I didn't like the abrupt finish! The movie runs only 59 minutes on the Fox DVD. Not exactly good value for the money! I actually bought this 2005 Fox DVD in Australia and it cost me $21.00.Was it worth the money? Yes, just! Although you would think that a rich film-maker like 20th Century Fox would have thrown in a few extras - especially as the movie ends with this unexpected fade-out rather quite suddenly and very abruptly. But right up to it's somewhat abrupt and disappointing finish, "Born To Be Bad" (presumably the title is supposed to refer to the Loretta Young character) is very well acted, particularly by the leads, Loretta Young and Cary Grant - and also by the young boy whom I've not heard of before! (His name, according to the Fox DVD is Henry Travers! Perhaps giving people wrong or defective names is some sort of new publicity ploy that Fox have dreamed up to give their DVD releases greater mileage with critics and pressmen. It's a novel idea, I'll admit, but I don't like it and have no wish to encourage it).Anyway, according to the Fox DVD, the director was someone called Lowell Sheerman. Never heard of him either! But I do know Lowell Sherman - a top director, in my opinion. Brilliant in fact! I think this was his second last film as a director. The only later title I have for him is "Night Life of the Gods" (1935).But getting back to the movie, I'd say again that under Lowell Sherman's brilliant direction, both Young and Grant never gave better performances. That fact alone makes "Born to be Bad" worth seeing.

Loretta Young looks gorgeous. She gets to wear a lot of clothes. It's a little hard to buy her as an amoral, manipulative man-trap. But she works hard and this is partly because we know her oeuvre.I have recently watched a lot of her early movies, which are not substantial enough to comment on. These include "Road To Paradise," "Party Girl," and "Big Business Girl." These are all early sound pictures and very creaky.Here, though, Young is costarred with youthful and handsome Cary Grant. He hasn't quite become the Cary Grant who is rightly a fable in the history of Hollywood. But he's of course handsome and they are well matched -- if not necessarily plausible romantically.The rest of the cast is OK. But the director was Lowell Sherman, who was excellent and has been underrated in later decades.

This flawed second feature -- about a beautiful floozy, her streetwise little boy, and the millionaire who comes to their aid -- sustains interest only thanks to the attractive stars. Young, with her huge eyes and dazzling smile, has the aura of Joan Crawford in her "Dance, Fools, Dance" period, while Grant, who was 30 when this was made, has not yet fully matured into the character we know from the second half of the 1930s. The story, despite its implausibility, is not unappealing; it is pleasant to imagine oneself being a slum-kid one day and being invited to live with Cary Grant and his affectionate wife the next. The screenplay is oddly structured; the story begins with Young being admired by an odd trio that looks as if it wandered off from the set of "Dinner At Eight" and whom we never see again, and the picture ends just as abruptly. Still, not a bad way to spend 65 minutes.

This melodrama from 1934 almost works.Henry Travers, as always, is excellent. Cary Grant does a good job as a the male lead who is not a star, but who is supposed to support the acting of the lead. He comes off as thoughtful,kind and wise.Loretta Young, however, cannot quite pull off her leading role as the woman who, kicked around by life, decides to kick back. Jackie Kelk, as her barely pre-Code bastard son, is simultaneously whiny and predatory in an oh-gosh-gee-whiz sort of way.The entire thing has the air of having been cut down to serve as a second feature: some extra scenes might have been helpful. Give it a miss unless you want to see what Cary Grant was like while working his way up the Hollywood star system.