Antonius Block Very entertaining. To start with you have Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, and Warren William all delivering great performances. Add to that a 24-year-old Bette Davis in a supporting role showing off her legs in addition to her beautiful face, Humphrey Bogart working on his tough guy character 9 years before 'The Maltese Falcon', and a number of cute performances by child actors, most notably 6-year- old Buster Phelps. There are shots of newspapers headlines over the years of the previous decade, including the 'amazing feat of the new wireless telephone' (radio), and the trend of wearing 'sun suits', the 'new brief attire greatly favored for bathing resorts' for the 'fad of sun-bathing'. You see Joan Blondell in prison, listening to a stories read out of a steamy book, and then later connected to a giant hair-curling machine with wires descending from the ceiling to her metallic skullcap. The pre-Code script is a little over-the- top but that's part of the fun. It has three girls growing up into very 'types' of women, and then Dvorak's character getting so bored with her life of luxury that she slips into alcohol, drugs, and adultery, imperiling her little boy. Director Mervyn LeRoy keeps things moving and I liked how it was both short, at 63 minutes, but also packed with content. It's not "high art" or anything, but there are so many bits of interest that this is one that I would recommend to people who aren't normally interested in old movies, and I round up my review score a bit.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . is the first line of THREE ON A MATCH, one of the final mass-audience American flicks NOT approved by the Vatican and its henchmen. Twelve-year-old Mary responds to her perceptive male admirer, "What do I care?" And why should Mary be concerned, since she's sporting conservative black panties? Mary's P.S. #62 class valedictorian, Vivian, on the other hand, titillates the playground boys by proudly proclaiming that HER unseen panties are pink! (Maybe Vivian's not-so-unmentionable undies predated Victoria's Secret, but the raunchy passage she later reads to her fancy prep school classmates smacks of FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY.) Though Vivian passes along her traveling genes BEFORE sowing her wild oats, by the time that she's forced to take a final dive from her tenement window to save her only son, it's Mary who's riding around in Vivian's 40-foot limo and performing the wifely duties for Bob Senior. As my parents said more than once, Straight A's aren't everything!

Robert J. Maxwell Anne Dvorak is a nice married lady. Her husband is the wealthy, older Warren William, also a nice guy but perhaps a little stuffy. They have a cute little boy, about four, who whines all the time, whether he's happy or unhappy, and should be stomped like a roach. The problem is that Dvorak is bored with it all. She itches for something new. This is always a bad sign in a wife.William arranges for her and that nettlesome child to have a vacation in Europe but before boarding she meets a handsome young seducer and, well, they shack up in the Warwick Hotel without leaving New York. Her paramour seems to lack anything in the way of frontal lobes because he can not plan for the future. He gives a rubber check to gangster Edward Arnold, introduced by being first seen plucking nose hairs out of his nostrils with a pair of tweezers. Mervyn LeRoy directed. Of the check, goon Humphrey Bogart says, "If you drop a golf ball off the top of the Chrysler Building, does it bounce?" The seducer, Lyle Talbot, tries to get the money he owes by blackmailing Dvorak's husband. If William doesn't fork it over, Talbot will sell the scandalous story of Dvorak's loose morals to the tabloids. William throws him out.Well, I'll tell you. It gets worse and worse as Dvorak slips deeper into immorality. When the kid, in filthy clothes, asks for something to eat, she gestures from the couch to a tray of half-eaten bon bons. She goes beyond being a simple drunk and gets into cocaine.Arnold and his henchmen kidnap the kid and try to ransom him off to William. At that point, seeing her own little boy in danger (sob), she undergoes an epiphany, scribbles a description of the situation on her nightie in lipstick, then jumps out the window. The police arrive and twig immediately. The end.I'd like to point out a refulgent display of perspicacity on the part of another reviewer, who has seen depths in this film that my own poor sensibilities have kept from my mental grasp. The reviewer's handle is "Howdymax." He's a beacon to all of us.None of that is true, of course, but he's my brother and I owe him a lot of money and his agents are beginning to follow me around. One is a dead ringer for Humphrey Bogart.

vincentlynch-moonoi It's not often that I am truly impressed with films as early as 1932. This is one of the exceptions, and I give it an "8", a rating which I rarely hand out. And I credit director Mervyn Leroy for its excellence.Three women who had attended elementary school together (but were not exactly friends and had distinctly different personalities) meet again by chance and become friends. Mary (Joan Blondell) has gone into show business after spending some time in reform school. Ruth (Bette Davis) is in secretarial school. And Vivian (Ann Dvorak) has married a rich businessman, but is not content. At lunch one day they each light a cigarette from the same match and briefly mention the superstition that doing so is bad luck and that the last to light her cigarette -- Dvorak -- will be the first to die.On a cruise, a gambler (Lyle Talbot) sweeps Dvorak off her feet and she runs away with him...becomes addicted to drugs (watch for Humphrey Bogart's hint at this)...and she gives up her child to her ex-husband...clearly the good guy here. Dvorak's ex eventually marries Blondell. Dvorak's money slowly disappears, and Talbot owes big money to gangster Edward Arnold and his thugs (including a young and handsome Humphrey Bogart). Desperate, Talbot attempts to blackmail Dvorak's ex-husband by threatening to expose Blondell's time in reform school. His blackmail attempt is rebuffed, so he kidnaps the child. Dvorak eventually jumps out the window to her death, sacrificing her own life so the crowd below will see a message in lipstick on her nightgown, telling police where the child is.This is Dvorak's picture, and she is excellent, though not very likable. Blondell is superb, as well. Bette Davis' part is the lightest of the principals, but she does fine as the most prim and proper of the three friends (although in this pre-code film you do get to see her in her undies). The film is fast paced, not lasting much over an hour, but it's the pace adds to the excellence of the film. And, it's intense; it's gut-wrenching to realize the thugs are about to murder the child when the kidnap plan begins to go wrong, and a shock to see Dvorak leap out the window to her death. Make no mistake, this is an emotional film, and Leroy handle sit perfectly.A great addition to your DVD shelf!