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.

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.

If there was ever a movie with a misleading title, this one is it. With the title, "Bad Girl," the fact that it's Pre-Code, and the movie poster showing a scantily-clad woman lounging in a chair with her arms raised, while a man leers suggestively over her shoulder – you think this movie is going to be about a woman of loose morals, like Jean Harlow or Marlene Dietrich.But it's not. Instead, it's a romantic melodrama that tells the story of a young married couple trying to make it through their first year of marriage during the Depression. Dorothy Haley (Sally Eiler) marries Eddie Collins (James Dunn), a tough talking "Noo Yawk" radio salesman, who is secretly a softie inside. In the movie's opening scenes, Dorothy is a streetwise dress model who easily parries the advances of men who make passes at her. But after she marries Eddie, she turns into an emotional girl with an overactive imagination. (When Eddie is late on their wedding day, Dorothy bursts into tears because she assumes he has deserted her.)Dorothy isn't really a "bad girl." She's just dumb as a box of rocks! Unfortunately, so is her husband. Eddie and Dorothy spend the movie trying to make each other happy, but they're both too stupid to realize they actually want the same things. This leads to an extended version of what Roger Ebert called the "Idiot Plot," where there are lame misunderstandings and the characters keep secrets from each other for no reason except that the plot requires it. If they would just tell each other those secrets, it would solve all their problems, but it would spoil the plot. It's called an "Idiot Plot" because the characters have to be idiots for it to work.Case in point. Soon after their marriage, Dorothy finds out she is pregnant. But Eddie has saved up $650 to open his own radio store. Not wanting him to spend his savings on her, Dorothy doesn't tell Eddie about the baby. Instead, she tells him she'd like to go back to work, to earn more money. From this, Eddie concludes she is unhappy living in their one-bedroom apartment. So he spends his $650 to buy them a big house and furniture, which Dorothy likes but didn't really want. Only then does she tell him she's pregnant.Now, this could have been handled as a variation on "The Gift of the Magi." But in the "Magi" story, the husband and wife actually learned something from their experience. Eddie and Dorothy learn nothing, and keep making the same dumb mistakes.Eddie and Dorothy each wrongly assume the other one doesn't want the baby, which results in more problems with their marriage. When Dorothy decides she needs an expensive doctor, Eddie tries to earn the money as a boxer. When he comes home with bandages on his face, Dorothy accuses him of going to a speakeasy and getting in a fight, instead of staying home with her. For some reason, Eddie doesn't tell her about the money he's won, or that he got her the doctor she wanted.(On a side note, the movie's one great scene is when Eddie steps into the ring with the Champ. He gets beaten up pretty bad and is about to go down when he whispers to the Champ that he needs the money because his wife is having a baby. The Champ says, "Well, why didn't ya say so? I got kids of my own!" He then literally carries Eddie around the ring for a few more rounds, all the time talking about his own kids.)If this story had been handled comically, it might have been a forerunner of "The Honeymooners" and "The Flintstones." (There were times when Eddie reminded me of Ralph Kramden.) Instead, we get a sappy romantic melodrama that is instantly forgettable.It's surprising that Frank Borzage won an Oscar for directing this claptrap, and that the lame screenplay won an Oscar as well. Borzage made better films than this (see "Seventh Heaven" and "Street Angel"), and there were better directed films released in 1931-32 (such as Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights," James Whale's "Frankenstein," William Wellman's "The Public Enemy," and Edmund Goulding's "Grand Hotel"). But AMPAS was young then, and young organizations are bound to make mistakes.

Frank Borzage won the Academy Award for Direction for this film. That aspect of the movie is quite good, but much of the rest of it doesn't hold up that well. First thing's first, the title of this film (and actually the original novel on which it was based, I'd guess) is just a marketing ploy to make it sound salacious. It's actually quite innocent, even for 1931. Sally Eilers plays a gal who is sick of men flirting with her, so when she meets one who doesn't (James Dunn), she falls for him. The big problem with the movie is that Dunn is an awful jerk. The film tries to show that his tough guy exterior is just a shield for his sensitive inner self, but that doesn't excuse his behavior toward his girl (who soon becomes his wife). He's constantly whining, bitching and berating Eiler, not to mention treating her best friend (Minna Gombell) like crap every time she comes by. Given the title, I was kind of expecting Eiler to have to dump Dunn and make due as a hooker or something, but it turns out the film has a lot of affection for the prick. It's not like he beats her or anything, but my prediction for the rest of Eiler's life, as well as that of the baby she has near the end, is going to be really depressing, even after the Great Depression ends. She might be better off as a hooker.