WARNING: SPOILERS

There’s novelty in the premise of “Brother Orchid”—a gangster in a monastery—it just takes a while to get there. In the meantime, it’s same old same old. And then it’s not much.

Little John Sarto (Edward G. Robinson) decides to get out of the rackets and become a gentleman, only to find himself among bigger crooks than he ever was. If that sounds familiar, it’s the premise of the Robinson flick “The Little Giant” from 1933. There, he tried to join California high society. Here, he takes a trip to Europe, where he gets rooked in country after country. In London, he buys the world’s biggest diamond … that turns out to be a door knob. In Rome he buys “The Bed of the Borgias” … made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Etc. 

Sarto is a sucker here because he’s trying to be what he isn’t: someone with class. He loses the rest gambling in Monte Carlo. We’re not 10 minutes in.

The other Jack Buck
So he returns to what he is—being a gangster—which is when we get a less brutal version of what happened to Robinson in “The Last Gangster” from 1937. The remnants of his gang, led by Humphrey Bogart’s Jack Buck (yes, same as the great St. Louis Cardinals announcer), don’t want him back. They hot-wire a chair, berate him, toss him out on his ear. Two remain loyal: his dame, Flo (Ann Sothern, great), and Willie the Knife (Allen Jenkins), who checked himself into a New Jersey sanitarium to avoid Bogie. Flo, meanwhile, has gotten rich, thanks in part to a tall good-natured Texan, Clarence Fletcher (Ralph Bellamy), who follows her everywhere. Clarence is good with his fists, too. When Buck’s men try to make trouble outside the sanitarium, Clarence takes them out himself.

You kind of expect Clarence to be the muscle going forward, but nah, we get bland Warners guys; then it’s tit-for-tat stuff. Bogie makes a move here, Sarto counters there. It’s Flo who breaks the impasse. She brokers a meeting 20 miles outside the city. For a second she seems smart, but she isn’t, and Sarto is set up. In the woods he gets away, wounded, and winds up being revived at a monastery. 

By this point, we’re halfway through the movie.

Some of it isn’t bad. When he first wakes up and see the brothers surrounding his bed, he says, “I made it ... I’m in heaven.” When he tries on sandals: “Say, this is the first time I’ve seen shoes that are air-conditioned.”

But overall it’s not that clever. Just as he was cheated in Europe, so he cheats in the monastery. The brothers are amazed at how much more milk he can get out of the cows, but he’s watering down his output. (To what end?) He also gets a local kid to do his planting while he reads under a hammock. Inside his book about plants there’s pulp fiction: “He Slew For Her Honor” by “Two-Trigger” Sears. It feels like there’s a better gag somewhere.

Eventually he’s found out, confesses, makes good. Eventually, too, he reads a newspaper report about the upcoming wedding of Flo and Clarence. Thinking she betrayed him, he goes back for revenge. When he learns she didn’t betray him, he goes after Bogie’s gang, and all the Texas good ol’ boys in town for the wedding come along for the fun. Cue prolonged fistfight. I was reminded of movie serials: How they drag out the knock-down-drag-outs. Sarto and Buck go after each other, too, with fisticuffs. From IMDb’s trivia section:

Of the five films that Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart made together, this is the only one in which neither is killed.

Bogie gets arrested, and Sarto is poised to fleece Flo again … but it’s the end of the movie and we need our lesson. So he gives her up to Clarence. And the $300 he finagles from Clarence he gives to a poor cleaning woman. Rejoining the monastery, he makes this announcement:

“All my life, I’m a guy that was looking for class. I once went halfway around the world trying to find it because I thought class came in dough, and nice clothes, and society. Well, I was wrong. I sure traveled a long way to find out one thing. This. This is the real class.”

Music wells and we’re out.

Bacon and yeggs
In his autobiography, after Robinson writes that he cherished Ralph Bellamy, he adds, “I could not say the same about Brother Orchid.” Sadly, yes.

Is the problem Lloyd Bacon? He directed 99 features, mostly at Warners, often with Cagney and Robinson, and they’re all just kinda OK. The most memorable ones, such as “Footlight Parade” and “42nd Street,” were co-directed by Busby Berkeley.

Sothern is great in this one; she’s got real comedy chops. And Robinson brings his usual flair. Allen Jenkins disappears halfway through.

Of those five Robinson-Bogart movies, this is the fourth. It was released in June 1940. It would be another eight years before they would act together again in “Key Largo.” By that point, Bogie was a star, Robinson wasn’t, and the world had changed.