Three On A Match (1932)

 

Three schoolgirls meet again by chance years later as adults: Joan Blondell is now a showgirl with a prison record, Bette Davis is a secretary and Ann Dvorak is a socialite married to a wealthy lawyer. At a reunion lunch, they light their cigarettes on one match, ignoring the superstition that the third one to light the cigarette will be the first to die. This economical (it's barely over an hour long) pre-code is modestly entertaining. The pre-stardom Davis is wasted and the sassy Blondell is always welcome but it's Ann Dvorak's movie. As a respectable but restless blueblood, she abandons her husband to become the mistress of a gambling thug (Lyle Talbot), neglects her child and become a cocaine addict! Directed by Mervyn LeRoy during his tough period at Warners before he went all soft at MGM in the 1940s. With Warren William, Humphrey Bogart, Edward Arnold, Anne Shirley, Allen Jenkins and Jack La Rue.