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.

Excerpt from TCM located HERE