BORN TO BE BAD (1934)

One of the last of the Hollywood sex melodramas to be released before the Hays Code kicked in during the summer of 1934, this is a nice little gem, almost an archetypal pre-Code movie. Loretta Young is the "bad" woman referred to in the title, an unwed mother who works as a whore for businessmen who want a little entertainment for the night. She's raising her 7-year-old son (Jackie Kelk) to survive by disrespecting authority, being tough, and getting whatever you can by whatever means necessary. Kelk is hit by a milk truck and, although his injuries are slight, Young (in collusion with a crooked doctor and lawyer) sues the milk company and has her son fake serious injuries. She is exposed in court, her son is taken away from her, and the guy who drove the milk truck (Cary Grant) adopts the boy. Of course, Grant isn't just a milkman, he's the president of the company (who just happened to be driving a truck that day!), so Kelk gets used to the soft life, living in a mansion with Grant and his wife (Marion Burns, a rather bland Mary Astor-type). Meantime, Young keeps up her crooked schemes, first trying to get the kid to steal some booty and run away with her, and when that fails, conning her way (via the old fainting trick) into spending a couple of days at the mansion and seducing Grant. Using a hidden phonograph recorder, she tricks Grant into sex and threatens to use the recording to regain custody of her son, but Grant is nobler than she thought: he has already told his wife that he plans to leave her and go off with Young. This forces a crisis: will Young actually break up the home, even though she doesn't really love Grant, or will she do the right thing for the first time in her life?

The movie is just an hour long, so the event-packed narrative doesn't do much with character development, which is a problem when Grant suddenly, with little motivation (except a little friction against the thighs), falls for Young's scheming. Otherwise, the movie is quite fun. Young gives a full-tilt performance as one of the "baddest" of the pre-Code dames. Kelk does a great job as the kid, and it seems strange that he basically gave up movies after this, though he did some TV many years later. Henry Travers plays a kindly old bookstore owner who gave Young a job and a place to live when she was a pregnant 15-year-old collapsed on his doorstep (in a rainstorm, of course) and continues to look after her, even though he is horrified by her philosophy of life. Russell Hopton is Steve, Young's boss/pimp, and Paul Harvey is Young's shyster lawyer--presented as an outrageous anti-Semitic stereotype. Grant isn't terribly impressive, mostly because he's steamrollered by the smoldering and conniving Young. Definitely worth seeing, especially for fans of the pre-Codes. [FMC]