Silver Screenings

Depression-era Warner Bros. gangster movies are as much about reformation as they are about crime.

You know the drill: A ruthless gangster/criminal is hammered with bad luck, and these circumstances force him to become a Better Person.

We (yours truly) have a soft spot for these stories. They never get old, even if the studio recycled many of them, but the pace is so quick and the language so gangster-y, a person doesn’t mind.

Take, for example, Brother Orchid (1940) a comedy starring Edward G. Robinson as Little Johnny Sarto, a mobster who suddenly decides to retire.

There’s not much in this film that goes Robinson’s way. He calls it Quits after being caught off-guard by a business closure, then he travels to Europe where he’s repeatedly swindled.

When he returns to the U.S., he finds his old business has been taken over by subordinate Humphrey Bogart, who’d rather kill than surrender any ground.

His bad luck continues to pile up – he ends up getting shot and being left for dead – and the wounded Robinson finds himself at the door of a monastery. The brothers take him in and nurse his wounds, no Questions asked.

The extortionist quickly realizes what a perfect hideout the monastery is. All he has to do are milk cows and tend orchids; thus he dubs himself Brother Orchid.

Now, did we mention Robinson’s former “business” is a protection racket? The Sarto Protective Association, to be exact.

How ironic, then, that he’s forced to seek shelter in a charitable organization which, alas, will run afoul of his old protection scheme.

You’ve already guessed where this movie is headed.

Robinson sees great value in the sequestered life. He thinks the brothers are “the biggest chumps in the world,” and he’s found ways to game the System in the monastery.

But there are a lot of Moving Pieces in this film, and although Robinson tries to maneuver everything to his benefit, he cannot succeed. Indeed, the first 20 minutes of this film prove he’s somewhat reckless, especially in his relationships with his long-time (and long-suffering) girlfriend, Ann Sothern, and Bogart his Arch-Nemesis.

So when Robinson ducks out on his worldly life, is he really pursuing a Greater Cause? Is he admitting defeat?

Or is it a little of both?

Brother Orchid is a textbook example of the Warner Bros. mobster language and brisk, No-Nonsense delivery. It also has deliberately ridiculous phrases like, “These mugs couldn’t protect a nurse in a baby parade.”

The fabulous Sothern has some of the best lines in the film. For example, she gives a rabbit’s foot to Robinson for good luck and he asks where she got it. “From my mother,” she replies. “With her own hands she took it off of my uncle after they hung him.”

Brother Orchid is the fourth of five films in which Robinson and Bogart starred together, with Robinson as Hero and Bogart as Adversary. Their last pairing would be eight years later in Key Largo (1948), and although Bogart would have Top Billing, Robinson would steal the film.

Of Brother Orchid, however, we noticed New York Times film reviewer Bosley Crowther offered unexpected and well-written insight.

“The sublime—and essential—thing about Mr. Robinson’s comic gangsters is that they are cultural snobs, superior to the sloppy muggs around them,” he wrote, “and for this reason they are the inevitable prey of an incongruous situation.”^¹

Of course we urge you to see Brother Orchid. It’s a playful movie that pokes fun at organized crime, but it also prods us, too, asking if we ourselves might contribute to a greater societal cause.

Brother Orchid: starring Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sothern. Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Written by Earl Baldwin, Richard Connell & Richard Macaulay. Warner Bros., 1940, B&W, 88 mins.

Source

^¹New York Times. (Retrieved October 5, 2023.) THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; ‘Brother Orchid’ Finds Edward G. Robinson in an Excellent Farce at the Strand by Bosley Crowther.