And now it's time for another Oscar Film Journal entry, here at Enuffa.com!
Back to the Depression era we go, with 1931's Bad Girl, an adaptation of the hit 1928 novel by Vina Delmar. Directed by Frank Borzage and starring relative newcomers Sally Eilers and James Dunn, the film faced significant pushback from the infamous Hays Office for its subject matter. The novel was a fairly explicit cautionary tale about premarital sex and accidental pregnancy (considered so lurid it was banned in Boston), and the uptight censors felt the story was unfilmable as-is. But Fox Film Corporation came up with a treatment that cleaned up the story and made it more about an unlikely couple falling in love, getting married, getting unexpectedly pregnant, and worrying about money and each other's commitment level. Still the studio hedged their bets and only granted a $100,000 budget (equivalent to a scant $2 million today), and cast two unknowns as the leads. Amazingly the film was a critical and commercial smash hit, pulling in over $1 million and making stars of Eilers and Dunn, who'd be cast together in several subsequent projects.
