Three on a Match

Infobox Film
name = Three on a Match


director = Mervyn LeRoy
producer = Samuel Bischoff
Raymond Griffith
Darryl F. Zanuck
writer = Story:
Kubec Glasmon
John Bright
Screenplay:
Lucien Hubbard
narrator =
starring = Joan Blondell
Bette Davis
Ann Dvorak
music =
cinematography = Sol Polito
editing = Ray Cirtiss
distributor = Warner Bros.
released = October 29, 1932
runtime = 63 min.
country = United States
language = English
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0023590

"Three on a Match" (1932) Warner Bros. drama directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak and Bette Davis. The film also features Warren William, Lyle Talbot, Humphrey Bogart (in his first tough-guy role), Allen Jenkins and Edward Arnold.

Plot

Three friends from childhood, Mary (Joan Blondell), Ruth (Bette Davis), and Vivian (Ann Dvorak), meet again as young adults after some time apart. They each light a cigarette from the same match and discuss the superstition that this is unlucky and that Vivian, the last to light her cigarette, will soon die.

Mary is an entertainer who has established stability in her life after spending some time in a reform school, while Ruth works as a stenographer. Vivian is the best off of the three, married to successful lawyer Robert Kirkwood (Warren William) and with a young son, but she has grown dissatisfied with her life. On an ocean cruise, gambler Michael Loftus (Lyle Talbot) persuades Vivian to run away with him. She soon becomes addicted to cocaine (this is not explicitly spelled out, but a young Humphrey Bogart, playing a hood named Harve, mimes the dissolute woman's habit by brushing his hand under his nose in one scene, winkingly).

Concerned about Vivian's neglect of her son, Mary tells Robert where to find his boy. Robert retrieves his son and divorces Vivian. Mary and Robert become better acquainted and eventually marry.

Meanwhile, Vivian's money runs out and Michael owes $2000 to three sadistic gangsters, Harve, Dick (Allen Jenkins) and Ace (Edward Arnold), who tell him to pay up or else. Desperate, Michael tries to blackmail Robert by threatening to inform the press about Mary's criminal background. When that doesn't work, he kidnaps Robert's boy. However, in a selfless act of contrition and self-sacrifice, Vivian scrawls a message in lipstick on her nightgown and throws herself out the window of the fourth-floor apartment where she and her son are being held, alerting the authorities and saving her son's life at the cost of her own.

Main cast and characters

External links

*imdb title|id=0023590|title=Three on a Match