Actress Joan Fontaine had bought the rights to the novel, then sold them to RKO. Born to Be Bad was scheduled to go into production in 1946, was put on hold twice, and had gone through seven screenwriters when it finally went into production early in 1949. By that time, Hughes had bought the studio. According to Fontaine, he had been proposing to her for ten years (he had also wooed Fontaine's sister, Olivia de Havilland), and now he continued his pursuit. By that time, Fontaine's marriage to producer William Dozier was rocky, and in her memoirs she implied that when she told her husband about Hughes' latest proposal, the two of them decided that she would agree to divorce Dozier and marry Hughes if he hired Dozier to run the studio. Fontaine wrote that she was not in love with Hughes, and was unwilling to have an affair with him before she was divorced, because she did not want to risk losing custody of her daughter. So negotiations broke down, the relationship with Hughes never went anywhere, and Fontaine's marriage eventually ended. Dozier, however, did end up working at RKO. As for Born to Be Bad, Fontaine writes that "the only acceptable part of the film was my wardrobe designed by Tina Leser." (Fontaine's costumes are credited to New York couturier Hattie Carnegie.)
The rest of the cast included former Warner Brothers ingenue Joan Leslie, giving a strong performance as the discarded fiancee, and Zachary Scott as the rich man who becomes Christabel's prey. Mel Ferrer, recently signed by Hughes to a contract, played an artist who paints Christabel's portrait and observes her villainy. Ferrer was also a writer and director, and his second directorial effort, The Secret Fury (1950), was released in the same year as Born to Be Bad. Ferrer was also the fifth and only credited director on the Hughes fiasco, Vendetta (1950).
Director Nicholas Ray insisted on Robert Ryan for the part of the novelist who falls in love with Christabel. Born to Be Bad was the first of five films Ray and Ryan made together, and the start of a lasting friendship. Ryan's rugged good looks and ability to portray complex and often conflicting emotions made him an ideal Ray protagonist. His performance as the troubled cop in Ray's film noir On Dangerous Ground (1952) is one of Ryan's best.
Born to Be Bad was the fourth film directed by Ray, who had made an auspicious debut the previous year with the powerful They Live by Night (1949). Already, though, Ray had demonstrated a strikingly original visual style, and an ability to convey emotional intensity even when working with the most banal material. The opening scenes in Born to Be Bad are a bravura exercise in style, as he introduces the main characters preparing for and attending a party at the apartment of Leslie's character. The brilliantly choreographed and lit movement through the apartment hallway with many doors leading off it provides a visual metaphor for the characters' tangled relationships. The work of cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, who had been working in films since the early 1920s, and whose work on Out of the Past (1947) helped define film noir, is stunning in this sequence.
As was becoming typical of Ray's working method, he agonized over every scene of Born to Be Bad, which producer Robert Sparks was treating as just another romantic melodrama. After the film was finished, Hughes, typically, began tinkering. He ordered reshoots with other directors. He changed the ending. Ray asked for the right of final cut, but was denied. Somehow, an ending without retribution for Christabel managed to slip past the censors. When the film was finally released, critics dismissed it as just another soap opera. But over the years, as the cult of Nicholas Ray has grown, Born to Be Bad has undergone a critical re-evaluation. Franklin Jarlett, in his book on the life and career of Robert Ryan, writes "Born to Be Bad was well-written, fast paced, and convincingly played....In Nicholas Ray's perceptive hands, it emerged as a morality play." Born to Be Bad even received the ultimate movie lovers' accolade, when it was parodied on the Carol Burnett TV show, as "Raised to Be Rotten."
Director: Nicholas Ray
Producer: Robert Sparks
Screenplay: Edith Sommer, based on the novel, All Kneeling by Anne Parrish; adaptation, Charles Schnee, additional dialogue, Robert Soderberg, George Oppenheimer
Cinematography: Nicholas Musuraca
Editor: Frederic Knudtson
Costume Design: Hattie Carnegie, Michael Woulfe
Art Direction: Albert S. D'Agostino, Jack Okey
Music: Constantin Bakaleinikoff
Principal Cast: Joan Fontaine (Christabel), Robert Ryan (Nick Bradley), Zachary Scott (Curtis), Joan Leslie (Donna), Mel Ferrer (Gobby), Harold Vermilyea) Virginia Farmer (Aunt Clara).
BW-90m. Closed captioning.
by Margarita Landazuri
