Bad Girl is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film directed by Frank Borzage and starring Sally Eilers, James Dunn, and Minna Gombell. The screenplay was adapted by Edwin J. Burke from the 1928 novel by Viña Delmar and the 1930 play by Delmar and Brian Marlowe. The plot follows the courtship and marriage of two young, working-class people and the misunderstandings that result from their not having learned to trust and communicate with one another. The film propelled then-unknown actors Eilers and Dunn to stardom. It was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Plot
Dorothy Haley and Edna Driggs are store models, first seen in bridal clothes at their job one afternoon. After work Dorothy fends off her boss, who wants to take her for a ride, by claiming to be married to a prizefighter. The girls then go to Coney Island. On the return steamboat trip, the women make a bet about attracting a certain man's attention, and Dorothy proceeds to annoy him by playing a ukulele. This man is Eddie Collins; after his initial grouchy reaction to the women, he slowly forms a connection with Dorothy and sees her home. Eddie works in a radio shop and dreams of having a shop on his own, for which he has been saving.
Eddie forgets to show up for a date and Dorothy angrily finds him in his boarding house, where they remain together until 4 a.m. Eddie walks her home but she is afraid to go up, fearing the reaction of her abusive elder brother who is her guardian. Eddie proposes marriage as a solution and Dorothy joyfully accepts. Her brother calls her a tramp and evicts her from her home. Dorothy suffers some anxiety the next day when Eddie seems to have disappeared; he then turns up, having made arrangements for a new place to live, and the two are happily married.
Ten weeks later, Dorothy confides to Edna that she is pregnant, but is reluctant to tell Eddie the news when she learns that he is ready to open his new shop, an expensive commitment. Instead she tells Eddie that she would like to return to work, to which he objects. Wrongly guessing that she really wants a larger place to live, Eddie cancels his plans for the shop in favor of a lavish new apartment and the purchase of new furnishings, increasing Dorothy's worries. By the time Eddie finally finds out he is to become a father, the two mutually misunderstand that the other is unhappy about the pregnancy, resulting in a strain on their marriage. The strain intensifies when Eddie stays out late at night to earn extra money as a boxer to pay for the services of Dr. Burgess, the best obstetrician in the city, all without telling Dorothy. Eddie is being pummeled in one of these prizefights while Dorothy leaves for the hospital; when he returns and Dorothy sees him bruised and bandaged, she assumes he was in a barroom brawl and turns her back on him. After their son is born, Dorothy plans to leave Eddie; however, before that can happen the misunderstanding is cleared up, and the couple returns home together to raise their child.
Cast
- Sally Eilers as Dorothy Haley
- James Dunn as Eddie Collins
- Minna Gombell as Edna Driggs
Uncredited:
- Frank Austin as upstairs tenement neighbor
- Irving Bacon as expectant father
- Frank Darien as Lathrop
- Jesse De Vorska as expectant father
- Paul Fix as nervous expectant father
- Guy Edward Hearn as male nurse
- Aggie Herring as seamstress
- Claude King as Dr. Burgess
- Louis Natheaux as Mr. Thompson
- Sarah Padden as Mrs. Gardner
- William Pawley as Jim Haley
- Charles Sullivan as Mike the prizefighter
- William Watson as Floyd
Themes
The Depression-era backdrop of poverty and deprivation tinges the characters' preoccupation with and fears about earning money and paying for their needs.
Production
Development
The development of Bad Girl from the novel and play into a film required extensive purging and rewriting of the material to conform to the dictates of the Hays Office. A November 16, 1928, memo from the Hays Office put a damper on the whole production, stating: "'Bad Girl' might be produced as a sex hygiene picture called 'Motherhood.' It is simply the story of girl who is 'bad' for one night, marries the boy the next day, and then has a baby". The memo described the novel as a "nauseating story of doctors, illnesses, etc." and as "cheap and shoddy writing about cheap and shoddy people".
Fox, however, came up with a treatment that avoided the scandalous elements of the story and smoothed over the whole issue of premarital sex which Dorothy had with Eddie during their late night in his apartment. Instead, the implications of their night together are not addressed and Eddie's proposal of marriage to save Dorothy from the shame of facing her brother at 4 a.m. comes off as spontaneous. All that remains of the provocative content of the novel is the title, Bad Girl. The script was approved by the Hays Office in May 1931 with only a small number of "relatively minor" changes. Dunn made his screen debut in Bad Girl.
Critical reception
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette praised the film as a modern take on contemporary life, describing it as "so human, so free from pretense and so provocatively real". The Los Angeles Times called Dunn's first starring turn "triumphant", asserting that "no performance has lately equaled the impression made by this rather plain young man, who, aside from having a likable personality, scores a major hit by his ability as an actor". The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said of Dunn: "Sincere, honest and natural, his performance is flawless". Rebutting a review that claimed any actor would have succeeded in the "sure-fire part", a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reviewer argued:
<blockquote>It was a role so skillfully conceived and executed, so sympathetically played and so warm and sincere that one's natural inclination is to put the actor in this case above the role rather than the role above the actor. ... Mr. Dunn, on the other hand, created a character. It had a definite form. It breathed life. It had depth and feeling. Not for a moment were you conscious of James Dunn. You were conscious only of Eddie Collins.</blockquote>
The Brattleboro Reformer wrote: "James Dunn, as the sensitive, nervous, conscientious young husband in this, his first, picture gives a performance of astonishing strength. … He presents a new kind of film star and a personality of infectious charm". The scene in which Dunn as Eddie pleads with Dr. Burgess to take his wife's case was cited by the Los Angeles Times as "the equal of any of the great moments in past pictures",
Adaptations
The film spawned several adaptations. In October 1931, Fox produced a Spanish-language adaptation for the South American market titled Marido y Mujer (Husband and Wife), directed by Bert Sebell and released in 1932. Bad Boy, also starring James Dunn and directed by John G. Blystone, was released in 1935. 20th Century Fox remade the story in 1940 as Manhattan Heartbeat, starring Robert Sterling and Virginia Gilmore. The 1933 film Jimmy and Sally was also written and titled with the duo in mind, but after Eilers declined to play the lead, her part was given to Claire Trevor.