"Nothing Sacred" (Carole Lombard, 1937) - Which One to Get?
 

I see that there are many different relases of "Nothing Sacred" available, many of which are very cheap, so I'm assuming this film fell into the public domain at some point. The same thing happened with "My Man Godfrey" and I made the mistake of buying the Madacy release, which was very cheap but had one of the worst transfers I've ever seen (I bought the Criterion version after that).

Can anyone point me to a relase of "Sacred" that is known to have a good transfer?

Re: "Nothing Sacred" (Carole Lombard, 1937) - Which One to Get?
 

I've also looked for news on a decent DVD of this title, but haven't found anything promising. What's frustrating is that Disney has done a restoration (mostly) from the original negatives, but because of the film's public domain status, haven't released it to either TV or DVD yet (which raises the question of why they restored it??)

Here are links to some more information:

HTF thread about "Nothing Sacred" (1937)

Article about restoration of "Nothing Sacred"

I always pair this title together in my mind with the 1937 "A Star is Born", which is also from Selznick studios, was released in the same year, is also in Technicolor, and stars Frederic March. It's similarly in PD with only weak DVD releases, but according to the HTF thread linked above, has been restored by UCLA but hasn't been released to TV or DVD release.

Re: "Nothing Sacred" (Carole Lombard, 1937) - Which One to Get?
 

As far as I know Nothing Sacred has only had unrestored public domain releases on dvd, so I don't believe that there is a "good" transfer available at least by major studio release standards. I did some research a couple of years ago looking for the best version, and the few mentions I could find back then indicated that the long out-of-print Lumivision release was the best available and the one to get. I don't know if that still holds true today. I believe the studio was later renamed Sling Shot and released the same disc with the same UPC.

I've only spot checked my disc, but it appears quite watchable with decent color, sound, and sharpness though the grain is quite heavy. There is a damaged stretch towards the beginning of the film where according to the dvd back cover text, "during one scene shrinkage of the original 3 strip technicolor materials has caused an uneven line-up of the colors." This results in a very noticeable pulsating edge effect for about five minutes, but if you go into the film forewarned and with realistic expectations for a public domain dvd, then I think this release is a viable option. It also has a few nice bonus features as well.

Re: "Nothing Sacred" (Carole Lombard, 1937) - Which One to Get?
 

Thanks a lot for the replies - interesting stuff. Hopefully both "Nothiing Sacred" and "A Star is Born" (1937) will get a proper DVD release using the restored versions soon. I don't know why they'd go to such great lengths to restore the film and then not release it on disc. Since "Sacred" was Lombard's only Technicolor film, it deserves the deluxe treatment.

Just watched "Star" last night on Turner Classics, and the print looked fine. Maybe TCM will issue these together at some point in the future. In the meantime, I'll have a look around for the Lumivision release, and hope for better things to come.