Picture the 1920s in America and the first thing that comes to mind might well be Gatsby gazing at a light, or befeathered flappers hanging out in speakeasies. The glitz and glamour version of the 1920s has captivated our imagination for almost a century but, of course, plenty of women living at the time weren't enjoying a life of cocktail-strewn liberation.
While moral standards were changing for many young people on both sides of the Atlantic, Vina Delmar's 1928 novel Bad Girl suggests from the title onwards that the risks associated with a bad reputation could still be alive and well. A bestseller in its day, the novel explores the realities and risks of the urban 'whirl' taking place around the novel's main protagonist Dot and her life in 1920s Harlem.
Delmar debates the question, in increasingly ironic terms, of what constitutes a 'bad girl' and in doing so presents a cautionary tale about attitudes to class, premarital sex, pregnancy and childbirth in 1920s New York.
Release Date: September 19, 1931
Release Time: 90 minutes
Director: Frank Borzage
Cast:
Sally Eilers as Dorothy Haley
James Dunn as Eddie Collins
Minna Gombell as Edna Driggs
Uncredited:
Frank Austin as upstairs tenement neighbor
Irving Bacon as expectant father
Frank Darien as Lathrop
Jesse De Vorska as expectant father
Paul Fix as nervous expectant father
Guy Edward Hearn as male nurse
Aggie Herring as seamstress
Claude King as Dr. Burgess
Louis Natheaux as Mr. Thompson
Sarah Padden as Mrs. Gardner
William Pawley as Jim Haley
Charles Sullivan as Mike the prizefighter
William Watson as Floyd
Awards:
5th Academy Awards November 18, 1932
Best Motion Picture - Winfield Sheehan for Fox Film - Nominated
Best Director - Frank Borzage - Won
Best Adapted Screenplay - Edwin J. Burke - Won
From the LA Times Jan 28, 1990:
Viña Delmar; Adapted ‘The Awful Truth’ for the Screen
Vina Delmar, who as a young woman wrote a series of novels that scandalized the country, making them not only best-sellers but giving her entree to Hollywood, has died in a Pasadena convalescent hospital.
The author of “Bad Girl,” a 1928 Literary Guild selection about premarital sex and pregnancy that later became a play and film, was 86 at her death Jan. 19.
The widow of Eugene Delmar, a writer who became her editor, lived much of her life in Beverly Hills where she later wrote historical novels.
Her screen adaptation of “The Awful Truth,” a play by Arthur Richman, was nominated for an Academy Award. The now cult classic comedy starred Cary Grant and Irene Dunne as a couple going through divorce and an ultimate reconciliation.
Mrs. Delmar’s other works included “Kept Woman,” a collection of short stories called “Loose Ladies” and her historical works--"Beloved,” “The Big Family,” “A Time for Titans” and a domestic novel, “The Marcaboth Women,” a Literary Guild selection in 1951.
Her other work in films included “About Mrs. Leslie,” “Make Way for Tomorrow” and “Cynthia,” an early Elizabeth Taylor movie.
More recently she had written “The Becker Scandal: A Time Remembered” about a 1912 New York City police scandal.
Survivors include four grandchildren.
IMDB / INDIE BOUND / TCM
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