A screwball comedy from 1937, and one of the earliest films I've seen shot in Technicolor (not the earliest movie made with Technicolor, but Wikipedia claims it was the first "screwball comedy"). Fredric March plays the best reporter at his New York newspaper, but when an African Prince he brought to a charity event turns out to be a Harlem shoeshine man, he's demoted to the obituaries. He convinces his boss (the ever-present Walter Connolly - with the interesting character name of "Oliver Stone") to allow him to follow up a story about a small-town girl with radium poisoning (Carole Lombard). Unfortunately for him (although he doesn't find out for a while), she too is a fake.

The film sounded good on paper, taking jabs at the honesty of people in general, the press in particular, and the absurdity of media-generated fame. But the movie felt like someone had a basic concept ("newspaper man on the trail of a tear-jerking story that's a fake"), and a bunch of jokes that didn't necessarily fit the plot. No time seems to have been spent on integrating the jokes into the plot, they're just plopped down at appropriate intervals ... and most of them I didn't even find funny. If you listen to me, it's pretty damn unimpressive. If you listen to Rotten Tomatoes (as I did!), 10 critics out of 10 think it's a good movie.