Virtue

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.

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.

This movie asks that not unusual pre-Code movie question -- can a woman live down her tawdry past by marrying a good-hearted lout? And, while there is the usual collection of misunderstandings and Plot Contrivances, some really sharp acting out of Lombard and (of all people) Pat O'Brien. Also helpful is that this movie never loses sight of its emotional core, the understandably troubled relationship between Lombard and O'Brien. Also interesting is that Mayo Methot (the future battling Bogart) gets a far larger role than is usual -- and is good in it. Ward Bond also appears.

See this if you want to see Pat O'Brien do perhaps his best take on his urban loud-mouth with a heart of mush character. Maybe he is reacting to the genuine warmth coming off of Lombard's character. But it's unusual to see a Columbia movie of this vintage this well-acted, outside of Capra and Stanwyck.

Definitely worth a look. But don't really look for surprises in the plot. That is standard order for one of these ex-fallen-woman numbers.

No need to recap the plot. Pre-code movies are almost all interesting, but this one doesn't reach the level of hidden gem. (Check out Night Nurse {1931} or Employees Entrance {1933} for examples of pre-Code sleepers.) Virtue is a well-acted, involving feature with some clever innuendo. However, developments get pretty contrived toward the end with an outcome that's all too predictable. In short, despite some adult-level boldness, the final result is too similar to movies made after the Code to really distinguish itself from the pack.

Lombard is winning as the reformed hooker; however, she plays it straight, so this is not one of her signature madcap roles, to say the least. I agree with the reviewer who singles out Methot's performance as especially good. Her role here is the first time I've seen her and I'm impressed. She manages to make the betrayal of the gigolo Toots O'Neill deliciously believable in the midst of a pretty contrived murder sequence.

Be sure to cock an ear to the first 15 minutes. That's where Rifkin's dialogue really shines with a number of fast-moving innuendoes. Once the two lovebirds get hitched, the patter settles into a more conventional mode. Good thing O'Brien's not supposed to be rich because this is a pretty cheap production. The newly-wed's cold water flat is fine, but check out the "casino"—a heavy curtain, a bare table, and a chuck-a-luck. So I guess we're supposed to use our imagination. However, despite the flaws, the movie remains an entertaining 70 minutes.

Carole Lombard and Pat O'Brien star in "Virtue," a 1932 pre-code film featuring Ward Bond, Mayo Methot and Jack LaRue. Robert Riskin wrote the script and Lombard is a prostitute who's thrown out of New York - escorted onto the train, in fact, by a policeman - but she gets off at another city stop and stays in town. She meets and eventually marries a cab driver (O'Brien) who has no idea of her past. When he finds out, he's upset, but he's really in love with her, and they stay together. Then she's implicated in a murder.

"Virtue" moves at a fast pace, has very good dialogue, and Lombard gives an excellent performance as a street smart woman who falls in love unexpectedly. She's very beautiful and quite sophisticated in appearance, though her comrades in the streetwalker trade seem a lot lower class. Pat O'Brien, who worked into his eighties and usually played the best friend to someone like Jimmy Cagney, does a good job in a rare leading role for him.

Since the film is precode, it contains a lot of innuendo, my favorite being O'Brien's advice to Ward Bond, who wants to get married. "It's your doughnut," O'Brien says. "Dunk it."