Alfred Hitchcock's famously said "It's very rare, almost never, that a good film gets made from a bad screenplay." And it's rarer that a bad story can be made into a great script and movie.
Director Frank Borzage worked his magic when September 1931 "Bad Girl" was released. The movie was based on one of those "banned in Boston" books, Vina Demar's 1928 novel of the same name about a woman who gets pregnant in a one-night stand, goes through pregnancy and childbirth. It's a bleak story of a woman's struggle to decide to keep the baby. Even before a film studio expressed any intention in adapting the novel and the subsequent play into a movie, the Hays Censor Office was proactive in issuing a statement that it would be closely vetting this particular project because, in the office's words, it's "cheap and shoddy writing about cheap and shoddy people."
No studio touched the subject until Fox Film, in a treatment written by scriptwriter Edwin Burke, recast the entire story's focus to a marriage where a couple fail to communicate with one another. With the exception of some minor changes, the censors gave its stamp of approval. Borzage initially refused to direct the movie, but the studio pressured him, allowing him to mold the script his own way. He finally agreed to direct "Bad Girl," and the final result proved to be highly popular with the public.
As one modern reviewer wrote, "Thanks to Frank Borzage's sympathetic direction and Edwin J. Burke's snappy dialogue, Bad Girl rises to a level that a similar movie could never achieve." The selection of Sally Eilers as Dorothy Collins and James Dunn as Eddie Collins were inspiring choices, even though Borzage's selection of Spencer Tracy as the lead was rejected by the studio. Eilers, a Buster Keaton regular, played the role of an attractive woman weary of men constantly trying to pick her up. Dunn, a former stock theater actor before he secured the lead in the 1929 Broadway musical 'Sweet Adeline,' was immediately signed by Hollywood scouts. "Bad Girl" marked his film debut, launching his acting career well into the mid-1960s.
The plot no one wanted, the script no one wanted to direct, the second-tier actors who were willing to stake their careers in the film, all turned out to be winners at the end. The Academy, in its 5th Annual Awards," nominated "Bad Girl" as Best Picture. Frank Borzage won the Academy Awards Best Director, his second-his first was 1927's "7th Heaven" Writer Edwin Burke won for the Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was so financially successful, a sequel, 1935's "Bad Boy" was produced. In 1940, Robert Sterling starred in "Manhattan Heartbeat," a reworking of "Bad Girl."
Director Frank Borzage worked his magic when September 1931 "Bad Girl" was released. The movie was based on one of those "banned in Boston" books, Vina Demar's 1928 novel of the same name about a woman who gets pregnant in a one-night stand, goes through pregnancy and childbirth. It's a bleak story of a woman's struggle to decide to keep the baby. Even before a film studio expressed any intention in adapting the novel and the subsequent play into a movie, the Hays Censor Office was proactive in issuing a statement that it would be closely vetting this particular project because, in the office's words, it's "cheap and shoddy writing about cheap and shoddy people."
No studio touched the subject until Fox Film, in a treatment written by scriptwriter Edwin Burke, recast the entire story's focus to a marriage where a couple fail to communicate with one another. With the exception of some minor changes, the censors gave its stamp of approval. Borzage initially refused to direct the movie, but the studio pressured him, allowing him to mold the script his own way. He finally agreed to direct "Bad Girl," and the final result proved to be highly popular with the public.
As one modern reviewer wrote, "Thanks to Frank Borzage's sympathetic direction and Edwin J. Burke's snappy dialogue, Bad Girl rises to a level that a similar movie could never achieve." The selection of Sally Eilers as Dorothy Collins and James Dunn as Eddie Collins were inspiring choices, even though Borzage's selection of Spencer Tracy as the lead was rejected by the studio. Eilers, a Buster Keaton regular, played the role of an attractive woman weary of men constantly trying to pick her up. Dunn, a former stock theater actor before he secured the lead in the 1929 Broadway musical 'Sweet Adeline,' was immediately signed by Hollywood scouts. "Bad Girl" marked his film debut, launching his acting career well into the mid-1960s.
The plot no one wanted, the script no one wanted to direct, the second-tier actors who were willing to stake their careers in the film, all turned out to be winners at the end. The Academy, in its 5th Annual Awards," nominated "Bad Girl" as Best Picture. Frank Borzage won the Academy Awards Best Director, his second-his first was 1927's "7th Heaven" Writer Edwin Burke won for the Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was so financially successful, a sequel, 1935's "Bad Boy" was produced. In 1940, Robert Sterling starred in "Manhattan Heartbeat," a reworking of "Bad Girl."