It’s interesting how the YT algorithm works in lockstep with searches and selections … quite quickly really. There I was last evening, checking out Carole Lombard’s plane crash death and Clark Gable’s reaction … after her divorce rom William Powell … and there this morning was a Lombard movie called Virtue.
As precode, it was obviously not going to be about virtue but about vice … and yet:
This one has a prostitute trying to go straight, a tough-talking cab driver whose harsh words hide a heart of gold, and there is even a murder tucked away in the plot.
The story opens on prostitute Mae(Carole Lombard) being escorted to a train that will take her out of New York City – a condition of her not serving jail time for street walking is that she leave town. As soon as the police are gone she gets right off the train. Having no money, she has to ditch Jimmy Doyle (Pat O’Brien), the cabby that takes her back into the city, without paying him. However, Mae is a woman without options, not a woman who is basically dishonest, so as soon as she has the money she pays Jimmy the fare, although at the worst possible time – watch the film to see what I’m talking about.
Jimmy and Mae hit it off and even get married, but they’re basically two people looking for love that have two big problems. Mae can’t take back her past, and Jimmy can’t – with dignity – take back the words he has said about him being all-knowing when it comes to “dames”, especially after he learns of his wife’s past occupation at a most inopportune time. From that point forward the two have a good relationship on the surface, but underneath Jimmy always has his doubts as to whether Mae’s past is really behind her, and Mae feels like she’s on probation. Then something comes up that brings all of these feelings to the surface.
Mayo Methot plays Lil Blair, an aging woman of the streets and friend to Mae whose boyfriend Toots is more than happy to have Lil support him and more than unhappy when she can’t come up with quite enough money to keep him in race track forms. Lil winds up playing a bigger part in the whole story than her small amount of screen time would make you believe.
This fast moving little precode with heart is everything that the best precodes of the early 30’s should be. Many of the precodes that came out of Columbia in the early 30’s had a paint-by-numbers feel about them, like they were just going through the motions. This one has very good performances by the entire cast and a storyline that draws you into the everyday lives of these not so everyday people.
One difficulty is that she’s too glam to be a streetwalker, too savvy but never mind … the others aren’t. It’s not so much this film which is an issue but the aim of Hollywood Babylon and East Coast USA … maybe it was just plain communism and its promoter shaitan … therefore all sorts of social breakup is on the agenda, as it is now … anything twisted made to appear compassionately as natural human foibles, let alone hard luck tales.
The bigger problem to me is the puritanical Colonel Harrumph or hellfire preacher reaction, quite OTT, which to my mind is counterproductive. There’s a good case, imho, to not promote human degradation as tolerable or even funny … these were called screwball comedies but they were more “undermine families, values, in line with the communist and illumined agenda” and make light of it all comedies.
Now I just made a case against such screwball comedies in the previous paragraph … did I start ranting about you’re all going to burn, you miserable sinners? A la Ian Paisley? Because I find all that offputting … evangelism of the Calvinist type just drives people away.
In short, there are less fanatical ways to state the case.
