BROTHER ORCHID

Warner Bros., 1940.  Directed by Lloyd Bacon.  Camera:  Tony Gaudio.  With Ann Sothern, Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart, Donald Crisp, Ralph Bellamy, Allen Jenkins, Cecil Kellaway, Granville Bates, Frank Faylen.

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Gang leader Little John Sarto quits his protection association to see the world as a gentleman, leaving his girlfriend Flo Addams behind.  After five years of chasing "class," Sarto returns broke to resume his leadership, only to find that Jack Buck has taken over and that Flo has prospered in her own business with cowpoke Clarence Fletcher.  Sarto organizes a new gang and is rapidly muscling in on his old territory when Flo inadvertently sets him up as a target for Buck's boys.

Badly wounded, Sarto manages to crawl to a monastery where, rechristened Brother Orchid, he is nursed back to health and influenced by the kindness of the good brothers, and he begins to change his outlook on life.

When he learns that Flo is to marry Clarence and that the monastery is suffering financial hardship because Buck refuses to allow the brothers to market their flowers, however, Sarto leaves his sanctuary, stops the wedding and, with Clarence's help, breaks up the protective association.

His task accomplished, Sarto decides that he has found true class within the walls of the monastery, and so leaves Flo to Clarence and returns to his life as "Brother Orchid" in the Order of the Flowers.

American Film Institute Catalog

Additional photos courtesy of Gary