BORN TO BE BAD / Lowell Sherman (1934)

May 29th, 2007 by Scott Marks

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Born to Be Bad (1934)

Directed by: Lowell Sherman

Written by: Ralph Graves, Harrison Jacobs

Cast: Loretta Young, Cary Grant, Jackie Kelk, Marion Burns, Henry Travers, Paul Harvey, Russell Hopton, Harry Green

Aspect Ratio: 1.37 : 1

Genres: Drama, Romance, Adoption

Rating:

The theme of marital accord through adoption was very popular throughout the thirties (orphans) and especially the fifties (adoptive families) when the practice began gaining public acceptance.

If memory serves, Gloria Swanson was the first celebrity to publicly adopt a child. Prior to this a single mother in Hollywood meant one of three things: widowed, tied-tubes, or harlot. A formulaic offshoot of the genre frequently offered its heroines salvation through rejection: dump the kid, suffer the guilt and move on. Three years after Bord to be Bad, King Vidor would push melodramatic limits with Stella Dallas, the consummate orphaned mother melodrama.

Letty Strong (Loretta Young) is a “model” entertaining out of town buyers for clothes rep Steve Karns (Russell Hopton, a poor man’s Lee Tracy). At a ritzy nightclub, neighboring revelers misread her well-heeled veneer for that of a fellow socialite. In reality she’s a negligent single mother dealing with her seven-year-old delinquent son Mickey (Jackie Kelk).

As with so many child actors of the period, Kelk is all ears, freckles and urban earnestness. Even though the theme from The Babe Ruth Story is played towards the end, there’s nothing particularly sentimental about this mother and son relationship. Nor is the kid overly precocious. Instead of coming off as a hooligan, Kelk seems more a target for schoolyard bullies. It’s almost a relief when Malcolm Trevor (Cary Grant) runs him down with his milk wagon.

The scene is very effectively played out. From the point-of-view of Letty’s upstairs window we watch Mickey, on skates, hitch a ride off the back of a truck. Instead of faking it by using a midget stunt man or, worse yet, undecranking, Sherman blocks Young’s slight move left to obscure our view of the impact.
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