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.
The film itself is a dramedy about Dot (Eilers), a department store model who along with her best friend Edna (firebrand Minna Gombell) are tired of constantly being hit on by men, until they run into Eddie Collins (Dunn), who has no interest in either of them. This of course immediately draws Dot's interest in Eddie, and the two have an awkward date and develop an interest in each other. On their second date they spend most of the night together at Eddie's place, but Dot is terrified her abusive brother (with whom she shares a tenement apartment) will kick her out for being out so late with a man. To help Dot get out from under her brother's thumb, Eddie proposes, and the two have a hasty wedding. Eddie works in a radio store and dreams of opening his own place, but that plan is derailed a couple months later when Dot finds out she's pregnant. Too scared to tell Eddie, she inadvertently leads him to believe she wants to move to a bigger apartment, and he starts moonlighting as a prizefighter to help pay the bills, having drained his savings. Too scared to tell Dot, Eddie inadvertently leads her to believe he's cheating on her. This couple has some serious trust issues, I tell ya.
The three lead performances are all pretty strong, though very stylized to the 1930s - Eddie calls women "Janes" and at least a few times the phrase "You're a good kid" is thrown around. Still, James Dunn has a great tearful scene where he begs a prestigious OBGYN to take Dot's case even though he can't afford to pay for her care, and Sally Eilers has multiple emotional moments where she either thinks Eddie ran out on her or is overwhelmed at meeting her new baby for the first time. Both proved to be very skilled actors and enjoyed lucrative film careers into the 1940s.
The story is simple and shot in a very flat manner typical of early talkies, with straight-ahead camera angles and moves and not a lot of atmosphere; they were just showing you what was happening and little more. But the two leads and especially Gombell as Edna are likable enough to keep your attention and sympathy; you're invested enough in these two crazy kids and their tumultuous young marriage to care about how it turns out.
I'd have been interested to see a more faithful version of this story; this incarnation of Dot isn't really a "bad girl" at all, she's just deeply insecure. And so is he.
I give the film *** out of ****.
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