Broadway Musketeers

Isabel Dowling (Margaret Lindsay), Fay Reynolds (Ann Sheridan), and Connie Todd (Marie Wilson) are best friends from their days at the orphanage. Fay gets arrested for performing in a nightclub and the other two bail her out. They plan to meet every year on the same day and in the same restaurant. It is a chaos of melodrama as their worlds collide. Isabel's life falls apart while Fay replaces her.

This is a remake of Three on a Match (1932) and I marginally didn't like that one. I do like this version ever so slightly better. While still melodramatic, it may not be as chaotic as its previous version. For one, let's look at the jumping out the window scene. In this version, she is planning out her deliberate sacrifice. In the original, she's going crazy putting on lipstick and jumps out in madness. This version is a compelling act while the original is campy melodrama. This version is better.

Three women who grew up in the same orphanage -- Margaret Lindsay, Ann Sheridan, and Marie Wilson -- lead very different lives. Miss Lindsay marries wealthy John Litel. They have a child, but then she divorces him. Miss SHeridan becomes a nightclub singer, who marries Litel later. And Miss Wilson offers some comic relief. They meet every year for a dinner.

It's a B remake of THREE ON A MATCH (1932), and lacks the pre-code snap of the earlier version. Most of the tension is reserved for a kidnapping towards the end by gangster Dick Purcell, with Dewey Robinson getting a nice role as the soft-hearted henchman. Directed for speed by John Farrow, it's watchable, but I wouldn't stay up late to watch it. Fortunately, my TV comes equipped with a DVR.

... says a cop before arresting Ann Sheridan's character for a burlesque dance that doesn't amount to anything. If he's seen enough, all I can say is that this cop is probably a bachelor. Actually, it wasn't long after this scene that I had seen enough, because it is obvious this is a production code remake of "Three on a Match" from six years before, and even with Oomph girl Ann Sheridan, all of the oomph has been taken out of the plot.

The basic outline is the same as the original . This time the three girls grew up in an orphanage rather than having gone to the same elementary school. One has a checkered past and present (Sheridan) but is a good person, one is a rather mousy secretary (Marie Wilson), and one (Margaret Lindsay) has married a rich guy who dotes on her and yet she is not haaappy ( misspelled on purpose).

Lindsay's character takes up with a gambling gold digger, Wilson's character doesn't have that much to do, and Sheridan's character marries the deserted rich guy after the divorce. After her divorce settlement money runs out, Lindsay's gambling man, now her husband, writes bad checks to the mob to cover his gambling debts. Complications ensue.

The precode version of this was a couple of notches better than this for a number of reasons. Like a bunch of Puritan women in a chorus line, it is just too modest and humble for anything to come of it. And finally a warning - Warner Brothers seemed to make a habit of making movies in the mid to late 30s that had the word "Broadway" in the title to imply a vitality and glamour that the film just didn't possess. This is one of those films. The title is preposterous in fact. Although the plot does involve friendship, there is nothing of footlights in this movie.

In the tradition of B pictures not one of the three Broadway Musketeers is in any kind of Broadway show, though Ann Sheridan is in burlesque and definitely off Broadway. Broadway Musketeers is a remake of Three On A Match a film from the early 30s.

Ann Sheridan, Margaret Lindsay, and Marie Wilson are three women who grew up in an orphanage and grew up tough. When Sheridan gets busted for removing a bit much, Lindsay bails her out with some of husband John Litel's money.

Lindsay is in a loveless marriage to Litel. She's definitely too frisky for domesticity That comes at the sacrifice f being a mother to little Janet Chapman. When on a girl's night out Sheridan introduces her to playboy Richard Bond she decides she can have one time with him as a husband.

As for Sheridan she wants to settle down and Litel is seeing the qualities he missed in Lindsay.

I'll not mention the rest of the plot. But in the original Three On A Match Bette Davis played a colorless good girl friend to both Sheridan and Lindsay. Could any film aficionado in their wildest imagination see Marie Wilson in a role originally done by Bette Davis? Yet here we have it and Marie Wilson gives it a bit of color with her dumb blonde personality.

And wait to you see whom Wilson lands as a husband.

I found this remake of Three on a Match to be a bit more enjoyable than the original, thanks in no small part to the presence of Ann Sheridan.

Nobody could pull off (no pun intended) an above-the-shoulder striptease like Miss Sheridan. Wowser! I know she didn't care much for her well-known nickname but you can see why the name stuck.

Elsewhere in the movie John Litel does his usual job of providing solid support and little Janet Chapman is something else. She has to be one of the most likable child actors that I've ever seen in the movies.

It's interesting to note that the very last scene in Broadway Musketeers, Ann Sheridan and Janet Chapman embracing, is nearly identical to the final shot of Little Miss Thoroughbred, also directed by John Farrow.