Cinema: The New Pictures: Aug. 24, 1931

Bad Girl (Fox) tells a humble story humbly. A radio salesman, responding less to his own inclination than to her advances, makes friends with a pretty girl, seduces her with pleasure tinged by pessimism, marries her with love but some reluctance when her brother turns her out for coming home late. The picture, derived from Vina Delmar's best seller in 1928, might have been chilled by the sententious attitude with which cinema often apologizes for its attempts at realism. Instead, it is as intimate as the gossip on a fire-escape, as interesting as a secret. Director Frank Borzage (Seventh Heaven) gave the story just the treatment it needed to make its developments seem as important as though they had happened to people whom you know — as, in outline, they must have happened to some acquaintance of almost every cinemaddict in the U. S.

Bad Girl is flippantly human, sad with out being solemn or more than pardonably sentimental. When the girl (Sally Eilers) falls in love with the salesman, she reveals the state of her emotions by saying "Gee, but you're a funny guy!" Other good shots: Sally Eilers, feeling so guilty because she is going to have a baby that she cannot get excited over a new apartment; James Dunn, also feeling guilty about the baby, trying to persuade an expensive doctor to attend his wife.

Florenz Ziegfeld once called Sally Eilers the most beautiful brunette in Hollywood. She had her real wedding dress copied for her role in Bad Girl; like the girl in the picture, she lived in Manhattan until, after being in the Follies, she became a cinemactress. She likes giving dinner parties, driving the three airplanes which belong to her husband, Cowboy-Actor Hoot Gibson. Like James Dunn, who used to be a sales man of portable lunch wagons, played a small part in Sweet Adeline, and has a clause in his contract saying he must weigh less than 157 Ibs., she is likely, on the strength of her performance in Bad Girl, to be a star in her next picture.

Bought (Warner) will be particularly pleasing to admirers of the Bennett family. Father Richard Bennett, altered by a monstrous Gothic nose, plays the part of a ladies' apparel buyer who makes friends with a model and finds, as his friendship progresses, that she is his illegitimate daughter. Daughter Constance Bennett plays the part of the model. She is rude to her old and platonic admirer. She prefers circulating in a socialite environment, notably at Newport where she is "untrue to herself" with the assistance of a cub socialite. Penitent, she breaks her engagement with him, promises to be true to a level-headed young writer, and recognizes, for no very good reason, the old cloak & suit buyer as her father. Well-mounted, directed and acted, Bought is acceptable though severely commonplace entertainment. Silly shot: a cross-section of the model's bookshelf, intended to indicate that she loves good books, showing adjacent volumes by Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Galsworthy, Michael Arlen.