It’s about a girl who lets the world believe that she’s dying to enjoy fame and a free holiday in New York, until the truth comes out and a solution must be found.
The movie starts with the words “New York... where truth crushed to earth rises again more phony than a glass eye”, and then there’s a celebration for Wally Cook, a journalist with a big story who turns out to be fake when his rich sultan turns out to be a local man with wife and kids.
His boss Oliver Stone, the funniest character in the movie, is very angry and ‘plans to remove him from the living’, relegating him to writing the obituaries. Cook manages to convince him that he’s a better journalist than all the others and he could write a great story about Hazel Flagg, a girl who is dying of radium poisoning, instead of the simple column that has already appeared. Cook leaves for Vermont, where people don’t like journalists and say a lot of yeps.
Just now Hazel learns from his doctor that he had made a mistake and that she’s not dying; she’s relieved at first, and then almost sorry because she had planned to use up all the money she had to go away and spend her last weeks enjoying herself. She comes out of his office crying when Cook meets her and obviously thinks that she’s crying because she’s dying. He tells her that he can take her to New York, all paid by his newspaper, the Morning Star. She accepts and brings her doctor along, who strongly feels that the Morning Star owes him for not giving him the prize he feels he should have won twenty years before. The whole of New York honors her, there are front pages talking about the “doomed girl” and she receives the key to the city, and everybody cries for her and speaks of her great courage and how she’s an example to everyone. She knows she’s a fake but it takes a long time before she starts talking about a conscience.
When she’s called on stage she suddenly faints and everyone thinks she’s getting worse but she had been drinking all night and is simply drunk.
When she wakes up, still hangover, Cook comes to see how she’s feeling and to discuss with her the terms for her funeral, and to tell her that he’ll ask for a national day in her name. He tells her that he wanted the President to be present at her funeral but that he’s not available: “he’s still fishing” :lol: things don’t change all that much huh?
He also tells her that he doesn’t want to give up and that he’s called another doctor, an expert, to have a look at her. She’s terribly upset and thinks of faking her suicide and disappear. She leaves a not on the pillow and sneaks out that same night, but a man (the fake sultan) come to take some of her flowers for his wife finds the note and calls Stone immediately. The police and Cook are alerted, and Cook finds her before she conjures up enough courage to throw herself into the river (although knowing very well, since she checked, that her doc was there with a boat to take her to safety). Trying to stop her from committing suicide he inadvertently pushes her and then he jumps too without thinking, wanting to save her only he can’t swim. Together they get out and he proposes to her - a swim in the river and a lot of kisses and her makeup and lipstick are still absolute perfection :-)
The famous doctor from Vienna didn’t come alone. Hazel was examined also by his colleagues from Berlin, Moscow and Prague. They report to Stone that Hazel is totally healthy and therefore an impostor. Stone is very upset of course. Cook is glad to learn that she won’t die, but Stone is furious and orders his men to get her, but she fakes another illness, pneumonia this time. Cook doesn’t fall for it this time, but wants his boss to believe her so in order to make her all sweaty they have a fight and then he hit her to knock her out. He says it’s alright because he loves her. Then she comes to and hits him back, and then tells him she’s sorry because she loves him - she took him by surprise of course, she was being the worst fighter I have ever seen..
She confesses to the mayor and those few people outside her room waiting to see how she’s doing, and together they plan a way out. The papers report her death and everybody attends her funeral and shed tears for her while she goes away and marries Cook.
In the opening credits all the main actors are listed beside a terrifying miniature caricature of them :-p
All the cast was good.
Hazel- Carole Lombard
Cook- Fredric March
Her doctor- Charles Winninger, who has the tendency to ‘lean’ towards the people he speaks to, very Michael-Jackson-style :lol:
Oliver- Walter Connolly
Vermont drugstore lady- Margaret Hamilton - funny
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