"Three on a Match," or Ladies and the Tramp

The 1932 film "Three on a Match" traces the lives of three women friends from their school days to adulthood. It also offers an interesting look at three actresses on different career trajectories, with the one in the least showy role going on to become the queen of the Warner Bros. lot into the early 1950s. 

The story is by Kubec Glasmon and John Bright, the same duo who gave us "The Public Enemy," and the movie begins in the same territory -- a working-class urban neighborhood right around the end of World War I. This time around, however, the plot centers on three girls -- Mary, Vivian and Ruth. Ruth is the goody-goody kid, Vivian hangs upside down on the swings to let the boys see her bloomers, and Mary is voted most likely to be out back smoking with the boys.

Fast forward thirteen years, and the girls have grown up -- Mary into Joan Blondell, Ruth into Bette Davis and Vivian into Ann Dvorak. Ruth is a responsible office worker, Mary has gone from a stint in reform school to a life as a good-hearted showgirl and Vivian is married to wealthy attorney Robert (Warren William). Ironically, even though she has the most to be thankful for, including a young son, Vivian is the least content:



What Vivian is looking for is a little hotcha, and she gets it in the form of Lyle Talbot as Michael, a smooth gigolo-hood. They meet on a cruise ship, introduced by Mary -- Michael is there seeing off some friends and Vivian is going to Europe with Junior. At least that's her plan until Michael sweeps her off her feet:



The trunk belongs to Vivian. She's getting off in more ways than one.

And before you can say "sexually transmitted disease," she and Michael are shacking up, with neglected Junior along for the ride, a towhead in tow. Robert is going crazy trying to track them down, and with Mary's help, Junior and father are reunited. Vivian, on the other hand, is sliding steadily downhill, hanging out with Michael's hood friends (including Humphrey Bogart and Jack LaRue) and developing a taste for nose candy. (In one great moment Bogart wipes his nose dismissively as he refers to her.)

Meanwhile, Mary and Robert are getting cozy, and Ruth has become Junior's nanny. Mary and Robert marry as soon as his divorce from Vivian is final. Vivian and Michael have fallen on hard times, and Michael hatches a plan -- they'll kidnap Junior for ransom from Robert. Vivian is a reluctant accomplice, and when the heat is on, the hoods -- including Bogart, La Rue and Allen Jenkins -- make plans to kill the boy. Dvorak learns of this and in a scene that's still compelling after 80 years, she takes matters into her own hands:



There's a kind of perverse melodramatic beauty in those last scenes, from the jump to Junior's painfully lame acting to the casual tossing of the match. Tramp's dead and all's well!

Davis's performance -- and her character -- are pretty colorless. She was still a couple of years away from her breakthrough role in "Of Human Bondage." Blondell is pretty much playing the same good-hearted dame she would play through the 1960s and as late as 1978, in "Grease." Dvorak has the showiest role here, but that wouldn't last long, thanks to her battles with Warner Bros., her desire for independence and her subsequent move to England.





    

"I Steal!": The Unflinching "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang"

Paul Muni begins 1932's "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang" in an Army uniform and ends it in the uniform of the forgotten man of the depression -- unshaven, battered hat, threadbare coat, wrinkled trousers, probably the slight smell of sweat and cigarettes. He has a wild look in his eyes, as he should -- he's just escaped from a chain gang for a second time and has permitted himself just one final moment with Helen (Helen Vinson), the woman he loves:


From the darkness: "I steal!"

The ending is as abrupt and as unflinching as the rest of "I Am a Fugitive." Eighty years after its release, the film remains a true classic that is carried by the power of its true story, by Muni's performance and by Mervyn LeRoy's swift and sure direction.

The movie begins as James Allen, played by Muni, comes home after World War I. He's greeted by his adoring mother and ineffectual brother, a pompous clergymen whose faith will be absolutely no help to Allen as he faces life's cruelty and challenges.

Walking away from a factory job that will keep him close to home, Allen sets out to work in construction and makes his way across the country. When he is reluctantly involved in a robbery, he is given the harshest sentence possible -- years on a chain gang. (In Georgia, but Warner Bros. didn't want to risk any lawsuits, so that state is unnamed.)

The inhuman conditions Burns faces on the gang leads to his first escape, a terrific piece of kinetic storytelling:


Then it's off to Chicago, where Allen makes a prosperous life as a builder-contractor, until he is undone by the mercenary Marie, played by one of the best of the tough Warner dames, Glenda Farrell. She finds out about Allen's past, courtesy of a letter from the clergyman brother, and blackmails Allen into marriage. When he tries to divorce her to marry Helen, who he really loves, Marie turns stool pigeon. Allen strikes a deal with the authorities -- he'll return to the work camp for a few months, followed by a quiet release.

But after Allen has worked on the chain gang for a year, the state goes back on its word. Watch how Muni plays it, as a man crumbling apart from the inside:


"I Am a Fugitive" has the grittiness we expect from a pre-code Warner film; Allen's safe haven after his escape is in a bawdy house, where he spends the evening with a prostitute (Noel Francis). In another scene, the broke Allen tries to hock the medals he received in the war -- but when he goes to a pawnshop, the broker shows him a box full of medals he's gotten from other veterans. And the beatings and whippings Allen suffers on the gang still seem painfully real.

As a result of the movie, Robert Burns, the real-life James Allen, was pardoned in 1933. And though Muni would go on to deliver award-winning performances, he did little else that matches his vivid portrayal in this film.