Compressing thirteen years into sixty-three minutes of screaming headlines and sordid melodrama, Three on a Match draws a triangle of types—bad girl, good girl, rich girl—only to tweak the social-determinist schematic with bitter irony. A chance meeting in a beauty parlor reunites a trio of childhood classmates: Joan Blondell the reform-school graduate, pegged in girlhood as “just not serious enough”; Bette Davis, the serious one; and Ann Dvorak, the snobbish striver who, ambitions fulfilled, finds adult life “tiresome and pointless.” As the scenario rapidly descends into an underworld of drugs and crime, it becomes clear that there are worse things to be than a bad girl. The film showcases Blondell's knack for combining charming vulgarity with basic decency, and Dvorak's alarming talent for depravity; only Davis's character is underdeveloped (although her full physical development is on frequent display). Watch for an early appearance by Humphrey Bogart.
—Juliet Clark