Virtue

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."