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Virtue

Play trailer Poster for Virtue 1932 1h 8m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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Tomatometer 1 Reviews 44% Popcornmeter 50+ Ratings
Given a second chance after her arrest for prostitution, Mae (Carole Lombard) decides to go straight. Mae is soon befriended by kindly cab driver Jimmy Doyle (Pat O'Brien) who gets her work at a diner, where she meets Gert (Shirley Grey), another former prostitute. Mae and Jimmy fall in love, marry and save to buy a small business. Gert then pleads for money from Mae, which results in her unwitting involvement in a crime. Believing Mae has lied and cheated him, Jimmy threatens to leave her.

Critics Reviews

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Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews An entertaining programmer, that did a good box office with the Depression-era crowd but does not transfer well to modern times. Rated: C+ Oct 13, 2010 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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Steve D Melodramatic but Lombard is good enough to save it. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 05/06/23 Full Review Audience Member good early talkie pre-code Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/21/23 Full Review Audience Member It is not great by any stretch of the imaginations, but this Pre-Hays code quickie, about a streetwalker falling in love with a hooker before becoming embroiled in a case of mistaken identity and murder, is certainly very watchable. Carole Lombard is excellent as Mae, the streetwalker - and if she is emblematic of how streetwalkers looked in 1930s America, then boy they must have been busy! So elegent and refined! - and Pat O'Brian invests his taxi driver Jimmy Doyle with a certain amount of depth and conflict. In fact, the two leads invest this quickie with more than it probably deserved. This might not pass much muster today, but it's not all bad. It is certainly a fascinating insight into what Hollywood was doing before Will H. Hays. The director is Edward Buzzell who directed Go West and At The Circus, two Marx Brothers films and one of the Thin Men sequels, which starred Carole Lombard's first husband, Dick Powell. This film also references her second husband, Clark Gable. 1930s Hollywood was a small place! Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/25/23 Full Review Audience Member Decent little pre-code quickie. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Audience Member Inconsequential love story between former streetwalker Lombard and gruff taxi driver O'Brien. Will he discover her past? Can they stay together? These are the small big questions posed here. Several scenes of everyday chat that would have been excised from most movies remain, and with a runtime just over an hour doesn't allow for much development. They manage to insert a murder and case of mistaken identity to contribute SOME kind of tension. Lombard is not great in serious role but she looks stunning. Adorned in classy dress and jewelry back then, hookers have really gone downhill since the '30s. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/23/23 Full Review Audience Member Snappy pre-code dialogue, sappy plot. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Virtue

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Cast & Crew

Movie Info

Synopsis Given a second chance after her arrest for prostitution, Mae (Carole Lombard) decides to go straight. Mae is soon befriended by kindly cab driver Jimmy Doyle (Pat O'Brien) who gets her work at a diner, where she meets Gert (Shirley Grey), another former prostitute. Mae and Jimmy fall in love, marry and save to buy a small business. Gert then pleads for money from Mae, which results in her unwitting involvement in a crime. Believing Mae has lied and cheated him, Jimmy threatens to leave her.
Director
Edward Buzzell
Production Co
Columbia Pictures Corporation
Genre
Drama
Original Language
English
Release Date (Streaming)
Mar 8, 2019
Runtime
1h 8m