Born to Be Bad

This is the type of Pre-Code film that makes you curse the Hayes Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency. It is more serious and adult orientated movie than almost any movie for the next 20 years.

You have ambiguous lead characters who are allowed to be both good and bad people, so you can't really guess how things will turn out. The Hayes Code pretty much separated characters into good and bad and you could easily guess who would be rewarded (the good) and who would be punished (the bad).

Loretta Young is the revelation here. She looks a bit like Liza Minnelli in "Cabaret" and she seems to genuinely enjoy breaking social customs and taboos. She reminded me of Joan Crawford's character in "Rain". Her determination to seduce Cary Grant away from his wife still manages to shock us, or at least me, in 2010.

I know that Loretta Young hosted an anthology television series in the 1950's, which was rerun in the daytime through the 1960's. As a child, I found it quite boring and never watched it. I'm sure I would find it fascinating today.

The lackluster boy actor is the only weak part of the film. Young plays their scenes with genuine warmth, but the kid just gives us an early version of the East Side Kids caricature.

Cary Grant is his usual good guy self, but undergoes quite an unusual transformation. It is rare when Grant does something to alienate the audience in a movie, as he does here. He seems in complete control, but Loretta's sexiness causes him to lose his cool persona.

In most films we root for a mother who is going to lose her wayward son to state institutions. Here, we almost root against her getting her kid back. All in all, a fine film.

This film illustrates the havoc that was caused by the Hays code. Loretta Young tries her best to portray Joan Crawford in the bad-girl role, with little of Crawford's ability to show internal conflict and humor. Grant is adequate in his early cardboard handsomeness. The film, however, does not hold together, and has the look and feel of something that was taken apart and reassembled a number of times. Apparently Born to Be Bad ran into a lot of trouble with the censors, and was cut and tweaked to facilitate its release, leading to some mystifying gaps, puzzling voice-overs, and an ending which strains ones already diminished credibility. Still and interesting film to see for its historical value, being made on the cusp of an era which gutted movies of adult content and moral ambiguity.

Loretta Young looks angelically beautiful as an immoral young woman, radiant in all of her many close-ups. Her eyes have such an innocent beauty despite the fact that her character is supposed to have the sort of hard edge usually assigned to Harlow or Crawford. The story asks us to believe she had an early pregnancy from a man who deserted her and left her with a bratty son whom she smothers with mother love while garbed in glamorous clothes.

It also asks us to accept Cary Grant as a wealthy millionaire who takes pity on her situation and invites the boy to live with him in his posh home in the country. Grant seems a bit ill at ease here, and clearly had not yet fully developed his typical Cary Grant persona. Still, it's interesting to see both he and Loretta cast against type in this kind of story.

I don't agree with harsh words about Jackie Kelp's performance as her son. I found him reasonably believable in the part although he did look more than the supposed seven years. Loretta's scheme is to ingratiate herself with Grant so that she can steal the boy back even though Grant can give him everything.

The weak, abrupt ending is probably due to production code etiquette which was still having a hard time with all the sordid ingredients implied by the script. It's an unsatisfying ending for a story that could have been developed with more care for the downbeat ending.

Minor characters are very underdeveloped, notably that of Henry Travers as Young's loyal friend.

Summing up: More of a curiosity piece for Loretta Young's fans than anything else--and she was definitely a vision of beauty in her early 20s.

This flawed second feature -- about a beautiful floozy, her streetwise little boy, and the millionaire who comes to their aid -- sustains interest only thanks to the attractive stars. Young, with her huge eyes and dazzling smile, has the aura of Joan Crawford in her "Dance, Fools, Dance" period, while Grant, who was 30 when this was made, has not yet fully matured into the character we know from the second half of the 1930s. The story, despite its implausibility, is not unappealing; it is pleasant to imagine oneself being a slum-kid one day and being invited to live with Cary Grant and his affectionate wife the next. The screenplay is oddly structured; the story begins with Young being admired by an odd trio that looks as if it wandered off from the set of "Dinner At Eight" and whom we never see again, and the picture ends just as abruptly. Still, not a bad way to spend 65 minutes.

Well, a little LENGTH might have helped. This is a short film but a fascinating one - it's pre-Code and Loretta Young plays a tramp. It's also a pairing of two of the golden era's stars before they really hit the big time.

I don't think Young was the best actress in the world but boy, was she beautiful. A face like a cameo, and she was early 20s in this. She plays an unwed mother who lives off of sugar daddies. She sees the mother lode when her brat son gets hit by a truck.

Though the con doesn't work, Loretta's child is adopted by millionaire Cary Grant and his wife - or soon to be ex-wife if Young, hot on another scheme, has anything to say about it.

In her TV show, Young experimented more with "against type" characters. This hard, street smart woman is a departure for her in film, and she does a good job. Grant in this has not yet matured into his incredible looks or his screen persona, but he is effective. This film is worth seeing for a glimpse of these stars as they were before they "made it." And for Young's clothes and rare, radiant beauty.