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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 13, 2024 16:47:15 GMT
This Sunday, February 18th, at 3pm ET / 1pm MT / 12pm PT, we will be watching and sharing our thoughts on the 1932 movie "Three on a Match," starring Ann Dvorak, Joan Blondell, Bette Davis, Warren William and Lyle Talbot.
Strap in for this one which follows three female public school classmates who meet up again in their mid twenties when one is about to throw away a good marriage for a life with a low-rent hood.
Booze, gambling, loansharking and an incredibly graphic look at drug addiction follows. This is a precode that holds almost nothing back.
It predates addiction movies like "Panic in Needle Park" and "Leaving Las Vegas" by decades, but cedes nothing in human suffering to those later efforts.
Dvorak, Davis, Bondell, Williams and Talbot deliver riveting performances that elevate the movie's powerful script and fast directing.
Precodes are often fun romps through the sexual peccadilloes of the rich or they'll show the "challenges" faced by a refined upper class man or woman who turns into a cool-looking cat burglar by night, but "Three on the Match" takes the gloves off to show the truly ugly and destructive side of bad decisions and addiction in the 1930s
Link to the movie from the RU site as the Internet Archive site removed the movie only days ago: "Three on a Match"
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Post by topbilled on Feb 14, 2024 2:28:07 GMT
I watched this movie about a month ago on the Criterion Channel, and I didn't look at it in the wonderful way you just wrote about it! Good thing I will be re-watching it on Sunday.
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 14, 2024 10:34:40 GMT
I watched this movie about a month ago on the Criterion Channel, and I didn't look at it in the wonderful way you just wrote about it! Good thing I will be re-watching it on Sunday. I don't always see the same movie the same way when I rewatch it, so it's no surprise that different people have very different views. I haven't seen this one in a few years (if memory serves), so on Sunday, I might not see it in the wonderful way I wrote about it either. One thing stuck in my mind from the movie is Dvorak's decent into drug addiction being very painful - I'll be watching to see if that's how I feel this time.
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Post by topbilled on Feb 14, 2024 13:06:05 GMT
I watched this movie about a month ago on the Criterion Channel, and I didn't look at it in the wonderful way you just wrote about it! Good thing I will be re-watching it on Sunday. I don't always see the same movie the same way when I rewatch it, so it's no surprise that different people have very different views. I haven't seen this one in a few years (if memory serves), so on Sunday, I might not see it in the wonderful way I wrote about it either. One thing stuck in my mind from the movie is Dvorak's decent into drug addiction being very painful - I'll be watching to see if that's how I feel this time. Sometimes we do focus on specific things, then when we come back to the film later and re-watch it, we focus on something else or tune into a whole different aspect of the production. This is a strong case for watching some classics more than once.
Two films I had to watch multiple times at the school of Cinema-Television (as the department was called at USC in the mid-90s)-- CITIZEN KANE and PSYCHO. CITIZEN KANE because it seemed to be on the syllabi of several professors. And PSYCHO because one of my first term papers required a shot-by-shot analysis of the shower scene. I re-watched PSYCHO two years ago, and it no longer holds the same interest for me. But CITIZEN KANE is one that I do think about fairly often, even if I haven't seen it in a while, and when I go back to it, it always seems fresh with my viewing things again from a new vantage point.
One thing that struck me about THREE ON A MATCH was how under-developed the other two women's roles were. It really is Ann Dvorak's picture. Davis is barely in it. Blondell is basically supporting Dvorak. This is a film that if expanded to 90 minutes, we would have seen key standalone scenes for Davis and Blondell, with their story arcs fully fleshed out. Perhaps the original script had more for them to do.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Feb 14, 2024 19:05:18 GMT
I'm a big fan of the pre-code Three On A Match. Funny but I was just watching Tales of Wells Fargo and there was Lyle Talbot. He lived until he was 94 and was in films or TV for 6 decades.
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 15, 2024 10:55:43 GMT
Please join us Sunday, February 18th, at 3pm ET / 1pm MT / 12pm PT for "Three on a Match" to see Ann Dvorak's harrowing descent into hardcore drug addiction.
Link to the movie from the RU site: "Three on a Match"
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Post by topbilled on Feb 17, 2024 0:55:37 GMT
From TCM's article:
THREE ON A MATCH (1932) is one of Warner Brothers' best precodes. It's a tough, fast-paced melodrama that features a talented cast of relative newcomers, many of whom would become major stars in the following years such as Ann Dvorak, Joan Blondell, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart. At the time none of the cast or crew attributed much importance to it and contemporary critics dismissed it as unexceptional fare.
Juggling multiple subplots within a sixty-four minute running time, the film follows the fates of three childhood friends, opening with a prologue set in 1919 and then reuniting the trio in 1931 where they have a reunion at a restaurant and vow to stay in touch. At this meeting, Vivian (Dvorak), Mary (Blondell) and Ruth (Davis) all share a match for cigarettes, laughing at the famous superstition that predicts a dire fate for the third one to share the match.
In Vivian's case, however, it proves to be true. A bored society wife, she abandons her lawyer husband (Warren William), takes their son and runs off with a notorious underworld figure (played by Lyle Talbot). Eventually Vivian's husband divorces her and wins custody of their son. Then, in an ironic turn of events, he ends up marrying Mary and hiring Ruth as his child's nanny. Meanwhile, Vivian sinks deeper and deeper into poverty and despair until a final desperate act provides a grim but necessary resolution to the story.
Among the three leading actresses in THREE ON A MATCH, studio boss Jack Warner favored Ann Dvorak stating in his autobiography, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood:
"I had seen her in SCARFACE (1932), and she had a dainty, unworldly quality that was rare in the actresses around Hollywood at the time. I brought her to Warner Brothers and in a five-year period she made nineteen pictures, including THREE ON A MATCH (1932), MIDNIGHT ALIBI (1934) and G-MEN (1935). When agents Myron Selznick and Charlie Feldman began double-crossing each other in a fight to get her, Ann ran away and took a slow boat to New York through the Panama Canal. I put her under suspension, and she never came back to the Burbank lot, which was too bad."
Dvorak is undeniably riveting as the doomed Vivian in THREE ON A MATCH, bringing a sense of genuine tragedy to the highly stylized soap opera proceedings.
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 17, 2024 10:25:12 GMT
Please join us tomorrow, February 18th, at 3pm ET / 1pm MT / 12pm PT for "Three on a Match," a harrowing look at a woman, who has everything, throwing her life away. But there are a few upbeat moments in this tough picture, like seeing two of 1930s most popular female stars - Bette Davis and Joan Blondell - having some fun at the beach.
Link to the movie from the RU site: "Three on a Match"
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Feb 18, 2024 18:05:45 GMT
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 18, 2024 18:57:16 GMT
GG, thank you for a great post. I still can't get the link to the IA version of the movie to work, but hopefully it will work for others. The IA version was fine two weeks ago, but I've had no luck in the past week. Looking forward to "seeing" you and everyone in about an hour.
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Post by BunnyWhit on Feb 18, 2024 19:03:23 GMT
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 18, 2024 19:25:01 GMT
The Continuing Adventures of Fawn and Me
Me: "If it was the early 1930s, I'd have a shot with Ann Harding."
Fawn: "Where's our dictionary?"
Me: "Collecting dust somewhere since they invented the Internet. What do you need the dictionary for?"
Fawn: "I must be confused about the meaning of the word 'shot,' as in 'I'd have a shot with'."
Me: "I'm just saying, Ann seems to have a personality that would work well with mine."
Fawn: "What a relief for her; no more lonely Saturday nights."
Me: "I'm not saying she was lonely, I'm just saying..."
Fawn: [cutting in] "That she'd prefer you to a handsome Hollywood leading man."
Me: "No, I'm just saying, theoretically..."
Fawn: [cutting in] "Theoretically, that she'd prefer you to a handsome Hollywood leading man."
Me: "No, I just meant that if we happened to meet..."
Fawn: [cutting in] "Happened to meet where - at the premiere of a blockbuster picture, because you go to those all the time?"
Me: [dejected] "Never mind."
Fawn; [hopping up on the sofa and passing over the popcorn to me] "Hey, I'm just messing with you. She'd be lucky to meet you."
Me: "Thanks buddy."
Fawn: "Now, I've always felt that Rita Hayworth and I would have enjoyed each other's company."
Me: "Try that and Orson Welles would've turned you into a venison dinner.”
Fawn: [pensively] "Yeah, that could be a problem. Who needs these Hollywood starlets? Let's just watch the movie."
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Feb 18, 2024 19:30:43 GMT
I wonder if Mike Nesmith was a big fan? Joan's hat looks familiar.
Fabulous stuff BW. I for sure would have been on board with that advert influencing me to buy - I think. FF can you pop $5 into your magic inflation converter machine and tell me what that suit would cost today?
I hope there is time to get to the adult snack bar before 3pm. When exactly is the sun over the yardarm today I wonder? At any rate, extra reinforcements are required for this one. By the time we get to the Lindbergh baby I may be three sheets to the wind.
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 18, 2024 19:36:02 GMT
I wonder if Mike Nesmith was a big fan? Joan's hat looks familiar.
Fabulous stuff BW. I for sure would have been on board with that advert influencing me to buy - I think. FF can you pop $5 into your magic inflation converter machine and tell me what that suit would cost today?
I hope there is time to get to the adult snack bar before 3pm. When exactly is the sun over the yardarm today I wonder? At any rate, extra reinforcements are required for this one. By the time we get to the Lindbergh baby I may be three sheets to the wind.
The suit would cost about $120 in today's dollars. A bit incongruous, but I like the three-olive martini and the box of popcorn snack idea.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Feb 18, 2024 19:40:55 GMT
I still remember trying on Catalina suits with my best friend when we were both about 13. The tops were so firmly constructed and molded they stood out from our bodies like separate women. We were both at that praying mantis stage then. All long legs and hips and tiny upper bodies. (We got better.)
I just watched the first minute of the movie to set my sound. I love when they show the cast that way with actor names and character names under their pictures. Very helpful!
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