Sherry Chandler

Enter Bogart with his tight-lipped lisping sneer, his piercing eyes under the snap brim of his hat, and this movie comes alive.

Three on a Match is a pre-code (Warner Brothers, 1932) soap opera that re-unites three schoolmates: the bad girl, the good girl, and the rich girl. Wikipedia has a nice plot summary.

Mary Keaton, the bad girl, is a good egg, a free spirit who shows her black bloomers on the swings and skips classes to smoke in the barn with the boys. Portentously, she steals the rich girl’s boyfriend.

Vivian Rivere, the rich girl, is given a special diploma as the most popular girl in class and Ruth Westcott, the good girl, gets honors for making the highest grades. Mary is only allowed to attend graduation after a scolding by the principal.

Graduation is from grammar school. This opening school-days scene takes place in 1919. In those days, as for my parents, high school was not part of public education, so these girls are now on their own. Times have changed in more ways than one. In fact, the movie introduces its time-changes with bits of newspaper articles and newsreel footage that are almost like archeological artifacts to the modern viewer. The scene in which Mary is getting a permanent wave is an eye-opener, too. And I always always love to look at the clothes from the 1930s.

In saying farewell to Ruth, Vivian announces that she will go off to a prestigious boarding school. Ruth says she will have to go to business school so she can work. “What will Mary do?” Ruth asks. “Oh, she’ll wind up in reform school,” Vivian replies with some satisfaction.

This movie is actually about the rise of the working-class girl, poor, wild, but essentially honest, and the fall of the spoiled rich girl.
Bette Davis is beautiful, competent, but wasted as the third point in this triangle, the hardworking good girl. Ruth seems excess to the plot, needed only to fulfill the title trope of three on a match. Davis had signed with Universal in 1931 and moved to Warner Brothers in 1932. In those two years she made a dozen movies. I’m not sure she had a dozen lines in this one, though she is billed as one of the stars. She is mostly paired with a curly-haired moppet who looks like a male Shirley Temple and of course steals every scene. He’s uncredited, but I think it must be Frankie Darro.

Joan Blondell mostly plays type as the wisecracking showgirl with the heart of gold. She is charming but not inspired. In one scene on the beach, Davis frolics around in a bathing suit while Blondell is costumed in a full-length pantsuit. It’s a gorgeous outfit but all eyes are drawn to Bette Davis.

Ann Dvorak is an actress I never heard of until I saw this film. As the brunette who is third on the match at the reunion lunch, the bored, doomed, rich girl, she isn’t really interesting until the final third of the movie when she’s become a coked-out ruin who makes one final grand gesture to save the life of her child.

But then that’s when Bogart bursts into the tenement flat and the drama becomes intense.

Here’s the setup. Vivian Revere has tired of her successful lawyer husband, Robert Kirkwood (portrayed by the urbane Warren William), and her pampered life. She decides to take a curative cruise with her son, the aforesaid moppet. But onboard ship, she meets Mary Keaton who’s come to attend a bon voyage party. Accepting Mary’s invitation to join the party, Vivian meets the gambler Michael Loftus (Lyle Talbot) and is persuaded to elope with him, Junior in tow, by lines like this one:

I can tell you’re a real woman, not one of those stuffed brassieres you see on Park Avenue. You’ve got all the works that make a woman want to go, and live, and love.

Loftus seems to appeal to the heretofore well-hidden risk-taker in Vivian. Soon enough, she becomes debauched. The couple is in hiding from her husband but Mary knows where they are. She becomes concerned about Junior and her own role in facilitating this liaison. After talking things over with Ruth, she first confronts Vivian and offers to take the child to live with Ruth’s family. When that doesn’t work, she goes to Kirkwood and rats Vivian out.

Kirkwood reclaims his son, divorces Vivian, marries Mary (fulfilling the foreshadowing of the schoolyard), and sets Ruth up as nanny to Junior.

Vivian and Loftus continue on the fast track to perdition until, having run through all of Vivian’s money and desperate to pay back a gambling debt, Loftus abducts the child. Junior goes willingly with “Uncle Mike” to see his mother but the gangsters, led by Bogart’s Harve, see a chance to turn this into a real kidnapping.

Three on a Match was Bogart’s second film for Warner Brothers and his first tough guy role. It’s a joy to watch him turn this potboiler into a real drama.

Along with frank attitudes toward women’s sexuality, racy dialogue, and the shocker of an ending, Vivian’s coke addiction is one of the things that marks this as a pre-code film. It’s fairly subtly handled. We never see her snorting, only early on, drinking cocktails and feeding her child on bon-bons. By the time of the kidnapping, though, Vivian is obviously in trouble. She is unkempt with dark rings under her eyes. Confronting Harve, she sniffles and runs her fingers under her nose. Harve does a take, turns to his henchmen with a knowing look, and runs his own finger under his nose. If you aren’t watching closely, you’ll miss it. Later, when Harve has been out on an aborted mission to collect the ransom, he’s asked if he “got something” for Vivian but he says the streets are crawling with cops and he couldn’t. Of course, this is Prohibition time, so we could be referring to alcohol. But I think not.

My son pointed out that this movie lets not one but two blonds triumph over the brunette. But I think the real loser was Bette Davis. Always the sidekick, whether to Vivian as schoolgirls or Mary as adults, her big reward is the post of nanny to the rich brat. Not only is there not the least hint of romance for her, though I suppose as nanny she’s set up to meet some one well-heeled, but while the other two get to have their fun, Ruth doesn’t even get to misbehave a little bit. And she was never more beautiful

Ah well, Bette makes up for lost time later.

Zane Grey! The name just sings cowboy. Certainly moreso than Pearl Zane Gray, the name his Quaker mother gave him in Zanesville, Ohio. Dropping the Pearl is obvious, but the subtle changing of the American “a” for the English “e” is a master stroke. He played minor league baseball but never made the big time. His father paid off a paternity suit in the 1890s for $133.40. Eventually he settled down to practice dentistry, as had his father, but he was so bored with extracting teeth that he began to spend his evenings writing. He wrote more than 90 books.