BABY FACE & BORN TO BE BAD
A film review by Jeff Meyer
Copyright 1988 Jeff Meyer
Both of these films were shown in conjunction with the "Hollywood and the Code" Series at the Seattle Film Festival.
BABY FACE (USA, 1933) Director: Alfred E. Green Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook, Margaret Lindsay, Douglas Drumbille, John Wayne
BORN TO BE BAD (USA, 1934) Director: Lowell Sherman Cast: Cary Grant, Loretta Young, Henry Travers
BABY FACE and BORN TO BE BAD are rather interesting sides of the same coin. The first, made in 1933 and listed by William Everson as one of the films most responsible for the institution of the code, is a surprisingly entertaining story of a down-and-out girl from the slums who sleeps her way to the top of a corporation. Barbara Stanwyck redeems the film a good deal with her presence, but it has appeals beyond that. To get a job in a major business office, she takes advantage of the considerable number of dorks who promote her to the top in exchange for her affections. After a fall from grace (so to speak), she is given a position of responsibility in France, which she does extremely well on her own (even though she's never heard French or studied accounting -- well, she *is* Barbara Stanwyck). When the Big Boss falls in love with her on the up-and-up, she plays along, but she believes that all she's interested in is his money (the interplay between her and Brent is excellent -- she tosses in a couple lines that Mae West would have been proud of). Right at the end, she realizes that she *does* love him (surprise, surprise) and it has a rewritten ending that combines a "happy ending" with a fate that was supposed to satisfy the "punishment of evil" theme that the religious reformists were crying for (her husband and she give up all their money to get his company back on its feet, and they go to work in the factory town she came from {until the company hits the big time at the very end}).
I really enjoyed this for a number of reasons, though Stanwyck was the main point. She plays a woman who is much smarter than the bozos she's working for; cynical but very intelligent, capable of doing anything they toss at her (legitimately), and able to manipulate them in a number of ways. The romance between her and Brent works rather well; he knows what she's done but loves her anyway, and doesn't treat her like the Scarlet Woman (he treats her indiscretions as minor ones when he first meets her, as opposed to the "pull out the crucifixes and garlic" attitude that other films impose on such characters). And the performances are rarely dated, especially Stanwyck's (her early scenes in the mill town have a particularly gritty, realistic feel for Hollywood).
Worth a look if it appears on TV late at night; fully entertaining.
Right before the code was instated, a lot of the "tawdry" films were rationalized by the studios as "moral parables." Rather than watch some character doing naughty bits, you held up that person's behavior and insured that she came to a bad end. A prime example (and another film Everson used as a precursor to the code) is a ridiculous film named BORN TO BE BAD, with Loretta Young as a beautiful young woman with a son born out of wedlock (Henry Travers, in an immensely annoying performance -- Everson listed it as the single worst child performance he'd ever seen, and I see no reason to dispute it; even the kid in DONDI had more appeal than this). Young is tough but appealing, but the script is so stupid that nothing could help it.
Young tries to put her kid up to a false injury suit against Cary Grant's dairy (he's the president of a huge milk company, but is driving the truck that Young's brat runs in front of because "one of my employees was ill." Sure, and I bet you fill in for your secretary too, Cary). Once the false nature of her claims against Grant become apparent, the court takes Travers away to a home for wayward boys, where Grant decides to be a foster home for the boy. Grant's wife (so saintly the audience was breaking up) and Grant work towards reforming the kid, so Young decides the only way to get the kid back is to vamp Grant. After being utterly goody-goody and refusing all Young's attempts (put this in Cary Grant-ese: "You're bad, bad, bad, a bad girl"), she shows up in flimsy evening gown, and ba-boom! From here it gets *really* ludicrous, as Grant makes love to her in his own house (and keeps her there! Those lusty dairy magnates!); and his wife -- get this -- decides to release him to "true love" and gets ready to leave...but not before she saves Obnoxio, the boy wonder from a fall in the pool. Of course, Loretta sees things in a new light, leaves kid to live with Grant and wife, and goes to work in the bookstore where she gave birth to the kid in first place. The entire thing is such a hoary failure that today it's tough to see why people got upset. But of course, we've had DALLAS and DYNASTY to guide us through such bathos...
Side observations: Young has a tendency to run around in her undies; there is a pretty offensive stereotype of a Jewish shyster lawyer; and the comment "That's white of you" (which Everson [said] was fairly common for that period). One of the things I found most unpleasant was how Grant is viewed as some sort of innocent throughout it (OK, he has a baby face, but still...); as if it's all Young's fault that he jumped her (there was a lot of women hissing from the peanut gallery at The Egyptian, and I don't blame them). BABY FACE is heads above this, both from the script and from the acting.
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM
Manual UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews