Born To Be Bad 1950

One of the most oft-revived of the pre-Technicolor Nicholas Ray efforts, Born to Be Bad offers us the spectacle of Joan Fontaine portraying a character described as "a cross between Lucrezia Borgia and Peg O' My Heart". For the benefit of her wealthy husband Zachary Scott and his family, Fontaine adopts a facade of wide-eyed sweetness. Bored with her hubby, she inaugurates a romance with novelist Robert Ryan. All her carefully crafted calculations come acropper when both men discover that she's a bitch among bitches. She might have gotten away with all her machinations, but the censors said uh-uh. Originally slated for filming in 1946, with Henry Fonda scheduled to play the Robert Ryan part, Born to Bad was cancelled, then resurfaced as Bed as Roses in 1948, this time with Barbara Bel Geddes in the Fontaine role. RKO head Howard Hughes' decision to replace Bel Geddes with the more bankable Fontaine was one of the reasons that producer Dore Schary left RKO in favor of MGM. Based on Anne Parrish's novel All Kneeling, Born to be Bad is so overheated at times that it threatens to lapse into self-parody; though this never happens, the film was the basis for one of TV star Carol Burnett's funniest and most devastating movie takeoffs, Raised to be Rotten.

Joan Fontaine - Christabel Caine
Robert Ryan - Nick
Zachary Scott - Curtis
Joan Leslie - Donna
Mel Ferrer - Gobby
Harold Vermilyea - John Caine
Virginia Farmer - Aunt Clara
Kathleen Howard - Mrs. Bolton
Dick Ryan - Arthur
Bess Flowers - Mrs. Worthington
Joy Hallward - Mrs. Porter
Hazel Boyne - Committee Woman
Irving Bacon - Jewelry Salesman
Gordon Oliver - Lawyer
Frank Arnold - Man at Art Gallery
Barry Brooks - Man
Ann Burr - Schoolgirl
Jack Chefe - Man
Homer Dickenson - Art Gallery Attendant
Donald Dillaway - Photographer
Sam Harris - Old Man at Ball
Bobby Johnson - Kenneth
Ray Johnson - Guest
Peggy Leon - Caine's Secretary
Sam Lufkin - Taxi Driver
John Mitchum - Guest
Al Murphy - Man