Virtue

Screenwriter Robert Riskin may be best known for his collaborations with director Frank Capra, but this well written, character driven melodrama will make you want to check out his other credits. The always terrific Carole Lombard is the tough but sweet woman with a past, and Pat O'Brien is her man, a soft-hearted blowhard. Mayo Methot is Lombard's world weary best pal, and Jack LaRue is her good looking but dumb as a box of hammers gangster boyfriend. Walking cliches, one would expect, but the script is careful with details, and the characters act logically and believably, even in the most unbelievable situations. The good writing clearly energizes the actors, with O'Brien and Methot, in particular, rising to the occasion. You might come away suspecting that Robert Riskin just may be more interesting than Frank Capra.

On loan from her home studio of Paramount Pictures, Carole Lombard made this film with rising new star Pat O'Brien who next year would be signing with Warner Brothers. It's the story of a streetwalker who falls for a lovable lunkhead of a taxi driver, but whose past keeps catching up with her.

Virtue could not have been made in two years once the Code was firmly in place. Prostitutes were barely seen on the big screen after that and definitely no stories were built around them as central characters.

Lombard and a group of her friends are given suspended sentences providing they leave the New York City limits. But the course of true love gets in the way when she meets O'Brien and almost gyps him out of a fare.

O'Brien somewhat dumbs it down in this part. He's not the usual fast talking promoter in fact his grammar and diction are about two steps above Leo Gorcey. It was more the kind of role his boyhood chum Spencer Tracy was doing over at Fox Films at the time. Still he's a good guy and comes through when it counts.

Humphrey Bogart's third wife Mayo Methot plays Lombard's best friend and Jack LaRue her no good boyfriend. Ward Bond is also on hand as O'Brien's best friend in one of his early films. Bond if possible is an even bigger lovable lunkhead than O'Brien.

With a nice crisp script by Robert Riskin who wrote some of the best of Frank Capra's films, Virtue is a real undiscovered treat for fans of both Lombard and O'Brien. Catch it by all means when it is next broadcast.

The above quote is one of Mae West's more famous off-screen quips and although it wasn't made about the 1932 picture VIRTUE but it could have been given this is a sharp little pre-code drama from Columbia that may have failed with ticket takers but still holds one's interest a good 70 years after production was completed.

The very young Carole Lombard stars as Mae (!!) a rather chic and smart street walker (especially compared to her contemporaries in the film) who unexpectedly finds true love with loud-mouthed cab driver Pat O'Brien who is oblivious to her past. Shortly after their wedding he finds out the truth and struggles to keep his faith in her. The script to this little programmer is by Robert Riskin and features excellent and credible dialogue, not "snappy patter" a hackneyed writer might have gone with. Lombard is superb in this and even the often predictable O'Brien does really good work here. TCM aired this long-unseen little gem with zero fanfare for the first time in December 2007, let's hope they'll also go in the vaults to get Lombard's other rare Columbia films NO MORE ORCHIDS and BRIEF MOMENT.

Virtue (1932)

*** (out of 4)

Pat O'Brien plays a soft hearted taxi driver who thinks he knows all there is to know about women but that changes when he meets a prostitute (Carole Lombard). At first he doesn't know her history but that changes after they're married and soon after more problems start popping up. This is a pretty good little drama that manages to have several good performances and a nice story to go along with it. Lombard is very sexy in her role and delivers a fine, tough performance but it's actually O'Brien who steals the show in what could be the best performance I've seen from him. He plays a complete jerk throughout the entire movie but when it comes time for that good heart to show he mixes the two perfectly. The film goes through some standard stuff including a murder subplot but in the end this moves along very fast and makes for a good time killer.

I liked this little movie quite a lot. It has a substance and quality that some of Lombard's other early movies lack. It is obvious that some care was taken with this screenplay. I would say that the key word for this film is "misunderstanding". It explores the question of whether someone can escape their past and whether love conquers all. This is the first of five pictures that Lombard would make for Columbia Pictures.

The chemistry is good between Pat O'Brien who plays "Jimmy" the cabdriver and Carole Lombard who plays "Mae" the street-girl. Mae's sentence has been suspended by the Judge on the condition that she leave New York City. Of course she refuses. On her way home she takes a cab, but has no money to pay. She stiffs the cabdriver. Later she goes back to square things and a relationship develops between the two. We watch these two grow closer and more dependent on each other, we root for Jimmy as he struggles to fulfill his dream to become a business man, and we cry as a financial crisis and murder come between them.