Set in Warsaw, Vermont. An unscrupulous reporter takes advantage of a tragic story to sell papers and manipulate the world—sound familiar? This is a common tale, but it was seldom told with such comic, satirical flair as here. The screenplay was written by Ben Hecht (who had previously dipped his pen in ink to write about journalists in the 1931 film The Front Page).
Nothing Sacred is also notable as an early color film, and one of the few screwball comedies in color: since that genre flourished in the 1930s, few films used the relatively new and very expensive Technicolor process. The movie features the first montage and process effects in Technicolor, and it was the first to incorporate rear screen projection (watch for it during the airplane scene).