Screwball Satire?

Reading scripts from the early days of talkies isn't the easiest thing for me. I assume that many of the early screenwriters were playwrights to begin with and so needed to explain much stage direction. These kinds of things aren't really seen much in scripts today, unless the director has written the script. In any case, it's can be a lengthy process for me because it doesn't always grab me. So, I'm always hesitant to read an old script. Especially when I see a lot of action lines. This was the case with Ben Hecht's screenplay of Nothing Sacred. Straight from the beginning, he's describing this world, and I'm almost a bit overwhelmed. But truth be told, once I got over it, the story is quite good, and different from what the film turned out to be, and it became clear to me that Nothing Sacred wasn't meant to be a screwball comedy, but really it's more black comedy, it's meant to be a satire.

To be quite honest, I couldn't understand why it is that people love this film so much and I just couldn't see why, other than that Lombard was lovely in it and Charles Winninger was pretty funny, Hattie McDaniel and Margaret Hamilton have essentially cameos but make great use of their small roles. But I couldn't really see what it was that was great about it. I thought because of the change of writers that there was something wrong with the story, and there is, although I couldn't figure out how to make it better. When you reach the end of the film, you kind of know it's going there, but it's not very satisfying. I'm not really laughing a whole lot when Hazel suddenly tells all these leaders of New York that she's not sick and then they all decide the story can't get out. I like the bit about dying alone like an elephant, but that's a line that would have been funnier as a payoff if the film would've kept the setup from the script, but they didn't, and so it's just a funny line only because Carole Lombard knows how to deliver it.

The screenplay is quite cynical, and in the end I almost didn't like it. In fact, as I was getting close to the end I was a bit disgusted by Hazel because in my head I think this is a screwball comedy and suddenly there's nothing funny about kidnapping newborns from African-Americans who are written in such a racist manner that I had reached my limit. But it turned out quite funny and the ending was sweet. I still think the script has some blatant racism in it though, but I know those were different times. I think where the film fails is that William Wellman and David O. Selznick wanted it to be a Lombard screwball comedy, but it wasn't. Whereas in the film, you like Hazel, she isn't really likable in the script, but then again, no one is. Everyone has their own motivations for the whole deception. While Wally and Stone think it's the real deal, they exploit Hazel in order to sell newspapers. Hazel just wants a free tour of New York because she's sick of Warsaw and Dr. Enoch is holding a twenty-two-year-old grudge against the Morning Star for not picking him as the winner of an essay on the six greatest Americans--which is another setup that never gets paid off in the film, but in the script it does. Sure, these are all things that are pretty much established in the film, but the screenplay shows a more nuanced portrayal of these characters.

For the most part, Stone is left intact as a ruthless and exploitative newspaper editor, only there are more headlines he toys around with and to show how desperate he is at selling newspapers he even writes an article when he has to. Wally, on the other hand, seems funnier in the screenplay, but here I think it's because of the lines and so Fredric March's performance is hurt more by the rewrites of the script. The line of the greatest fire in Rome, which comes out of nowhere almost in the film, is said earlier in the scene and within the dialogue context. It seems as if the writers hired to polish up the dialogue only picked lines they liked and forced them onto new dialogue, without really re-reading it through. The marble editor line, though, was kept intact, which goes to show that March couldn't quite deliver it, or at least he couldn't quite do it for me.

The different ending reveals even more about some of the characters. Hazel is seen as even more ambitious than Wally, and suddenly driven to get a bigger story to help out Wally and Stone. On the other hand, Dr. Enoch was robbed of some of his best lines by the rewrite of the ending. This bumbling doctor, who you're always wondering how he ever got his license to practice, does the biggest botch-up in the end. The Sultan shows up again because his wife is delivering four babies and she had met him as a Sultan and so he wanted her to have a sort of formal delivery. He asks for Enoch's help. The good doctor falls for the Sultan's request. Hazel and Wally are trying to get out of New York before everyone discovers who they are and leave Stone behind to take the fall once everyone finds out the truth. Wally feels bad about it and wishes there was a bigger story that would overshadow Hazel. And while quadruplets aren't really that big of a story, when Hazel sees another African-American with recently born twins, she dons a nurse's uniform, tricks the father into going home so she can steal the babies from the nursery. She delivers them to Enoch, who reluctantly agrees to go along with the plan, and thus a new story is born: the world's very first sextuplets, or as Enoch names them, the six greatest Americans--he did say he was going to show the Morning Star the six greatest Americans if it was the last thing he ever did. And so, everyone is in full-mode again and Hazel and Wally slip out. Of course, days later when the two are to be wed, they get a note to go to the hospital at once, and when they all arrive, the scene there is filled with cops, Stone apprehended by a couple of them, Enoch by another pair, the African-American father pointing fingers, and when Wally and Hazel see this, they quietly slip out before getting caught. And what do the six babies sound like when they cry? Why they cry to the tune of the song Dixie. There're more details, but this is the general gist of it, and I must say it's more satisfying than the one in the film. It just seems like everything set up in the beginning is finally paid off in the end. It comes across as smarter and worth more my time. Mostly though, it's a lot darker and cynical of not just journalism but the people that drive it, from the reader to the journalist and round back to the object of the stories. Everyone in the end has their own selfish motives to get ahead and drive the newspaper business booming along the way.

Some of the other differences include the montage in the beginning and the attempted suicide. In the screenplay, the montage is different and then the scenes that follow are a different order of what we see in the film. For what I see in the script, it seems that is perhaps the only part in which the film version is served better. Much of this is more talking, but I liked that in the film these things are shown instead. I don't need to hear about the whole sculpture that is going to be made in Hazel's memorial, but I rather enjoyed watching a poet trying to be inspired by a bored Hazel sitting right across from him. What these scenes did show, though, was just how exploitative Stone could really get, something I kind of already knew, but through these scenes it's definite and who knows, while I could've done without them, perhaps if they would've stayed then Walter Connolly might've given a more convincing performance. As for the attempted suicide, Lombard has a way of making a simple suicide completely screwy. This scene is much funnier in the film, with Hazel getting the nerve to jump and Wally pushing her in and them jumping in only he can't swim. In the script, Hazel is found swimming and Wally rescues her. They banter, but the film version is much funnier, at least when considering it as a screwball comedy.

I'm really glad I was able to find and read the screenplay to Nothing Sacred, mostly because I really wanted to like the film and through the script I realized the true story and was able to better appreciate it. It would be interesting to see the remake to see how loyal it remained to either the film or the script. The screenplay made clear too what defines a screwball comedy, and the cynicism found in Nothing Sacred, isn't something typical of the genre. The film in the end, is an attempt at a screwball comedy but with dashes of satire so it somehow ends up being a screwball satire, which is confusing, and if you read the script, you'll just wish they made that film instead.