08.12.04
Movie Review: Three on a Match (1932)

How do I love pre-Production Code movies? Oh, let me count the ways…

Throughout the 1920’s and early 1930’s Hollywood studios were able to function with a minimal amount of interference from state and local censorship boards. In the resulting movies, cleavage cleaved, “Godammits” were uttered, prostitutes plied their trade, and men danced with each other.

The party came to a screeching halt in March of 1934 when, under pressure from citizens’ groups and the Catholic Church, the industry implemented its own self-censorship mechanism, The Production Code. For next 34 years married couples slept in twin beds.

Which bring us to this week’s movie, Three on a Match. (No, I don’t want to go see Collateral, why do you ask?)

Three former schoolmates from New York’s P.S. Number 62- snooty Vivian, shy Ruth, and reform school-bound Mary- fatefully meet up years later, after which their lives all take several unexpected turns. Vivian (Ann Dvorak), bored with her life as a married socialite, heads off with her son on a cruise to Europe, which she ditches to shack up with shady Lyle Talbot. Reformed bad girl Mary (Joan Blondell) and Business School graduate Ruth (platinum blonde Bette Davis) help her stuffy husband (Warren William, the poor man’s John Barrymore) track them down. Quickie divorces, quickie-er remarriages, alcoholism, cocaine addiction, kidnapping and suicide ensue. A young-ish Humphrey Bogart plays a gangster.

The plots of movies like this tend to be inconsequential. What is a surprise about the subject matter of movies of this era is that they manage to be both a product of their era (The Great Depression, dumbass) and refreshingly modern. Overall, they tend to age better than their 40's and 50's counterparts.

They also tend to be short. Three on a Match runs 63 minutes, so even if you have the attention span of a mayfly, you probably won’t get bored.

Three on a Match is available on VHS and is in regular rotation on Turner Classic Movies.

Davis, Blondell, Dvorak