Virtue

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.

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."

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.

Ever put a film on you've never heard about but have been really surprised how good it was? This is one of those movies.

Some people might watch this because they're Carole Lombard fans. Although this might sound sacrilegious to them, I'm not a fan of her comedy but in this she's fantastic. This is a Columbia picture, it's shabby and grimy and Carole Lombard perfectly fits into this unsavoury world as a slightly shop soiled street walker. Unlike in some other films of the period, the star is not a victim, she's not struggling. She's thriving and is part of that environment, she's as much a part of that dirty city as the Brooklyn Bridge.

It's written by Robert Riskin, who would go on to write most of Frank Capra's classic films so you know that however uncertain things get for our heroes, you're probably going to get a happy ending....or do you?

Although the plot is essentially about a prostitute who falls in love with a taxi driver, Riskin's brilliant script weaves it into a lovely story arc where we see characters evolve before our eyes. It's underlying theme however is perception. In the eyes of the others, however much she changes, Mae was and always will be just an untrustworthy prostitute. Maybe on a deeper level it's about how we see ourselves and how we see each other. It's how we see others as reflections of our own preconceptions and indeed of ourselves. Although not quite Frank Capra, director Edward Buzzell does a great job and reinforces the reflection motifs with some clever use of mirrors and reflections.

Overall, definitely worth watching for a great, uplifting story with some of the best fast-talking, wisecracking dialogue ever giving us a real taste of life for the underdogs of New York during the darkest days of the depression.

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.