Three on a Match

Three on a Match is, at its very essence, a morality tale. It follows three women who all attended the same grade school but had very different personalities and backgrounds. Mary (Joan Blondell) who, in her adolescence, spent time in reform school, had a bad reputation for smoking and hanging out with the bad boys. She eventually finds a semblance of stability as a showgirl. Ruth (Bette Davis), who was valedictorian, grows up to be a stenographer, a steady job that offers her little satisfaction and is a far cry from where she thought she would end up. Vivian (Ann Dvorak) is the most successful having married a lawyer, Robert Kirkwood (Warren Williams), and has a young child, Robert Jr. (Buster Phillips), but longs for more excitement in her life. 

A chance meeting between the three women years later leads to a scene where the three women, reminiscing and smoking, lighting their three cigarettes on a single match. This leads to a discussion about the old superstition that this act is unlucky and that the last one of the three to light up, Vivian, will be the first to die. The film calls out this superstition, pointing out in text that this was a marketing ploy meant to sell more matches, yet the way the scene plays out on screen leans towards the superstitious interpretation of it all. The scene also serves to emphasize just how unhappy Vivian is in her cushy lifestyle.

Vivian’s unhappiness with her life doesn’t go unnoticed by her husband who handles it better than he should. He offers to take her on a vacation but she insists she wants to travel only with Robert Jr. Arrangements are made for her to travel on an ocean cruiser but Mary shows up with two men who are attending a party on the ship prior to departure. One of the men, gambler Michael Loftus, flirts with Vivian and, after a night of drinking and dancing, she decides to run away with him, leaving the cruiser before departure and taking Robert Jr. with her. As time passes, Vivian grows more and more self absorbed, leading to her neglecting the care of her young child.

Mary is appalled with how Vivian’s decisions are leading to child neglect, yet when Mary tries to talk to her on the child’s behalf, Vivian is dismissive and offended. Mary, in turn, feels responsible for the situation and tracks down the boys father who has been frantically searching for his missing family. Meanwhile Michael has gotten in some heavy debt to mobsters and is being pressured to pay back the money or else face permanent consequences. The only source of money that he can figure is from that of Robert Jr.’s father. 

A lot happens in such a short film and yet it manages to flesh out most of the characters. Ruth is the only real exception who mostly stays in the background getting little to do for most of the film. Bette Davis does a fine job with such little material but ultimately she is not given an opportunity to shine here. Mary has a more challenging role as the girl who started out wild but grows into her morality. Little time is given to show this development of character but for what little there is Joan Blondell does a good job with it. We feel her struggle as she tries to reason with Vivian as well as her self blame for starting Vivian on the road to her own personal destruction. Of the three women, Vivian is the standout performance here. Ann Dvorak has the hardest role in the film. She must convince audiences of a myriad of emotional ranges from deeply unhappy but trying to disguise it to all out devastation late in the film as her choices begin to catch up to her. In the end, as selfish as she has gotten she still deeply loves her son and it costs her everything.

The ending of the film is both tragic and predictable. To say it was foreshadowed would be an understatement. Even though this is a pre-code film it is laced with the type of message prevalent in the Hayes era when wrong-doing had to be met with consequences to get a passing grade for theatrical release. The film is fun to watch, even as we get frustrated watching Vivian descend into neglect and debauchery. The filmmaking itself does it no favors. Quite simply there are too many gimmicks used to depict the passing of time rather than letting the film tell this in a more natural way. Newspaper headlines and stock footage crop up regularly to remind us what year we are seeing. Interstitial cards with musical score titles also routinely interrupt the proceedings serving to only prolong the short screenplay yet add little to the feel or the moment. Through all this we are told several years pass during the main part of the plot yet it feels like only a matter of months (perhaps because Frank Jr. fails to age during all of this). A little retooling to eliminate such an unnecessarily long passage of time would have made this feel a little more cohesive. 

Ultimately the film wraps things up in such a way that audiences of the time would expect. Vivian’s final moment is shocking and poignant as she is beaten and held hostage by Michael and a handful of gangsters including Harve (Humphrey Bogart in a glorified cameo). Everyone else gets their happily ever after. This is after all a morality tale and, as such, the wicked are punished and the righteous get rewarded. It’s on the nose and obvious but, thanks in large part to the strong, if somewhat underwritten, characterization of Mary, the girl destined for reform school who ended up getting everything she could ever want just by doing the right thing when it counted. It’s moralizing at its finest but it is still enjoyable to watch. 

Release Date: October 29, 1932

Running Time: 63 Minutes

Starring: Joan Blondell, Warren William, Ann Dvorak, Bette Davis

Directed By: Mervyn LeRoy