Thoughts on Three on a Match

   On Criterion, I rewatched the 1932 Pre-Code classic Three on a Match (directed by Mervyn LeRoy), one of my favorite films of the 1930s. I had seen this decades ago when my mom gave me a VHS copy of it, one that had an intro from Leonard Maltin on it, and I liked how it was a film centering on three women, splitting off into different paths after middle school, and reuniting in unexpected ways. It also both depicts a woman (Ann Dvorak) who had been valued for her popularity and beauty only to feel bored being married to a rich lawyer with a three-year old son, and a woman (Joan Blondell) who had been a delinquent now working as a showgirl with more of a wiser look on life.

    The film's prologue shows the women as adolescents in the early 1920s, then cuts ahead ten years (with a lot of newspaper headline montages about notable events like the beginning of Prohibition, women's right to vote, and the early years of the Depression), with the women in their adult lives. Mary (Blondell) is a showgirl who is past her bad girl youth, finding stability in her life. Ruth (Bette Davis) is working a regular job as a stenographer. And Vivian (Dvorak) married a prominent lawyer and has a cute little son, but feels bored and empty in her life. 

    

Vivian and Mary have a chance meeting at the beauty salon, all three women reunite for lunch, reference the title ("three on a match" is from a wartime superstition that if three soldiers each lit their cigarettes from the same match, one of them would be killed or the third one on the match would be shot), and when Vivian decides to take a trip abroad, Mary and her gangster friends join her for a party on the ship prior to departure. Vivian, having taken her son with her, falls for one of the gangsters (Lyle Talbot), and instead of going on the trip, runs off with him and her son, causing scandal as a wealthy woman running out on her husband. Mary and Ruth work to find Vivian to prevent her from further ruining her life and concerned about her son being neglected, while Vivian gets into substance abuse with her new boyfriend, who is desperately broke and owes money to other mobsters.

    The film becomes more of a gangster film in the last third (the film is just barely over an hour long), and features a young Humphrey Bogart as one of the gangsters. Even though it's a Pre-Code film, the ending feels more like the kind of Hollywood notes given to punish a "fallen woman," and it comes off as hastily written and kind of ridiculous.

    But outside of that, I do really like this film. The women have great chemistry together, Joan Blondell is cute and sassy and smart, and Ann Dvorak was a knockout in playing a character who cracked under pressure to be beautiful and perfect and got lost in a bad romance instead. It's fun seeing Bette Davis in an early role before she became a huge star with Of Human Bondage just two years later, and outside of Talbot, Bogart is the only other gangster character that gets the most screen time as a typical hood. I'm glad I saw this many years ago, before I really knew about Pre-Code Hollywood, and it was fun to revisit this weekend.