From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Cocaine Blues- Bette Davis’ “Three On A Match”

                                             

 

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the 1932 film Three On A Match.

DVD Review

Three On A Match, Joan Blondell, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Warner Brothers, 1932

“Cocaine’s for horses, not for men, they say it’s going to kill you but they won’t say when.” from an old blues song. Yah, although the theme of this film is not about cocaine per se (and it is not explicitly mentioned and only introduced by a knowing low-life nose candy mimic from newly-minted gangster (stage gangster, that is) Humphrey Bogart) that line can serve as a metaphor for what this film is about. In theory it is about superstition (the old chestnut probably no used much anymore about the fate of the last of third on a match, an old wives tale but just in case, beware, okay. But really it is about going from riches to rags quick when that nose candy puts the squeeze on you.

Despite my plaintive plea the three gals in this story Mary, Ruth, and Vivian who have known each other since grade school (which we are aware of from the beginning shots that set the story line up) play this devilish game out when they met later in life during the Great Depression. Naturally poor little distracted, alienated, and bored rich girl Vivian was the last and thus fated to die first. And she does, after leaving her husband (and child in the end) for some hustling Dan who shows her the bright lights of the city, and introduces her to the free life, and that wicked cocaine, falls on hard times and, in an act of contrition saves her son from some evil ransom scheme by some mobsters who old Dan owes money to by committing suicide. Yah, leave that girl stuff alone. And you already know what I said about that match thing if it ever comes up.