Carole Lombard takes on the High-Profile Illness

Carol Lombard is, uh, under the weather.

Spoiler Alert

You have to hand it to 1930s screwball comedies.

They are, in part, a response to the Production Code (c.a. 1930-67), a set of rules about What Was Allowed in the movies. Screwball comedies wink at audiences while madly skidding around these rules. In a screwball comedy, the question is: See what we did there?

But 1930s comedies also scrutinize society – and still do today. Our Man Godfrey, for example, skewers class differences in America. His Girl Friday observes political interference in the justice system. And here’s Nothing Sacred (1937), a film that tackles the celebrity of the high-profile illness.

In Nothing Sacred, Fredric March stars as a celebrated Manhattan journalist who’s been demoted because he allowed a con artist to embarrass his newspaper. He’s desperate to find a human interest story that will resurrect his career.

The luminous Carole Lombard stars as…