, with inventive camera angles and dramatic lighting effects.

But I'll wager you've never seen or heard of Made for Each Other, and I only discovered it as an obscure public domain offering in a Mill Creek boxed set. Why is that? Well, I'd say a rather hokey and melodramatic script is what keeps this movie from being truly essential. Part of the blame for that rests on the shoulders of producer David O. Selznick, who insisted on shoehorning his brother Myron's medical crisis (which he deemed "too good to waste") into a plot where it didn't belong.

That gets to the heart of this movie's real problem: tone. As in, this movie never settles on one for very long. This is a story about two decent, reasonable people who get married on a whim and then find themselves entirely unprepared for the consequences of their actions. There is a lot of comedy to be mined from that situation, and the script occasionally acknowledges that, but every time the movie threatens to become fun, it takes a nosedive into soap opera misery. Jimmy Stewart and Carole Lombard are never able to enjoy themselves -- or each other -- for more than a minute or so at a time, since the plot requires them to take their problems seriously... and those problems occur at regular intervals for the entire running time.

Judging from his filmography, director John Cromwell's forte was clearly drama, not comedy. He revels in the dark and depressing aspects of this story, even when he doesn't have to. Take the sequence in which John and Jane's baby is born. Jimmy Stewart wakes up in some sort of guest room at a maternity hospital, then runs to his wife's room, which is unoccupied. He dashes to the delivery room, only to be told by a nurse that everything is fine. Which it is. But the sequence has a spooky, film-noir quality to it that makes it feel like a Twilight Zone episode.

That same eerie, uneasy feeling seeps into the very downbeat New Years Eve sequence, during which the miserable Masons are surrounded by drunken revelers and garish party decorations on the worst night of their lives. And the last half hour or so, with pilot Eddie Quillan trying desperately to deliver the life-saving medicine to the hospital, seems like it was imported from another movie entirely. It's a well-paced, exciting sequence, but it's obviously at odds with anything even approaching comedy. Again, this is a script problem, not an acting or directing problem. (One minor quibble about the storytelling: There are four, perhaps five montages in this movie. Maybe two or three would have been enough.)

James Stewart and Donna Reed

But there are good aspects to the script, too, and they arrive in the form of intimate little moments that reveal the nature of the characters. I was especially taken, for instance, by a sequence in which a dejected John returns home from his college reunion, feeling like a failure compared to his classmates, then is cheered up by Jane, who has never stopped believing in him.

I think it's noteworthy that the script for Made for Each Other was written by Jo Swerling, who also contributed to the screenplay for It's a Wonderful Life (1946), arguably James Stewart's signature role. In many ways, Made for Each Other plays like a decent first draft of the enduring Capra classic. In both movies, Jimmy Stewart is an honest, hardworking guy who can't seem to catch a break and nearly loses his faith in himself and humanity until a last-minute miracle changes his mind.

Since I've seen Wonderful Life several dozen times, I could not help but find cognates, counterparts, and parallels in Made for Each Other, right down to the prominent use of "Auld Lang Syne" and the presence of a generous and wise African-American servant character. There are no supernatural elements in the 1939 film, but the two characters played by Jimmy Stewart face many of the same obstacles and anxieties. John Mason, for instance, is just about to take a honeymoon cruise to Europe with his new bride when he is summoned back to work. That's exactly the kind of thing that keeps happening to George Bailey. There are even matching scenes in which these fellows find out -- in equally cute ways -- that their wives are pregnant. And Carole Lombard's character, too, has a great deal in common with Donna Reed's Mary Bailey. Both are playful, intelligent, loyal, and justifiably worried about their husbands. At the beginning of Wonderful Life, Donna Reed's character is heard praying for the deliverance of her husband. In a similar scene in Made for Each Other, Carole Lombard visits a hospital chapel to plead with God to spare her baby.

Is it funny: Well, that's a little tricky since Made for Each Other isn't strictly a comedy. It's more like a domestic drama with occasional comic relief. What comedy is there works pretty well, I'd say, though I got a little tired of Charles Coburn's unreliable hearing aid after a while. Probably the funniest sequence in the film is one in which John and Jane struggle to get through a truly awful dinner party with doddering Judge Doolittle, slimy Mr. Carter, and Doolittle's obviously-spiteful daughter.

But there are funny little moments scattered throughout the proceedings, as when James Stewart seriously considers punching a wind-up toy drummer or when Harriet faints upon hearing of her son's nuptials. Though not named in the credits, Frank Ryan (The Cowboy and the Lady, A Night to Remember) is said to have contributed "humorous situations" to the film. Mr. Ryan, your efforts were appreciated. I just wish you'd found more opportunities to add some levity to a disconcertingly down-in-the-mouth movie.

My grade: B

P.S. - The modern-day viewer may cringe a little at Lily, the character portrayed by Louise Beavers, again playing a black domestic. It's true that Lily's philosophy is, "Never let the seeds stop you from enjoying the watermelon." And it's also true that, during the New Years Eve sequence, Lily stops by the Masons' apartment to deliver a chicken. So chicken and watermelon are both associated with the character. But Lily is also one of the film's most positive and honest characters, much superior to the other domestics in the film (the rest of whom are white). And she is Carole Lombard's only female friend in the entire movie... really, the only person with whom she interacts other than her husband and mother-in-law.

Mill Creek Comedy Classics #76: "Swing High, Swing Low" (1937)

Love behind bars: Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray's  memorable first date in Swing High, Swing Low.

The flick: Swing High, Swing Low (Paramount Pictures, 1937) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 6.6

Director: Mitchell Leisen (known for romantic comedies like Midnight, Remember the Night and Easy Living; directed three episodes of The Twilight Zone; was a costume designer on The Thief of Baghdad)

Charles Butterworth

Actors of note: 

• Carole Lombard (Nothing Sacred)

• Fred MacMurray (My Love For Yours)

• Charles Butterworth (Forsaking All Others, Second Chorus, and Love Me Tonight; no connection to the pancake syrup lady)

• Jean Dixon (My Man Godfrey, Holiday, You Only Live Once; not to be confused with the famed psychic Jeane Dixon)

• Dorothy Lamour (Road to Bali)

• Harvey Stephens (Hitchcock's North by Nortthwest and Alfred Hitchcock Presents; plus Sergeant York, The Young Lions, Beau Geste, and more; not the Harvey Stephens who played Damien in The Omen)

• Charles Judels (The Villain Still Pursued Her)

• Franklin Pangborn (Hollywood & Vine, Meet the Mayor, All Over Town)

• Cecil Cunningham (despite the masculine-sounding name, an actress; The Awful Truth, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town)

• Anthony Quinn (Mexican-born Oscar winner for Viva Zapata! and Lust for Life; nominated for his signature role as Alexis Zorba in Zorba the Greek; varied film career includes La Strada, Lawrence of Arabia, The Guns of Navarone, much more)

Other notables: Among the contributors to the screenplay was Oscar Hammerstein II, half of one of the most successful musical theater writing duos of the 20th century. The pair's Broadway shows were frequently turned into movies, including Oklahoma!, Flower Drum Song, The Sound of Music, State Fair, Carousel, and The King & I. R&H compositions include "My Favorite Things," "Some Enchanted Evening," "People Will Say We're in Love," "Getting to Know You," "You'll Never Walk Alone" and dozens more. There are several songs in Swing High, Swing Low, but Oscar had no hand in writing them. This movie is actually based on a hit play called Burlesque, which ran on Broadway from 1927-1928 and 1946-1948 and whose original stage cast included Barbara Stanwyck.

Carole Lombard considers her romantic options.

The gist of it: Accompanied by her pal Ella (Dixon), Maggie (Lombard) works as a beautician aboard a passenger ship so that she can travel to California and meet Harvey (Stephens), a wealthy California "cattle baron" she doesn't love but who wants to marry her anyway. At a stopover in Panama, Maggie meets Skid Johnson (MacMurray), a hotshot trumpet player just out of the army. Maggie and Ella decide to hit the town with Skid and the trumpeter's piano-playing buddy, Harry* (Butterworth).

That night, though, one of the locals (Quinn) tries getting "fresh" with Maggie, and Skid decks him, setting off a full-scale melee. Maggie and Skid spend the night in the clink, so Maggie misses her boat and has to move in with Skid and Harry. Sensing the trumpeter's true talent, Maggie gets Skid a job at a prominent night spot owned by crusty old Murphy (Cunningham). To get the club owner's sympathy, Maggie tells her that she and Skid are already married, and the young lady starts working there herself as a showgirl, putting her in direct competition with singer Anita Alvarez (Lamour), a sharp-tongued vixen who has a romantic past with Skid. Anita lands a job at New York's El Greco Club and moves to the Big Apple, and Skid soon gets a contract to work at the very same place. This is his shot at the big time! He and Maggie, who have recently gotten married for real, much to Harvey's disappointment, tearfully depart with the understanding that the trumpeter will send for his bride as soon as he can.

Skid is a sensation in NYC, quickly being crowned "the King of the Trumpeters," but he gets distracted by the fast life and doesn't send for Maggie like he said he would. Maggie then asks Murphy to pay for her ticket and travels to New York herself. Scheming Anita, however, has intercepted Maggie's telegram to Skid, and he doesn't pick her up when her ship arrives in town. Instead, Skid goes clubbing with Anita and then falls asleep on her couch. When Maggie calls Anita's place and Skid answers, she assumes the worst and begins divorce proceedings against Skid. The trumpeter is devastated and goes into a career tailspin, and Maggie isn't too thrilled either, even though she plans to now marry nice guy Harvey. Can Skid and Maggie's marriage be saved? And what about Skid's trumpeting career? Harry has a band of his own now, and they need a trumpet player for a big radio show. But Skid might be too tipsy to make his big comeback.

* Confusingly, this movie has characters named Harry, Harvey, and Henri.

Screenwriter Virginia Van Upp

My take: I didn't know how my luck was going to break when I cued up Swing High, Swing Low. After all, Carole Lombard was the star of one of the films I'd liked best in this series, Nothing Sacred, while Fred MacMurray had toplined one of the flicks I'd truly despised, My Love for Yours (aka Honeymoon in Bali). The DNA of Swing High, Swing Low is actually much closer to that of the latter than the former. They even share a co-screenwriter, Virginia Van Upp. They have other elements in common, too: an exotic locale (Bali vs. Panama), a frumpy female best friend for the heroine (Helen Broderick vs. Jean Dixon), a vampy romantic rival for the heroine (Osa Massen vs. Dorothy Lamour), a wimpy romantic rival for the hero (Allan Jones vs. Harvey Stephens), and a pivotal song which reminds the hero and heroine of the good times they once had ("Mama Don't Want No Peas..." vs. "I Hear a Call to Arms"). Little wonder that both My Love for Yours and Swing High, Swing Low measure a 6.6 on the IMDb.

But Swing High isn't nearly as objectionable as My Love for Yours, largely because it isn't so preachy and misogynistic. Fred MacMurray's character is again a smarmy, overconfident jerk whose personality should make the heroine run, not walk, in the opposite direction. But at least Swing High knows better than to treat MacMurray as a god among men. When Skid and Maggie's romance temporarily hits a rough patch -- as the central relationships in pretty much all romcoms must do at some point in the narrative -- it is Skid who really falls to pieces, becoming a penniless, zombie-like alcoholic who staggers around New York in a daze. And it's Maggie who comes to his rescue, even though she has a viable second option in dull but reliable Harvey.

Still in all, I didn't see why it was necessary for this movie to become so weepy and depressing on the back nine. Carole Lombard is a delightful screen comedienne, with a personality that's part Lucille Ball and part Dorothy Parker, and this movie would have been well-advised to emulate the anarchic, anything-goes spirit of Nothing Sacred. Instead, Lombard gets to have lots of fun in the opening passages of the movie, but the frivolity basically evaporates after Maggie and Skid get married. Although it's heresy to say so, I would have been fine if Skid had wound up with Dorothy Lamour's character, the slinky, sexy Anita, whose "Panamania" is probably the film's most arousing musical number.

Director Mitchell Leisen keeps things moving nicely but largely tries to stay out of the way and not make his presence overly felt. From the look of it, Swing High was a fairly low-budget picture, with generous use of stock footage and some not-too-convincing rear projection shots. None of this is helped by the fact that the film is in pretty terrible condition these days, obviously mastered from a video tape transfer of a scratchy film print rather than the original negative. Anyway, the public must have liked the Lombard-MacMurray pairing, as they made four other films together.

Is it funny: Tough to say. I didn't laugh much, especially during the film's soggy, melodramatic last half. The first half is pretty heavy on the rapid-fire 1930s romantic comedy banter, with MacMurray and Lombard trading scripted-sounding quips within seconds of their first meeting. But through most of this, I was just nodding in appreciation and thinking, "Heh. That's cute." Now, as I see it, "cute" and "funny" are not mutually exclusive, but they are distinct from one another. Swing High is one of those movies which gets along on its likability. The film is so darned ingratiating that many viewers won't actually notice that it really isn't that funny and that the jokes are just sitcom-type zingers done at twice the normal speed.

That said, I will allow I quite liked the scene in which Lombard tells MacMurray why she hates trumpet music ("It's just noise!")... only to learn that her date plays trumpet music. (Whoops!) And it's kind of funny that Maggie and Skid's first date lands them in jail and that their total incomprehension of Spanish gets them in further hot water with the annoyed judge, who keeps raising their fine each time they try to argue their way out of paying. There are some nice supporting turns here, too. When she's still on the ship, for instance, Carole Lombard tests the patience of her boss, our good pal Franklin Pangborn, with her total incompetence on the job. She's not really a beautician, you see, and she manages to burn off the hair of one of her customers -- an unfortunate situation she unconvincingly blames on the humidity.

Anyway, Pangborn does his usual long-suffering fussbudget routine, and it's about as funny as it always is. Charles Butterworth, too, manages to steal some scenes with his deadpan, detached bemusement as Fred MacMurray's unflappable buddy. I can't recall anything particularly funny that he says, but he says them in a funny-enough way. Oh, there's one weird little scene where he takes off his coat only to reveal a second coat underneath the first. It's just a nice little moment of unexplained absurdity. I would have prescribed a few more.

My grade: B-

P.S. - Just like My Love for Yours, Swing High is not too sensitive in its depiction of non-white characters. The actual Panamanians in the Panama scenes are treated as little more than gibberish-spouting primitives who must acquiesce to the English-speaking white characters, i.e. the only people whose lives truly matter. And the movie does use a subservient, "yes, ma'am"-type Negro in a Santa Claus costume as a quick visual joke. Again, the movie is not as heavy-handed in its racism as My Love for Yours. But modern-day viewers should expect to cringe a little at the depiction of Central American people in this film nevertheless.

Mill Creek comedy classics #34: "Nothing Sacred" (1937)

That means The Merry Suicide. The French really know how to sell a picture, huh?

The flick: Nothing Sacred (Selznick International Pictures, distributed by United Artists, 1937) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 7.3

Director: William A. Wellman (The Ox-Bow Incident, The Public Enemy, A Star is Born [1937, won Oscars for writing and directing]; known as a hell-raiser who hated actors; married four times; made 83 movies in 38 years)

Margaret Hamilton; Billy Barty

Actors of note: 

• Carole Lombard (aka "the Profane Angel"; starred in To Be or Not to Be, My Man Godfrey, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, much more; died in a plane crash at age 33)

• Fredric March (Oscar winner for The Best Years of our Lives and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde; nominated three more times; starred in Inherit the Wind, Seven Days in May, a great deal more)

• Charles Winninger (Destry Rides Again, State Fair, Show Boat)

• Walter Connolly (It Happened One Night, Libeled Lady)

• Sig Ruman (Billy Wilder's Stalag 17 and The Fortune Cookie, the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, and A Night in Casablanca) 

• Frank Fay (Vaudeville star; was married to Barbara Stanwyck)

• "Slapsie Maxie" Rosenbloom (Boxing Hall of Fame inductee; appeared in The Bellboy, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, etc.)

• Margaret Hamilton (two years from playing The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz; appeared in Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud, William Castle's 13 Ghosts, much more)

• Raymond Scott and his Quintette (TV's Your Hit Parade; recorded "Powerhouse" and other music featured in Warner Brothers cartoons and The Ren & Stimpy Show)

• Billy Barty (Willow, Legend, UHF, The Bride of Frankenstein, Foul Play, too much more to mention)

• Troy Brown, Sr. (The Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races)

• Hattie McDaniel (Goodbye Love)

• Charles Lane (The Milky Way)

• Hedda Hopper (B-movie actress turned infamous gossip columnist; known as "Queen of the Quickies")

• Tenen Holtz (Money Means Nothing)

Other notables: Original music by Oscar Levant (eccentric pianist, composer, noted wit, and member the Algonquin Round Table). Among those who contributed to the screenplay: Ben Hecht (so-called "Shakespere of Hollywood" and the credited screenwriter), James H. Street (given a "story by" credit), Moss Hart, Ring Lardner, Jr. (member of the Hollywood 10), George S. Kaufman, Budd Schulberg, George Oppenheimer, plus Wellman himself and producer David O. Selznick.

Big faker Carole Lombard

The gist of it: Hotshot Morning Star reporter Wally Cook (March) is in the doghouse with his temperamental editor, Oliver Stone (Connolly) after his latest discovery, a supposedly wealthy Eastern "potentate," turns out to be a plain old shoe shiner named Ernest Walker (Brown). Wally, Oliver, and the Star are the laughingstock of New York. But Wally promises his boss he's found his next great story -- a young Vermont woman named Hazel Flagg (Lombard) who's dying of "radium poisoning" from the local factory. Wally takes the first train to Hazel's hometown, Warsaw, to meet her in person. Meanwhile, Hazel's frequently-soused doctor, Enoch Downer (Winninger), has made a terrible discovery: Hazel isn't dying of anything. This upsets Hazel greatly, since she was looking forward to spend her life savings to finally get out of Warsaw on a big farewell spree.

Unaware of this new diagnosis, Wally catches Hazel as she emerges in tears from Dr. Downer's office and vows to take her and the good doctor back with him to New York. They agree, and soon Hazel is the toast of New York, gracing the cover of the Morning Star every day with gigantic headlines and inspiring tributes from all corners. Everywhere she goes, Hazel is treated as one of the greatest heroes in American history for her bravery in the face of death... even though she's not actually dying. Everything is going swimmingly until Wally, who has fallen in love with Hazel, brings in another doctor, the eminent medico Emil Eggelhoffer (Ruman), to examine the supposedly doomed girl. Desperate to keep her secret, Hazel will try anything, including faking her own suicide or feigning the symptoms of pneumonia, to keep from being exposed as a fraud. And once he learns the truth, Wally has no choice but to assist Hazel in perpetrating a public fraud.

Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole

My take: A comedy about the phoniness of the newspaper industry in particular and fraudulent media sensations in general, Nothing Sacred reminded me a bit of Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (1951), in which Kirk Douglas's unscrupulous reporter needlessly prolongs the rescue of a man trapped in a mine simply for the publicity and money it's generating. But Wilder's film, which was remade on The Simpsons as "Radio Bart," is much darker and is genuinely dismayed at human nature, while Wellman's film takes mankind's dishonesty as a given and cheerfully shrugs it off. Many tears are shed in this film over Hazel Flagg, and Nothing Sacred scoffs at every last one of them. On The Simpsons, fictional urchin "Timmy O'Toole" (actually Bart playing a prank) is treated like a hero simply for falling in a well, just as Hazel is elevated to the status of a goddess for contracting "radium poisoning."

In an incredible bit of timing, the previous article I wrote for this blog discusses "Hearts and Flowers," the song used in movies and television to denote false sympathy or mock tragedy. And, sure enough, that very tune plays on the soundtrack when a weepy Ernest, a fraud himself, reads Hazel's phony suicide note -- a document he discovered while ransacking her hotel room! The movie tells us that we pretend to mourn for public figures because it makes us feel better about ourselves, not because we really care about them. The closest this movie comes to sentimentality is in its depiction of Wally and Hazel's improbable love for one another, but even here, Wellman does not overplay his hand. Our lovebirds are never allowed to get cozy and romantic, at least not for long, before some new calamity arises. Besides, both characters are such utter goofballs that we don't really take them seriously as romantic figures.

Drew Friedman''s portrait of Raymond Scott

Beyond its parody of media sensationalism, Nothing Sacred is mainly interested in being a non-stop three-ring circus of entertainment. This is zany, fast-paced, sketch-comedy style humor which leans toward cartoon-like exaggeration rather than naturalism. The tone is set during the opening credits, which feature hand-painted, three-dimensional caricatures of the movie's four main actors. These grotesque figures are not unlike the Spitting Image puppets of the 1980s. It's no surprise to learn that the film's daffy, anything-goes script was used as the basis of a Martin and Lewis remake, Living It Up, seventeen years later.

While there's an escalating narrative throughout the entire film, Nothing Sacred also works as a series of vignettes, as when Wally arrives in Warsaw and is given the cold shoulder there by the tight-lipped townsfolk (including Margaret Hamilton) who mainly limit their responses to "yep" and "nope" and expect to be paid for their time. Then, there's a scene at a wrestling match (featuring Rosenbloom) which satirizes the staged phoniness of the sport -- tame by today's standards but ridiculous nevertheless. At one point, the wrestlers stop what they're doing for a ten-second moment of silence in Hazel's honor and then pick right back up again where they left off, which is to say knotted up in a human pretzel with the referee!

Possibly the most bizarre sequence is one set at a nightclub, where there is a musical tribute to the greatest women of history in Hazel's honor. While Raymond Scott and his band, unseen but unmistakable, play "novelty swing" arrangements of songs like "Yankee Doodle" and "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," showgirls dressed as Lady Godiva, Catherine the Great, and Pocahontas parade across the stage in a garish, tasteless spectacle. Honestly, the participation of Raymond Scott in this movie excited me more than that of Carole Lombard or Fredric March. Though I'd been unwittingly exposed to his melodies for years thanks to Warner Brothers cartoons, I truly learned to appreciate Scott's oddball style of jazz through The Ren & Stimpy Show, which employed Scott's original recordings. It's nice that this eccentric musical innovator was able to enjoy a resurgence in popularity (including CD reissues of his work) before he died in 1994.

More troubling, though, is the fate of Carole Lombard, who died only five years after this movie. The whole plot is predicated upon the fact that Ms. Lombard has a long, healthy life ahead of her. Unfortunately, we in the audience know otherwise.

The 3D caricatures from Nothing Sacred. Compare these to the Spitting Image puppets.

Is it funny: Yes, for the most part. This is one of those everything-but-the-kitchen-sink movies, so some scenes are bound to work better than others for you as a viewer depending on what you find funny. For instance, I found it quite amusing when a group of schoolchildren gather outside Hazel's hotel room door while she's terribly hungover and serenade her with a rendition of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," whose lyrics have been changed in her honor. But the ending of that scene, in which a squirrel crawls out of one boy's pocket and finds its way into Hazel's bed, didn't work for me. I tend to enjoy fast-paced newspaper comedies with cranky editors, so I got a lot of laughs out of Walter Connolly's character, Oliver, who is so fed up with Wally that he threatens to remove him "from the land of the living" and reassigns him to the obituary department.

Then again, some Swedish dialect comedy with a fireman (actually played by Canadian John Qualen) who comes to rescue the faux-suicidal Hazel didn't even raise a smile out of me. As for the film's violent comedic climax... well, it's tough to say. Without spoiling anything, I can say that I was genuinely surprised by it, possibly too shocked to actually laugh. It's a joke you'd never see in a modern live-action comedy, but it would be par for the course on Family Guy or an Adult Swim series. It's no coincidence that I keep making references to animation in this article. Nothing Sacred is that kind of movie.

My grade: A-

P.S. - This film starts with a heaping helping of racial stereotypes in the form of "shoeshine boy" Ernest Walker, whom Wally once refers to as "Old Black Joe" and whose exposure as a fraud causes Oliver to be serenaded with "Dixie" wherever he goes. Hattie McDaniel, two years from her Oscar-winning role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, plays Mrs.Walker, who shows up with her children at a gala event where her husband is pretending to be a foreign dignitary and shouts, "That's my husband!" as he bestows his benevolent blessing on the crowd. Later, Ernest will attempt to steal flowers from Hazel's hotel room to bring back to his wife. (He tells her he's getting the flowers "wholesale.") To be fair to Ernest, he does experience genuine sorrow when he discovers what he believes to be Hazel's suicide note. But for the most part, this is a dishonest, slow-witted, and buffoonish character.

And it doesn't end with Ernest. There's an Uncle Tom's Cabin joke, too, and a rendition of "Massa's in de Cold, Cold Ground." So maybe this isn't one to play during Black History Month.