Hot on the heels of Fox's successful First, Second and Third Waves of their 70th Anniversary releases comes the awaited fourth and final Wave. Sparkling again with cinematic gems such as
'Three Coins in the Fountain' and more war shenanigans in shape of
'The Enemy Below' and
'The Desert Fox' and includes the fantasy epics of Jules Verne with
'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' and
'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' . Amidst all these is a little seen drama from the thirties with two very young soon to be stars...
'Born to be Bad' is a very dated melodrama from Fox in their Classics range celebrating their 70th Anniversary. This 1934 potboiler starred two names that would later become very famous, that of Cary Grant and Loretta Young.
Young plays a teenaged mother, Letty Strong (Loretta Young), a street smart and sassy woman who has a seven year old son in the shape of Mickey (Jackie Kelk, better known as the character Georgie Basset in the popular series of seven one-reel
'Booth Tarkington Juvenile Stories' ). Letty has given up on life as she has been dealt bad blow after blow and has created a cynical and self-reliant beast that takes no prisoners, the only soft spot in her cold heart is that for her son.
We are introduced to both as Mickey is dragged by his very large years to her apartment by the truant officer. Mickey has been learning how to have street savvy rather than his English or any normal schooling lessons; this little tyke is his mother in the making. Showing the profits of his bottle collections while he should be in school this shows Mickey with a cigarette and supping away at a pint of beer, I guess this would have been somewhat daring in its time, but now this comes across as a dated curio more than a shocking portrayal of childhood delinquency.
Mickey is out playing on his skates and comes a cropper with a milk wagon, the driver did not have a chance to stop before the whimpering boy hit the tarmac. Could this be the chance Letty has been waiting to exploit ? A large company like Amalgamated Dairies would not take on a distraught mother and her oh so injured son, would they ? With her shyster lawyer and doctor friend on the take, Mickey's injuries are made much worse than what they are. The company's chairman, Malcolm Trevor (Cary Grant), who just happened to be the one driving the truck on that particular day, comes a calling expressing his concern and offering his hand in help. Sweet words to the conniving ears.
Even though the sultry Letty thinks she has everything planned out, some insurance adjusters film Mickey playing outside after the accident. It seems that he is not injured as he was pretending to be. This is shown in court and the jury is told what we have known all along, that is that Letty is not a fit mother to bring up a child in the manner she was doing so. It seems the born to be bad title of the movie actually refers to Letty and not Mickey as one would have thought. Her days of wearing designer clothing, and having little or no money to speak of, with her differing nightly visitors harks at things that the Hayes code would not permit to be openly spoken about how a mother should not behave.
The story then goes into unbelievable territory where Trevor and his wife decide to adopt Mickey as he could become the son that they are missing in their lives. As for Letty, she decides to make one final play to bring Trevor and his wife down and get Mickey back. She uses her womanly charms and the rigid Trevor swoons head first into her fiendish plot.
The stars do well under heavy make up and a pretty contrived plot and this is very much Young's show, the sound is much better than how the grainy print looks and there are no extras on the disc apart from a few weblinks for more in the Fox Classics range.
This is watchable soap but perhaps this would be better purchased as part of the Cary Grant boxed set instead of an individual buy.
'Born to be Bad' is out to own now and available via
AmazonUK and
Amazon .
You can read more about the DVD in our
database .
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