User reviews

Bad Girl is another of Frank Borzage's romantic dramas of the trials and tribulations of lovers usually caught in circumstances and forces beyond their control. In this case it's the Great Depression and their own attitudes about romance itself.

Their attitudes being that romance is just a lot of bunk. But attitude or not James Dunn who was making his feature film debut and Sally Eilers are in love in spite of themselves.

I'm not quite sure why the film is entitled Bad Girl since there really isn't nothing bad about Eilers at all. Possibly her original attitude though that is quickly corrected. These are just two people trying to get by, but they always seem to misjudge attitudes because of first impressions and say the wrong things at time.

Take for instance the new apartment that Dunn uses all his savings in to impress Eilers. He says exactly the wrong thing about the two of them living only for today. That's just at the time she was about to break the news that wasn't to be two any more, but three.

Dunn really loves her. How many husbands to earn an extra couple of dollars would go out and try to go 4 rounds with a professional prizefighter? Charles Sullivan proves to be a good guy however.

So does Claude King as the obstetrics specialist who does Dunn a solid when Dunn wants him for his wife's delivery. None but the best as Dunn beautifully carries off a scene breaking down begging for King's services.

The film adapted from a Broadway play of the previous year won an Oscar for adapted screenplay. It also won for Frank Borzage an Oscar for Best Director.

Today's audiences might get a kick out of the prices and the amounts needed for many things. Inflation has come a long way since. Still the themes are universal and I think Bad Girl holds up well today.

This is a beautifully made, poignant drama about a young working-class couple starting their life together in the tenements of 1930s New York. This couple is incredibly normal and that's what makes this film so watchable. They're not gangsters, prostitutes, criminals, lawyers, or society girls down on their luck, they are just an ordinary couple without anything making them different to anyone else. What makes this so enthralling is therefore its story and specifically the storytelling.

The world these people live in is perfectly encapsulated with a scene early on when a neighbour dies on one floor of their tenement and a baby is born on another. Our hero sadly concludes: "Born on the second story... he'll probably die on the fifth. All his life, just to climb three flights of stairs." This however is a positive story, it shows that although The Depression was of course a struggle, even living in a one-room-apartment people survived, they went to work, had fun, got married, started families and found happiness. It was just life and that's what this picture is about even though in this case the couple aren't sure they're ideal for each other, aren't sure what they want, aren't sure that the other one doesn't love them and that makes us uneasy as to whether they will stay together. It's so well presented that very quickly we feel we know these people so are hoping desperately that they will make a go of it and that everything works out for them.

Inasmuch that it's about ordinary people, this is somewhat reminiscent of 1932's VIRTUE but the characters and the story and even the acting in this feel more natural and modern. It is perhaps more like the Kitchen Sink Dramas of the 50s and 60s such as LOOK BACK IN ANGER but set in America.

Why is it called "Bad Girl" and why has it got such a salacious poster? Obviously to get people to flock to the cinema and obviously to get people like me nearly a century later to watch it! Fox Films however knew that to avoid riots in their theatres when the customers realised the extend of the false advertising, they had to provide a genuinely top rate entertainment and that's exactly what they did. There is no "bad girl" in this film, that was the name of the book on which this was based but even in the book "bad girl" is just an insult which is thrown unjustly around, a term which our protagonist doesn't want to get branded with. Although this was made in what's referred to as "the pre-code era" the PCA made very sure that with this picture, the Hays Code was very heavily enforced. The eyes of the nation were on them because Vina Delmar's book had caused such an outcry, it was banned in Boston and was cited as containing: downright and unforgivable nastiness. Any suggestions or even hints that pre-marital sex was something which actually existed was heavily censored. The long process of consultation with the PCA lasted so long that Fox Films considered abandoning this entire project but eventually Miss Delmar's novel was considered suitably sanitised. We obviously can't ever know how a film of the original story would have been but even so, the changes certainly haven't destroyed the theme or spirit of the story. Possibly the challenges they posed have made a more interesting movie since Borzage has had to compensate for the lack of explicit content, language and sex with a visual flair unique to him.

The poster by the way does not seem remotely connected in any way with this film - it's good though isn't it!

Note: some scenes described in detail.

As usual for Borzage, this is full of sentiment, and the details of the plot are deadly. Never was the development of misunderstandings between two inarticulate people more aggressively, one might say more ruthlessly, pursued. When they're not playing "Gift of the Magi" (he giving up the dream of his own radio store for the big apartment he thinks she wants), they're busy each thinking that the other doesn't really want the baby. And how could Borzage resist milking the maternity ward scene, with its inevitable ethnic cross-section, older woman, and troubled mother. And here's another version of that typical pre-Code era film pair, the beautiful girl and the unhandsome blow-hard boob.

All that said, this is still a very good film in spite of itself, certainly deserving of its Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. Borzage constantly redeems himself at the worst moments. A prime example: the evening before the baby's due Jimmy goes out to fight four rounds of preliminaries at $10 a round to pay the doctor. Sally is lying at home, convinced that he's with his drunken friends, or worse, and no longer loves her. Dunn's opponent is a mean-looking, cynical, paunchy guy who's about to knock him out in the second round. Oh, the ironic cross-cutting: he's getting the crap beat out of him, while she lies in bed, anxious and bitter. But, in a clinch, Jimmy begs the pug not to knock him out because his wife's going to have a baby. Why didn't you say so, says the obliging pug, I've got two of my own. In an amusing moment they chat away while pretending to lambaste each other. This takes the curse off the sentimental plot maneuvering.

And there are a lot of other fine sequences, too. The film starts with Eilers in a fancy wedding gown, being attended to by a dresser. She's so nervous, she tells best-friend Gombell, who's dressed as a bridesmaid. As they do the formal bride's walk through the phalanx of bridesmaids, in the corner of the screen one sees part of a tray of dirty dishes being carried by a waiter. Gradually the camera pulls back to show that they're modeling the gowns for a bunch of lecherous buyers. Then they go to Luna Park (nice shots of the park). Throughout these early scenes there are plenty of sharp pre-Code wisecracks about how men only have one thing on their minds. Funny, breezy stuff. They meet Dunn on the ferry on the way home, the first guy that doesn't make a pass. The scene shifts to the couple sitting at the foot of her rooming-house stairwell. As they talk, an old hen-pecked lush comes down the stairs, and an older woman uses the hall phone to tell her sister that their mother has just died. That may be pouring the milieu on a bit thick, Borzage style, but this scene is beautifully played by Eilers and by the older woman and is quite affecting. Later, when Eilers stays in Dunn's room (no hanky-panky, it seems) and he asks her to marry him, her brother kicks her out of the house, and Gombell, the brother's gal, walks too. (Single-mom Gombell's little boy is a terror. In the morning he won't scram: "I want to see Dotty get out of bed.") Sally is sure that Jimmy will desert her at the alter, and that's the beginning of all the tear-jerking plot elements.

But the film goes beyond those elements with a richness of detail, a generous painting of daily life in the city during the Depression. And, when all's said and done, what really makes the film, and where Borzage ultimately redeems himself, is in the performances. Eilers, who somehow never got the recognition she deserved, is beautiful and gives a strong, sensitive, emotional performance--for my money a more appealing one than most of Janet Gaynor's work for Borzage. Gombell, another undervalued thirties player, is really fine as the tough but good-natured pal, who doesn't let Dunn's dislike of her color her opinion of him as a good husband for Eilers. Her performance goes beyond the requirements of the script in very subtle ways. And Dunn, well, he plays the typical early-thirties boob of a husband, but even he has a bravura scene when he breaks down while having to beg the expensive doctor to handle his wife's childbirth. Borzage films are always full of sentiment, but not always honest sentiment. This scene with the doctor is full of sentiment, but it's honestly handled, and one can say the same for the whole film.

A man and woman get married, she gets pregnant, and then the two of them spend the rest of the movie wondering if the other really wants to have a baby. They could just talk to each other about it I suppose, but then there wouldn't be a reason for this film's existence.

"Bad Girl" is a bit of a curio in that it won Oscars for Best Director (Frank Borzage) and Best Writing (Adaptation) at the 1931-32 Academy Awards, but who's even heard of this movie now? It's not very memorable, and it's a testament to the power of the Academy Awards, whether or not you personally give them any credence, that films like this are kept afloat in front of modern-day audiences based on the fact that they won some Oscars back in the day. That's certainly the motive for my seeking it out, whereas any number of other early talkies that are no better or worse than this one fade into obscurity.

James Dunn and Sally Eilers are pretty good, and talkies were still new enough that it's refreshing to find actors who knew how to act with sound as their medium. It's also fun to see movies from this time period because they give us a glimpse into what life was like during the Great Depression.

Many comments have said that the title is completely irrelevant to anything that happens in the movie. That's not entirely true. When Dunn first meets Eilers at Coney Island, they have a conversation where he mentions something about how everyone has both bad and good in them, and the idea that both husband and wife suspect the "bad" in each other drives much of their behavior throughout the rest of the film. But I do agree that the theme isn't explored very fully, and it is a misleading title.

In addition to the two Oscars it won, "Bad Girl" was nominated for Best Picture.

Grade: B

A wildly uneven film that seems as confused as its marketing. The pre-Code era was known for salacious titles and advertisement, but I don't think I've ever seen a film more at odds with its poster. I'm not kidding, these are the words underneath the poster of the main character (Sally Eilers) leaning back with her ukulele:

EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS GIRL There's one in every town Tumult in her heart. She wanted things. Clothes. Boy friends. Fun. Gayety. Kisses. * Red-lipped shop girl in sleazy dress, Aching with suppressed emotions ... dance halls ... excursion steamers ... chop suey palaces ... Coney Island ... clinging farewells ... then back to the hall bedroom. * Drama of girls ... who love to live. Laughter of girls ... who live to love. * It's romance of the working girl ... today ... your most dependable patron.

In the actual film, nothing could be further from the truth. Eilers' character is not loose, flirtatious, or even pushing on the boundaries of the role women were assigned to. We see a lot of bad male behavior though, e.g. men coming on to her (leading her to remark to her friends that all of them have just one thing on their minds), a controlling brother who hits her for coming home late (alluded to, not shown), and even the guy she's attracted to (James Dunn) doling out insults and mansplaining things. When the two marry on a whim because she fears facing her brother after coming home at 4 am (though not having had sex), he also tells her that no wife of his will be getting a job.

The best part of the film is the support she gets from her friend (Minna Gombell), a tough talking woman who stands up for her. She literally flicks her husband's chin upwards while fixing his tie, and the two part with this exchange: "Bye, Grouch" / "So long, Dizzy."

The film providing a window into the conditions women faced and the bond between friends is when it's at its best, but it's less successful afterwards. At its center this is a relationship picture, with the married couple dealing with tight finances, and miscommunicating when she gets pregnant (they both think the other doesn't want a baby). It got quite tiresome over the last half hour for me. Dunn has a weepy scene where his acting leaves a lot to be desired, then improbably offers himself up in a boxing match for money. The nurse at the hospital oddly teases Eilers' character by bringing out several different babies before giving her hers, and all of these scenes seem like filler for a film that lost its way.

As for the Oscar that director Frank Borzage won for this film, it's frankly hard to understand. It's an average film for the period, with nothing that stood out. The images of light and shadow that Josef von Sternberg captured with Marlene Dietrich in 'Shanghai Express,' on the other hand, are immortal. That year also saw so many other great efforts, e.g. Ernst Lubitsch (The Smiling Lieutenant), Rouben Mamoulian (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), Clarence Brown (A Free Soul), Fritz Lang (M), William A. Wellman (The Public Enemy), F.W. Murnau (Tabu), King Vidor (Street Scene), Frank Capra (The Miracle Woman), and Roy del Ruth (Blonde Crazy). I usually don't like to fixate on awards and apologize for this long and pedantic laundry list, but my point is that if you're looking for a stellar film from 1931, you can do so much better than this one.

"Bad Girl" was a fun movie for a good 3/4ths of the film, then it became frustrating. This movie was an early version of miscommunication in a rom-com. Miscommunication seems to be a staple and an essential plot device in most rom-coms and it is ALWAYS irritating.

Dorothy Haley (Sally Eilers) was a pretty young lady who was tired of every guy making a pass at her. She found a rare bird when she met Eddie Collins (James Dunn) at a fair. Eddie not only didn't try to make a pass at her, he was a bit rude.

Dorothy liked it.

Apparently, she was interested in guys who weren't ostensibly interested in her. The more standoffish he was the more she was drawn in. She was smitten, and even though he didn't show it, Eddie was too.

The two got married in fast order and that's when all the miscommunication started. It was even worse once she got pregnant and was too scared to tell him. From there the communication between them just got to the point that each of them continued to make assumptions about the other. It was enough to drive you mad. "Just tell her what you've done!" I wanted to scream. "Just tell him you're pregnant!" is what I wanted to yell. Truthfully, most of the miscommunication was the fault of Eddie. He would never say what he was doing.

Eddie was concerned about money and being able to afford the finer things in life. He'd said over and over that kids would only upset his plans. When Dorothy said that there was more to life than just money, he responded, "Sure, there are a lot of things in life besides money, but you gotta have money to find them." But, as obsessed as he professed to be about money and opening his own business, he was really crazy about his wife and their prospective baby.

Between the two of them was Dorothy's friend, Edna Driggs (Minna Gombell). She was a go between at times who helped them out. She had a contentious relationship with Eddie, but it was very lighthearted. The two of them reminded me of Martin and Pam in the sitcom "Martin." They'd throw insults back and forth all day, but they never took it personally and never attacked each other to hurt deep, just to get the best quip in.

Edna consistently calmed Dorothy down when she got excited or upset about Eddie and his apparent flippancy. Eddie was working hard for his wife and unborn child, and while Dorothy should've assumed the best, Eddie should've been more forthright. To see the two have these absurd conversations because of holding back very simple information made the movie a little less enjoyable. The movie was great when they were dating, it became a bit of a chore once they were married.

Free on YouTube.

I finally tracked down Bad Girl. It had been on my list of wanna sees for years as it had won a major Oscar for Best Director- Frank Borzage.It was one of those tantalizing early talkies that had not actually been lost it had merely fell from sight. When I finally saw it last year at a Borzage revival, the film was a revelation.It was a pre-code delight about an ordinary couple, falling in love, struggling financially and having a baby etc.It most reminded me of the great silent film-The Crowd, which dealt with similar matters. What was especially fascinating to me was its depiction of "average" lower middle class types and how they lived and spoke in Depression America. The apartments... the slang, all of it, seemed real. It wouldn't be until the 50's neo realism hit American movies that we would see ordinary people depicted on the screen again, without condescension The movie has all the Borzage trademarks- love surviving against all odds, even an exciting if a little hokey climax.Unfortunately, the film has been slighted often in movie books,most likely, because the authors have never actually seen it. If it is ever shown again, try to see it. It's a wonderful peek at average city folks in Depression America.

This film starts out as pre-code as it gets. Dot (Sally Eilers) is a fashion model in a New York City where every man is as grabby as a certain current NYC-based politician and any woman on the street, in the subway or on the Staten Island ferry is bound to be subjected to ogling, groping, propositioning or worse. As a result Dot is a bit soured on men in general.

Eddie (James Dunn) is apparently the only straight man in NYC who behaves himself. He's a radio repairman back in the days before TV and computers when that was a serious career. He grew up in poverty and is determined to be financially secure before getting involved with women. You can guess what happens when Dot and Eddie get together, if we're to have any sort of plot to this movie, and you're right.

Thus the rapacity of other men becomes less part of the plot than a device to set Eddie apart. Once that's been accomplished, the film becomes more of a romantic comedy, save for accusations, apparently prevalent in that era, that any unmarried working-class woman was a "tramp" or "impure" or whatever else you'd like to call it.

Still, even as the film becomes less steamy, there are a few twists and turns, some more credible than others.

The title is misleading, but not nearly as much as the illustration in the movie's poster as seen here, which has absolutely nothing to do with the movie.

Bad Girl is included in the new Murnau/Borzage and Fox collection,and kudos to them for making it available! Though an excellent little slice of life film from the Depression Era, I definitely wouldn't say that it compares with Borzage's timeless silent romances, though Borzage's recurrent theme of love conquering all is here to.The lead actors,Sally Eilers, and James Dunn, both do fine jobs, especially Dunn, who paints a very realistic portrait of a "regular Joe", decent kind of a guy. His performance rings true, and he later made a comeback, winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.(1945) This is the story of a young couple's struggle to make it through marriage, finances, and becoming parents. The background story of what was considered "making it" in a poor economy is especially pertinent today. Dunn's character, Eddie Collins, thought it was opening his own radio shop, providing his wife with an elaborately furnished apartment, and getting her the best doctor for her delivery. Not so different from what young couples are facing today! The film is sometimes a bit too wordy, but the slang of the time is a hoot! As one of Borzage's smaller films, it's worth a watch.

I have to admit to low expectations coming into this film and happy to admit that I was pleasantly surprised. I don't know if it was the time period this film was made, or just this script, but there were a lot of gender stereotypes reinforced within. Also the forced accents were a bit hard to take as well. Never-the-less I did find this film an interesting take of early films here in America and have to say there is an episode in which the male lead tries out boxing to make a few extra bucks, which I found outright hilarious. Yes, it's a little forced but in general I found it fun.

Most possibly the greatest disappointment of all Oscar winners. But does anybody remember it?? I don't think so. Such a sad and boring film. What was wrong with people in the 1930s, really!?

An interesting little Borzage love story set during the Depression, detailing the struggles of young couple (Sally Eilers & James Dunn) with their hopes and dreams. Curiously Borzage won his second Oscar as Best Director for this oddly heady little movie and that's perhaps the only reason to watch it. It works as a timepiece of its era. But I definitely wouldn't call "Bad Girl" one of Borzage's best romances (in many ways it strikes me as turgid and unaffecting in several moments, and I didn't like the ending), but it is definitely worth catching if you are fan or a student of the director's sublime and unheralded oeuvre.

A pregnant newly-wed wife mistakenly believes her husband doesn't relish the prospect of fatherhood. Sally Eilers and James Dunn, two forgotten stars from the early years of talking pictures, spend most of their time wooing each other at the foot of the stairs that lead to the flat she shares with her bullying brother. The threat to their eventual marriage is the result of the kind of misunderstandings that arise when two characters fail to talk to one another in the way that all real people would. It's a cheap and lazy source of conflict, but Bad Girl still manages to entertain thanks largely to a lively and sympathetic performance from Dunn. Ultimately, though, it's let down by a weak ending

I don't know that honesty is always the best policy, but I think that this melodrama might have gone much more smoothly for the married "Dorothy" (Sally Eilers) and "Eddie" (James Dunn) if they, especially the latter, had just been a little more upfront with the other. She basically thinks all men are predatory wastrels; he that women just want to shop their way trough life. Despite these obvious misgivings, and because he treats her with almost as much disinterest as she does him, the pair start to quite like each other. She's got a brother who is a controlling pain in the neck, so they come up with a plan to get her married so she's out of his ambit. Swiftly, with a baby looming, he loses his job and desperate times call for desperate measures - all against a tapestry of mistrust and scepticism! There are times when I just wanted to bang their heads together and I took that as a sign that they were all doing their jobs properly. Dunn delivers quite engagingly, especially as the film progresses and his character's inability to simply be honest and less priggish just worsens his problems. It takes a while to get going, but once the dynamic is laid out for us, then this is quite an amiably presented look at the stupidity of human nature and of the breadwinning custom and is well worth ninety minutes - though maybe not if you're headed to a maternity ward anytime soon.

Alfred Hitchcock's famously said "It's very rare, almost never, that a good film gets made from a bad screenplay." And it's rarer that a bad story can be made into a great script and movie.

Director Frank Borzage worked his magic when September 1931 "Bad Girl" was released. The movie was based on one of those "banned in Boston" books, Vina Demar's 1928 novel of the same name about a woman who gets pregnant in a one-night stand, goes through pregnancy and childbirth. It's a bleak story of a woman's struggle to decide to keep the baby. Even before a film studio expressed any intention in adapting the novel and the subsequent play into a movie, the Hays Censor Office was proactive in issuing a statement that it would be closely vetting this particular project because, in the office's words, it's "cheap and shoddy writing about cheap and shoddy people."

No studio touched the subject until Fox Film, in a treatment written by scriptwriter Edwin Burke, recast the entire story's focus to a marriage where a couple fail to communicate with one another. With the exception of some minor changes, the censors gave its stamp of approval. Borzage initially refused to direct the movie, but the studio pressured him, allowing him to mold the script his own way. He finally agreed to direct "Bad Girl," and the final result proved to be highly popular with the public.

As one modern reviewer wrote, "Thanks to Frank Borzage's sympathetic direction and Edwin J. Burke's snappy dialogue, Bad Girl rises to a level that a similar movie could never achieve." The selection of Sally Eilers as Dorothy Collins and James Dunn as Eddie Collins were inspiring choices, even though Borzage's selection of Spencer Tracy as the lead was rejected by the studio. Eilers, a Buster Keaton regular, played the role of an attractive woman weary of men constantly trying to pick her up. Dunn, a former stock theater actor before he secured the lead in the 1929 Broadway musical 'Sweet Adeline,' was immediately signed by Hollywood scouts. "Bad Girl" marked his film debut, launching his acting career well into the mid-1960s.

The plot no one wanted, the script no one wanted to direct, the second-tier actors who were willing to stake their careers in the film, all turned out to be winners at the end. The Academy, in its 5th Annual Awards," nominated "Bad Girl" as Best Picture. Frank Borzage won the Academy Awards Best Director, his second-his first was 1927's "7th Heaven" Writer Edwin Burke won for the Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was so financially successful, a sequel, 1935's "Bad Boy" was produced. In 1940, Robert Sterling starred in "Manhattan Heartbeat," a reworking of "Bad Girl."