The Virtuous Sin

Director George Cukor gets his feet wet as a co-director with Louis Gasnier ( Reefer Madness) in The Virtuous Sin, a basically three person melodrama that manages to fail in nearly every department. Featuring an incredulous storyline and unconvincing performances it stumbles from scene to scene while Kay Francis models fur coats and frocks seducing a general (Walter Huston) in attempts to set her husband free from the brig.

Soldier, scientist Victor Sablin is on the verge of a medical breakthrough that will save millions but WW1 breaks out and Gen. Platoff (Walter Huston) prioritizes his killing enemy instead. Sablin balks and is tossed in the brig. His wife Marya (Francis) devises a plan to save him by working in a brothel that the General frequents on occasion. It works but unforeseen fallout accompanies.

All dressed up with no talent to show, Francis clumsily connives while maintaining naivete, her coquetry hackneyed. Huston is a cantankerous curmudgeon, loud and brash with zero romantic chops. As Marya's husband (eventually in real life as well) Ken McKenna overacts monstrously to every revelation while Jobyna Howland does a dull Mae West brothel madam. Compositionally the scenes are draped in typical Paramount gloss but come across limp much in part to the listless performance of the leads and uninspired direction of one man on the way up and one on the way down. Their conferences together probably showed more drama.