Three on a Match (1932)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Three on a Match (1932) – M. LeRoy

Pre-code drama that shows us three childhood schoolmates (not necessarily friends), first as “types” at grammar school (the bad girl, the good girl, and the popular girl) and then as young adults who have transformed into Joan Blondell, Bette Davis, and Ann Dvorak.  They still fit the same type:  Blondell has been in the reformatory but is now a showgirl; Davis is a hard-working typist; Dvorak is married to a rich lawyer (Warren William), has a young son, and lives in a mansion. But Dvorak’s character yearns to be free from the shackles of marriage and motherhood (this is pre-code, remember) and soon we see her take up with a bad egg (Lyle Talbot), bringing her 3 or 4 year old son into squalor.  Against type, Blondell saves the child.  Alcoholism and drug abuse soon follow for Dvorak and when Talbot gets on the wrong side of the mob due to a gambling debt (led by Edward Arnold with a young Bogart as his henchman), he kidnaps the young boy to try to elicit ransom money.  It’s all pretty bleak, especially the shock ending.  Still, Blondell is her perky self and Dvorak inhabits the wasted girl well (Davis has nothing to do and Bogart gives only a glimpse of his later tough guy persona).  Worth a look, esp. since it clocks in at just over an hour and offers an eye-opening and lurid look at 1932.  The title refers to the famous superstition, of course.