5/10
One Sexy Package when the picture called for it
22 January 2012
Warning: Spoilers
Born To Be Bad takes the unusual step of casting the normally wholesome Loretta Young as a bad girl. She's not only a woman of easy virtue, she's got an out of wedlock kid to prove it in the person of young Jackie Kelk. She supports herself and Kelk with a job at Henry Travers's bookstore.

But Loretta thinks she might have hit the mother lode when Kelk gets hit by a dairy truck that belongs to rich farmer Cary Grant. She's going to follow the American dream of getting rich by suing somebody with deep pockets. And she's got an attorney in Harry Green from the whiplash Willie Gingrich school of shyster attorneys to help out. But Grant's attorney Paul Harvey gets the goods on them.

For a film which strays into The Fortune Cookie territory it then takes the road to Stella Dallas as Grant and his sterile wife Marion Burns offer to adopt young Kelk to give him a decent home. Loretta's down, but her bag of tricks is far from empty.

Young was already a star and Cary Grant was up and coming, but hadn't quite found his niche yet in comedy. He's a serviceable leading man her nothing more.

As for Loretta she was certainly one sexy package when the picture called for it. Born To Be Bad will never be rated in the top films of either Cary Grant or Loretta Young, but it did no harm to either star.

As for the ending, think Stella Dallas.
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