Three on a Match indicates the power of a studio over a good director (LeRoy) who doesn't have a vision of his own, i.e., Three on a Match is obviously a Warner Brothers picture as much as LeRoy's Quo Vadis (1953) is an MGM film. Three on a Match is also a pre-code film, a combiantion of soap opera and gangster film, including drug addiction as well as extra-marital sex. The film starts in 1919 when the three leading women are in school and grow up to be Mary (Joan Blondell), Vivian (Ann Dvorak) and Ruth (Bette Davis). Ruth ends up as a secretary, Mary goes to reform school and eventually becomes an actress, Vivian marries a wealthy lawyer (Warren Willian playing a non-cad). Times passes as newspaper headlines roll by and Vivian leaves her husband out of boredom --taking her child with her --to live with a low-level gangster, Michael Loftus (Lyle Talbot), and gets addicted to drugs; her husband divorces her and marries Mary and hires Ruth as his governess after he gets custody of his and Vivian's son. Lyle and his gang (including a young Humphrey Bogart) kidnap Vivian's son and hold him for ransom while they lock Vivian in a tenement room. Vivian leaps through a nailed-shut window with a message of where her son is written on her slip in lipstick.
The film is crisply shot (by Sol Polito, who photographed 8 films in 1932; LeRoy directed 6) and edited (by Ray Curtis) and packs a great deal into its running time of 63 minutes. Joan Blondell and Ann Dvorak have the biggest roles; Bette Davis's potential had yet to be discovered, though she is quite intense in her relatively small role.
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