Born to Be Bad (1934)

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A Loretta Young vehicle. She plays Letty, a single mother with an obstreperous son, Mickey (Jackie Kelk). Letty has some sort of job wearing dresses at nightclubs—it's a little obscure, but the point is, she gets to look pretty. Mickey gets knocked over by a milk truck driven by dairy magnate Malcolm Trevor (Cary Grant), and Letty, Mickey, and a shady lawyer try to get damages, but somebody's taken film of Mickey running and jumping, so they throw the case out of court and Mickey gets taken away, first by matrons, and then by the soft-hearted Trevor. Mickey rather likes the posh life, and the affection of Trevor and his wife Alyce (Marion Burns). Then the scheming Letty tries to get her son back by fascinating Trevor—easily done—but the noble response of the wife, first in not making a fuss, and then saving Mickey from drowning in the swimming pool, changes her mind. She dumps Trevor, though he's ready to divorce his wife for her, and walks away, teary-eyed. Big unselfish act, probably her first. The movie ends rather abruptly, after Letty's friend remembers some incident or other from the boy's infancy, saying something about how cute he was. Letty gazes tearfully into the middle distance. "Yeah," she says. That's the end. The bad girl goes good. Young does a decent enough job with this melodrama. The kid Kelk is knobby-kneed, big-eared, and a ham. Grant is mostly a stick figure—any upright actor would do. Good thing it's only an hour long.

Letty (Loretta Young) is a tramp. Early in the film she is established as a classy, attractive girl who appreciates fine things. The viewer is then given a shock when she suddenly changes in demeanor. I was impressed with the way Loretta Young was able to go from "nice" to "naughty" in one scene, giving away her character's true nature beyond a doubt. For nearly the full length of the movie we see Letty trying to cheat her way through life, convinced it is the only way to survive.Audiences of 1934 may have been looking for escapism in motion pictures, but I do not believe they could have found Loretta Young's character appealing. Pregnant at 15, she was taken in by a kind book store owner, but as she reached her early 20's she had taught herself and her son to win at any cost. In doing so, she becomes an escort to prominent men while her son, Mickey (Jackie Kelk), learns to be "street-wise" at a very early age. You could easily imagine Mickey ending up in prison. Having a lawyer offer advice on how to commit a new scam was a nice touch. Surely no one could feel sorry for Letty losing her son as an unfit mother. Loretta played that "unfit" part perfectly.Cary Grant really blended into the background in Born To Be Bad. His star was rising, but virtually any lead actor could have played Mal Trevor. Jackie Kelk was slightly older than his character, Mickey, at the time the movie was made. I found Mickey's change of heart to be a bit too easy, but as others have commented the movie is a bit short. Maybe with more time to show the supporting characters develop the movie would have made more sense. The only characters that really had any depth were Letty and Mickey.

Having grown up w/Loretta Young as a paragon of virtue in her TV show and her movies (seen on TV) - The Bishop's Wife, The Famer's Daughter, Come to the Stable, etc, etc, etc - I was surprised and entertained by this bauble. She plays a slut w/verve, AND she is dressed w/ her habitual hyper elegance. She changes outfits 5or 6 times a day, evidently. Her rather brutal screaming at her raucous son strikes an odd note, making her (no other word will do) horniness even more striking. Cary Grant is about as long-suffering & gullible as he was w/ Mae West, but he also looks good. Fast, sentimental and raunchy, she even gets to tear up several times - a swell little film.

Breathtakingly beautiful is the young Loretta Young in this movie--short movie, that is, which gives us life in the thirties with a look at fashion, language and life. It is a fair movie but pleasant to see because of the era in which it was made is so apparent in it. Cary Grant is young and vibrant and charming, isn't he always? As said, Loretta seems to own many lovely and glamorous clothes for a woman who is down on her luck, but well, it is a movie. Did I say she looks beautiful. She is a selfish woman who devises a plot to win her son back but comes to realize what really matters in the end is not her own good, but the well being of her child. A very short movie, too short, and ends abruptly, but I did enjoy seeing it. Stars today are not as beautiful as once was Loretta Young.