LGM Film Club, Part 535: Three on a Match

In the immediate years after the talkie era began, Mervyn LeRoy was about as big as it got as a director. He was just pushing out content through the early 30s, multiple films a year. Since they were usually only about an hour long and this was normal in the silent era, this isn’t that surprising, even if it was to change soon. The films are a bit mixed, though the best (Gold Diggers of 1933) are pretty great. He was willing to push the envelope at times as well, not so much with sex, but with realistic portrayals of life when the subject matter met the film. One of the better examples is 1932’s Three on a Match. This isn’t a perfect film. It’s supposed to be about three classmates in a late 1910s-early 1920s New York public school, one rich, one smart but poor, one a sex-crazed disaster.

They grow up. They meet again in 1931 after years apart. Bette Davis plays the smart but poor one. She is just working a regular job. The weakness of the film is casting Davis but giving her nothing at all to do, so it’s disappointing on that front. Joan Blondell is the sex-crazed disaster who has found her way being a showgirl and has gotten her shit together after time in reform school. Ann Dvorak is the rich girl, who is now an unhappy rich wife. It’s really the Dvorak show and somewhat the Blondell show. For Dvorak, rich and married but unhappy, throws her life away for some loser and becomes what is clearly but not actually stated a heroin addict who loses her son. The husband, played by a very boring Warren William makes me want to leave him too.

What makes this film work is Dvorak’s descent portrayed so well (she is good at playing rich and maybe isn’t quite so well playing dope fiend, but is good enough) and then Blondell, who is awesome in every role she played in the 30s. Seriously, I think Joan Blondell is one of the great all-time Hollywood figures. She made every film she was in better. She could wise crack with the best of them, she could play poor and clawing your way up great, she had the looks, the voice, the whole thing. Just a very good actor. Also, the film has a very young Humphrey Bogart in a small role as a gangster enforcer and of course he could do that very well.

Unfortunately, Dvorak’s character’s kid plays a key role here and like every child actor from the 30s, I largely wish he had been murdered early in the film. These kids were directed to this saccharine and annoying cuteness. Yeah, I’m an asshole, I don’t care. Somehow child acting has improved so much since the 60s. Thank God for that. This film could really use Macaulay Culkin or someone like that.

So the film is uneven, but really quite solid, even if Davis’ role was way smaller than it could have been. Absolutely worth your time.