Is there anything truer on earth than a mother’s love? And what can be tougher than to break it? Today’s premiere of the motion picture Born to Be Bad, with Loretta Young and Cary Grant gave me lots of food for thoughts.
Miss Young’s character Letty wants to spare her seven years old son Mickey what she had gone through: Becoming “a case of survival of the fittest…. if you don’t do, you’re gonna get done….” She had born him in the back room of a book store. An older storekeeper — with nickname “Fuzzy” — had saved the pregnant Letty from hunger and coldness at age fifteen. Now she’s teaching Mickey to be “…so darn smart by the time of age, he won’t have to worry…. Honor and decency, that’s a lot of hash!”
Obviously Mickey is already involved in juvenile delinquency, while his mother wears fancy gowns without paying for them. It seems she regularly gets them from rather doubtful men…. Letty knows very well people can hardly resist her extraordinary beauty and this makes their life fairly easy.
One day Mickey acts recklessly with roller skates, running into a truck. Although he’s not gravely injured, Letty talks him into simulating a cripple in the court room, just to win a fortune. But the swindle gets revealed and Mickey is taken away by the juvenile authorities. The wealthy truck owner Malcolm adopts the boy and allows his mother to visit him at any time.
Letty’s trial to flee with Mickey from Malcolm’s country estate fails. So she starts flirting with Mal, who promptly falls in love with her. Now Letty threats to inform his wife Alice, if she wasn’t allowed to leave with her son. But Mal is even ready for divorce and Alice has already given up. Yet, finally Letty yields up Malcolm and Mickey and backs crying out to town.
The farewell scene between Letty and her little boy is absolutely heartbreaking — the toughest thing I ever went through in a movie house. Mickey already feels that his mother would leave and starts crying. Letty tries to smile bravely, but also can’t stop her tears. To me nothing hurts more than to break the love between mother and child — it’s the ultimate tragedy. Admittedly Letty has made bad mistakes, but she already realized this, telling her son: “It was all wrong…. that’s swell for someone like me, but not you honey.” Mickey now lives on the sunny side and hasn’t to fight any longer.
Here it shows Born to Be Bad is a social drama as well. Letty thinks she has to be “bad” because she was born poor. Malcolm is able to offer a lot more to her son…. “You’ve given him things that I couldn’t, because you’re rich.” This picture brings up a painful subject of our time. Many people are so poor, they can’t bring up their children in a decent way. I’m asking myself whether the Hays Office tried to stop this film because it’s telling an awkward truth, in order to put a damper on the social unrest in this country.
Clarissa Smith — May 18, 1934
