Production
The first screwball comedy filmed in color, Nothing Sacred also represents the first use in a color film of process effects, montage and rear screen projection. Backgrounds for the rear projection were filmed on the streets of New York. Paramount Pictures and other studios refined this technique in their subsequent color features.
Ben Hecht is credited with writing the screenplay in two weeks on a train. He adapted the story "Letter to the Editor" by James H. Street which had been first been published in Hearst's International-Cosmopolitan. Hecht wrote a role for his friend John Barrymore in the film, but David Selznick refused to use him as Barrymore had become by then an incurable alcoholic. This caused a rift between Hecht and Selznick, and Hecht walked off the picture. Budd Schulberg and Dorothy Parker were called in to write the final scenes and several others also made contributions to the screenplay, including: David O. Selznick, William Wellman, Sidney Howard, Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman and Robert Carson.
One of the reasons why this is considered one of the most celebrated screwball comedies is that underneath the humor is some of the most cynical and serious themes of corruption and dishonesty. This film, as well as The Front Page and subsequent His Girl Friday shows the extent some newspapers went to get a story.
This film (along with Selznick's "A Star Is Born"), despite being in the public domain, were released on DVD in 2011 by Kino Classics in transfers made from 35mm nitrate Technicolor prints preserved by the George Eastman House Motion Picture Department and authorized by the estate of David O. Selznick; prior to this most home video releases of both films had rather poor quality color. The Museum of Modern Art has partially restored both films to their Technicolor splendor. In 1999, Disney had fully restored the film, but this full restoration has yet to be released on DVD or blu-ray. Since Disney performed a full restoration, it is far superior to what has been released on home video, including the release by Kino Classics.
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Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)