Product Details

• Actors: Virginia Davis, Joan Blondell, Anne Shirley, Ann Dvorak, Betty Carse
• Directors: Mervyn LeRoy
• Writers: John Bright, Kubec Glasmon, Lucien Hubbard
• Producers: Darryl F. Zanuck, Raymond Griffith, Samuel Bischoff
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: Unrated
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Warner)
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 63 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302041104
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #170,724 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

If three people light cigarettes from the same match, one will die soon, or at least that's how the old superstition had it. Three childhood friends (Joan Blondell, Bette Davis, Ann Dvorak) laugh it off as they all light up from the same match. Vivian (Dvorak) is married to a wealthy attorney (played by Warren William, in a sympathetic role for once). Bored and stifled in her life, she decides on a walk on the wild side; absconding with their 4-year-old son, she falls in with gangsters and takes a nosedive. Soon she's living the life of a slattern, hooked on cocaine and bootleg liquor, neglecting her son like he's so much excess baggage. Meanwhile her husband and friends are frantic to get the little boy back and set things right again. In this movie's 64-minute running time, director Mervyn LeRoy managed to include Depression-era social commentary, drugs, crime, sex, violence, and some surprisingly well-fleshed-out characterizations. The young Bette Davis is beautiful (even playing one scene in her lingerie), and Blondell and Dvorak are both great in their roles. Even more remarkable, though, is the number of future stars that can be spotted in Three on a Match: Lyle Talbot, a young Anne Shirley, Edward Arnold, and Humphrey Bogart in a great role as a menacing hood. This is entertaining fare that's still potent today in all its pre-censorship seediness. --Jerry Renshaw

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars OUTSTANDING VINTAGE FILM..., January 20, 2002

By 

Lawyeraau (Balmoral Castle) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Three on a Match [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I absolutely loved this 1932 movie which had me riveted to the screen. As it is a pre-Hays code film, it has not had the life sucked out of it and, consequently, tells a decidedly juicy story, brilliantly directed by the legendary Mervyn LeRoy.

The film tells of three young women who went to public school together as children and, meeting again ten years later, become friends. All three appear to have done well for themselves. Mary (Joan Blondell), who had been wild as a child, has grown up to be a vivacious, good hearted showgirl, while Ruth (Bette Davis), the smartest, went on to business school and is now a stenographer. Vivian (Ann Dvorak), the most popular as a child, is now married to a handsome, prominent and wealthy attorney (Warren William), with whom she has an adorable little boy. Yet, with so much, Vivian, the envy of the other two, is disatisfied with her gilded life. As all three reminisce over lunch one day, they light their cigarettes from one match, laughingly defying the supersition that three on a match means one of the three will die.

Soon after, the dissatisfied Vivian goes on a cruise with her young son, leaving her husband behind. At a bon voyage party on the ship, she hooks up with good looking Mike Loftus (Lyle Talbot), and her life spirals out of control. She soon gets more excitement than she bargained for. Her new life style impacts on Mary and Ruth in ways that they could not have imagined. It also ultimately brings her into contact with a brutal mobster, Harve (Humphrey Bogart), as the movie draws to its climax. If you want to know what kind of excitement the viewer is in for, think the following: booze, crime, drugs, gambling, sex, and violence. All this is crammed into a film that runs for sixty four action packed minutes.

Mervyn Leroy managed to tell a full blooded, three dimensional story, using film montages and film clips of national and world events to move the film along in time. He exacted bravura, stellar performances from the entire cast, and turned out a film with a shocking and surprising ending that is still riveting in today's day and age. This is a remarkably fine film that those who love classic movies, as well as a great story, will enjoy.

The video also provides some brief, but interesting, commentary by film historian Leonard Maltin.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You've found it... this is what pre-code is all about!!!, February 3, 2005

By 

ixta_coyotl (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Three on a Match [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I have been on a pre-code/early-talkie kick as of late, and so I was bound to come across this film sooner or later. When I saw my local video store announced it as "scandalous enough to upset the sensibilities of even the most jaded modern viewer", I couldn't quite believe it but had to take a look. As it turns out, in the first five minutes of the film a very young school girl shows off her bloomers to the boys before smoking a cigarette with some of her classmates! And there was more good stuff after that. Three on a Match is of course dated and stagy like all early talkies (I thought Ann Dvorak's acting in the lead was by far the worst), but if you are interested in cinema history you really have to see it. The whole film, even with Leonard Maltin's intro and epilogue, breezes by in less than 70 minutes. I hope they give this Forbidden Hollywood series a DVD set release like the earlier Film Noir and Gangster films have now received.

Some final thoughts on the cast: 24 year old Bette Davis has a very small role but is absolutely delicious as a cute little blond. I have gone thru her photos and it appears she rapidly morphed into the form she later became better known for sometime during the late 1930s; an astonishing and most unfortunate transformation (enjoy it why it lasts, Mena Suvari!). Also worth watching to see Humphrey Bogart in a small role as a low-ranking gangster. And you should check out the talented Warren William (Robert Kirkwood) in a much more flattering role in Capra's fantastic little 1933 hit, Lady for a Day.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A melodrama of three young women tempting fate, July 4, 2001

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Three on a Match [VHS] (VHS Tape)

In this 1932 film directed by Mervyn LeRoy, three old girl friends from school meet and bring each other up to date. Mary Keaton (Joan Blondell), is a former tomboy who left reform school to become an entertainer. Vivian Revere (Ann Dvorak), is married to a prominent attorney and has a son. Ruth Westcott (Bette Davis), has graduated from secretarial school and has a job as a stenographer. While the girls talk, they light their cigarettes from a single match and laugh off the old superstition that the third person to use the match, Vivian, will soon die. Vivian decides to take her son on a cruise and invites Mary and Ruth to the bon voyage party. But Vivian is attracted to mobster Mike Loftus (Lyle Talbot), who shows up with Mary and ends up running off with him. Vivian's husband, Robert Kirkwood (Warren William), finds Vivian with Mary's help, divorces his wife, gets custody of his son (Buster Phelps), hires Ruth as the boy's companion, and asks Mary to marry him. Meanwhile, Vivian has turned to drinking and drugs, while Loftus ends up hiring three thugs (one of whom is Humphrey Bogart) to kidnap Vivian's son.

Bette Davis' name is used to sell this film on videotape, but she has the least of the three female leads to do in this story, which is excessively melodramatic to say the least. Actually, Bogart's bit part is more important to the plot. What makes this film notable is that it was made before the Hays Office established the code that cleaned up the movies. "Three on a Match" was remade by Warners in 1938 as "Broadway Musketeers," with Ann Sheridan, Margaret Lindsay and Marie Wilson playing the three friends.