The Match King (1932) User Reviews

Match Point!

[sol-kay · 7/10 · 9 January 2010]

**SPOILERS** Movie about a man who started out as a sweeper or clean up man at the Chicago Cub's ballpark Wrigley field and ended up cornering the world's match market. That's until all his sleazy back-room wheeling and dealings finally caught up with him.

Paul Kroll was anything but modest in his achievements even when he was sweeping cigarette butts and spent matches as a sweeper in Chicago's Wrigely Field. Kroll took over his family's small match factory in Sweden that was about to go bankrupt and turned It into a world wide conglomerate that covered some 40 countries with over 250 match factories. Becoming the undisputed "Match King" of the world Kroll was always a step ahead of his creditors in paying off his bills, amounting to over 150 million dollars, in a number of Ponzie schemes that he dreamed up.

In the film "The Match King" we see what a smooth operator Kroll was not only in the world of business but the world of romance as well. Always out to get what he's after Kroll turned his sights on German actress Marta Molnar and, despite her wanting to have nothing to do with him, finally ended up getting her to fall in love with him. Kroll did this by getting Marta's favorite entertainer Gypsy violinist Trino to cancel his concert appearances in order to serenade her, as well as himself, wherever she went. Always looking to be king of the hill in the match business Kroll went as far and having the socially minded and somewhat naive chemist Christian Hobe committed into a mental institution because he invented a match that was self sustaining and would never burn out. This would have put Kroll and his world-wide match empire out of business as well as put him back in "friendly confines" of Wrigley Field sweeping up the matches that his, by then closed down, match factories once manufactured!

***SPOILERS*** It was after the stock market crash of 1929 that Kroll's unbroken string of luck suddenly ran out. Afer getting Italian financial crook Scarlatti to sell him 50 million dollars worth of forged Italian bond notes Kroll had him killed, in a staged boat accident, so he wouldn't have to pay him, something like pennies on the dollar, for them as well has having Scarlatti not in the position of blackmailing him! This all backfired on Kroll in that with Scarlatti not being around to cover up the truth about the fraudulent Italian bonds it soon came to light that, with the bonds shown to be fakes, he didn't have the money to pay off the banks whom he was deeply in debt to! The final nail in the coffin for the by now desperate Kroll was that his love of loves, and he had many of them in the film, Marta Molnar left him for another man! That man turned out to be non other then the Gypsy violinist Trino that Kroll himself introduced her to! With the walls closing in all round him all that was left for Kroll was to go back was the gutter from where he, in his job as a clean up man in good old Chicago's Wrigley field, came from. And that's exactly where he ended up!

P,S The movie was based on the real Match King Ivar Kreuger who, after getting wiped out in the crash of 1929, blew his brains out in his Paris Hotel on March 12, 1932. Which happened just eight months before the movie "The Match King" was released!

Warren William Meets Mrs. Errol Flynn: Sparks Fly

[blanche-2 · 7/10 · 16 January 2011]

"The Match King" is a 1932 precode film based on the life of Swedish industrialist Ivar Kreuger, known as the Match King and the inventor of the concept that three on a match is unlucky. That, of course, was so he could sell more matches. This film was rushed into release after Kreuger's suicide. Kreuger's brother claimed that Ivar was murdered, and 30 years after Ivar's death, documents appeared to back this up. In 2000, a book was published about the case, but it's in Swedish.

Warren William, one of my favorites, plays Paul Kroll, the main character in this film, and Lily Damita (Mrs. Errol Flynn) is his great love, an actress who gets a chance at a Hollywood career. She is supposedly based on Greta Garbo. I worked on the Greta Garbo biography by Barry Paris. It's been a long time -- I do believe she worked for a store that Kreuger owned and appeared in a film that Kreuger had something to do with, but I'm not sure the two had any involvement. Damita is lovely, though she doesn't register strongly.

This film deals with Kroll's European match monopoly, which bailed out quite a few countries, earning him the title "Savior of Europe." However, he used probably the first Ponzi scheme or a variation on it, so 88 years later, this movie is still relevant! Warren William is terrific as the smooth, charming, but ruthless and underhanded Kreuger. William during the silent era and early talkies often played the heavies; later on, he got to show his lighter touch, which was on a par with William Powell's. Supposedly a book was published about him in late 2010, which is a tribute to a renewed awareness of him thanks to TCM.

The actual Ivar Kreuger owned many, many businesses, and varied ones, not only match companies in many countries, but stores, banks, a ball bearing company, mining companies, a department store, a movie company, a telephone company, a railroad etc. His demise hit world finances very hard. He was a crook, but a borderline one, and many of his companies are still in existence today.

Very good film that is worth seeing.

One of the best movies you probably never heard of

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 13 July 2006]

This is probably the best performance you'll see by Warren William--a very popular leading man in the early to mid 1930s but who has been all but forgotten today. And, since he's no longer a household name, it's not surprising that this film is very much unknown.

This story is based on a real individual named Ivar Kreuger, who tried to corner the world market on matches by being about the most unscrupulous and power-hungry man of his day. The film concerns the many ways he shows that down deep he has no soul and there is no sin beyond him if it gains him more money and power.

William is exceptional in the role and the film is fascinating from start to finish. Considering the film is about matches, it must have taken considerable writing, acting and directing talents to produce such a captivating film.

Cagney Without a Gun

[dougdoepke · 31 December 2009]

It's a Warren William showcase that should be seen along with his other ruthless tycoon triumphs, such as Employees Entrance (1933) and Skyscraper Souls (1932). Cagney personified the street tough with a gun and the guts to power his way into the penthouse. William personifies the unscrupulous aristocrat with the charm and polish who's already in the penthouse. What both have that makes each so convincing is total self-assurance. When Kroll (William) says: Wait till it (the bad) happens, then I'll take care of it-- we believe him, just as much as we believe Cagney's snarl. Today, Cagney is still a household name, while William has unfortunately been forgotten, the victim of an A-picture career that peaked during the forbidden pre-Code era that never turned up on popular TV.

Here William plays a real life character (Swedish match king Ivar Kreuger) who schemes and manipulates his way to the top of Europe's financial empire. Oddly, the schemes and shenanigans remain illuminating of our own time some 80 years later, as other reviewers point out. After all, it looks like Kroll relies on a Ponzi setup in assembling his empire much in the way Bernie Madoff swindled billions from investors before finally taking a fall. In fact, a viewer can probably learn more about the anatomy of our own recent financial meltdown from this antique than from anything on the current screen.

All in all, this celluloid obscurity remains both broadly topical and a fascinating glimpse of capitalism's perils and attractions at the top. It's also a chance to catch one of Hollywood's most compelling actors in a tailor-made part. William may be unknown to the broader public, but it looks like a new appreciation is building among old film buffs.

Rise and fall - the scarface of the business world

[raskimono · 7/10 · 12 July 2002]

This gangster-styled story set in the world of business shows the rise of a janitor Paul Kroll, who as a janitor in the US returns to Sweden and rises to own and become a monopoly in the world matches business using unscrupulous and immoral antics. You know he has to fall. Good acting by the always good Warren William and an extremely beautiful LIly Damita as the "woman". The difference between making the movie today, than back then, would be the lack of melodrama between the William and Damita character (heck! it was the era of the woman's picture) Formulaic stuff but good formula all the same with an unusually expensive look (good cinematography, tons of location shooting, great sets, lots of wide shots) for a WB thirties picture tells you this was probably an expected blockbuster in the year of 1932.

A window into Depression-era cynicism

[gbill-74877 · 7/10 · 29 December 2018]

Three years into the Depression, America was cynical of the institutions that had led to a system which had failed, and resentful of its professional classes. Films like 'The Match King' really illustrate this, and if for nothing else, they're worth watching for that reason. With Warren William playing a guy who rises to the top of the match empire through his ruthless behavior and cheating the system, you may see some parallels in the businessmen of today as well.

In the film, William will do anything to individuals around him or in the world at large to advance his own power and prosperity. It's all a giant game to him, one in which he cautions others to "never worry about anything 'til it happens, then I'll take care of it" usually before screwing them over. He borrows money to revive the family's business in matches, and then borrows still more money to pay off the first loan and expand the business - going into debt heavily in a pyramid scheme. He is comfortable in debt, heedless of what it might mean for the future, an approach that is mostly form and marketing, with little substance. He plays on the public's ignorance, pushing the myth about "three on a match" spelling doom in order to increase demand. He digs up dirt on people to use it as leverage to expand his business. He shows his character most when an inventor has come up with a breakthrough - a reusable match - which would clearly be great for humanity, but which might threaten his bottom line, so he schemes to have him silenced.

The scene with the inventor is interesting both for what William says and for what he doesn't say. He simply asks how much it cost to make the reusable matches, and whether anyone else knows about it, which shows he has only business in mind (it should also be noted that ironically, he doesn't care to use matches of any type himself, preferring a lighter instead). He doesn't ask anything at all about how the technology works, how many times the match can be used, whether the materials are safe, how the scientist figured this out or if there are other applications, etc - he doesn't care about any of that stuff. This is not some benevolent, enlightened businessman who is pushing humanity forward with his own personal success; he's the polar opposite of Ayn Rand's Howard Roark. We see a cold-blooded criminal in the white collared world, one who plays classical piano and speaks eloquently instead of toting a gun, but is a criminal nonetheless. We also of course see the deep cynicism America had towards businessmen in the 1930's.

William gives a fine performance, even if he was typecast. The film falters a bit in his love interest (Lili Damita), which is a bit of a clunky subplot. I loved the retrospective sequence showing the consequences of his actions, which I thought was a nice touch. If only those thoughts ran through the minds of all corporate crooks.

The Bernie Madoff Of His Day

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 9 January 2011]

Ivar Krueger whose career closely resembled the Wall Street speculators of the Reagan era never invented anything. He was a consummate gambler who by cleverness and guile managed to get a monopoly on matches in Europe and a few other places. Like Paul Kroll in this film he was one step ahead of it all crashing in on him.

But Warren William as Krueger/Kroll was brought down by market forces that overwhelmed him and the rest of the civilized world during the Great Depression of the Thirties. He was not brought down by the fact that he dropped everything to chase Lily Damita off to Salzburg after she gave him the air in a Berlin nightclub. The real Krueger was strictly all about business, he was never making business decisions with his male member.

The future Mrs. Errol Flynn number one was a lovely item however in her prime years and Warren William was a classically trained actor of the old school. That profile of his caused him to be always compared with John Barrymore and against that competition William always fell short. That's a pity because William was a fine actor on his own and his death in 1948 caused him to be forgotten today.

Young Hardie Albright as William's friend and confidante who is frantic as William is unavailable during crisis has the best supporting performance. This is not the real story of Ivar Krueger, it took years for a lot of that to come out. It's not even remotely based on what was known at the time. But it's a good programmer from Warner Brothers taken from a story that was headline news in a Depression dominated world.

One of the best unknown films

[bullybyte · 10/10 · 15 February 2003]

If James Cagney had played Paul Krohl and Greta Garbo (who had in fact turned down the part) had played Marta Molnar, this film would be a lot better known than it is. Because the leading roles were played by the lesser-known Warren William and Lili Damita, the film is neglected, although neither Cagney, Garbo, nor anyone else, for that matter, could have bettered the performances. When this film is reviewed, reviewers, who are not averse to writing hatchet jobs on creaky old black and whites, instead write comments like: "Not at all bad," and "Uncommonly well acted."

The film closely follows the life of the crooked Swedish safety-match tycoon Ivar Kreugar, right up to his suicide, after being caught trying to sell forged Italian government bonds. There are a few scenarios which are made up for the purposes of the film, otherwise the story of Paul Krohl is in perfect accord with the facts, right down to the invention of the three-on-a-match superstition in an attempt to get people to use more matches. This film is well-layered, a perfect analysis of modern industrialism. It shows that products are successful only because they have a limited life. The scenes of Krohl working as a sweeper at a ball-park shows that an industry has arisen dealing with the spent products. The doomed love affair with Marta Molnar shows that he is trapped by the industrialisation process, which relies on the money he has borrowed, eventually bringing about his ruin. Warren William's acting cannot be praised enough. He is totally convincing, as he manipulates people with his reassuring, "Never worry about it till it happens, and I'll take care of it then." Lili Damita provides some light relief, as she unsuccessfully spurns Krohl's advances; and is, as we all know, exceptionally good-looking.

This film is well worth watching.

Who would have thought a movie about matches would be good?

[utgard14 · 6/10 · 10 November 2013]

This movie is about Paul Kroll's rise to power as, you guessed it, the Match King. Kroll is based on real-life swindler Ivan Krueger. Warren William does fine as Kroll although some claims I've read that this is his finest performance seem like overstatements. William's best roles were ones where his charm and humor shone through. Here he's stone-faced serious the whole time, whether he's committing crimes or making love. Speaking of love, I did enjoy the exquisite Lili Damita (the future Mrs. Errol Flynn). She's very sexy. Glenda Farrell fans be advised that her part is small and over with early.

Strangely, I find myself in the position of saying that while I liked the movie I was also a little disappointed. After reading some of the reviews here I was expecting something with a little more grit to it. This is actually a fairly straightforward corrupt businessman picture, similar to others I've seen from the 1930's. There are some gripping parts, such as how Kroll deals with a reclusive competitor and how he backstabs a forger. There's also a nifty pre-credits sequence showing how everybody uses matches. The ending is powerful and perhaps my favorite part of the movie. Overall I would recommend it as it is largely forgotten and should be more well-known. But don't go into it expecting a classic as it's not quite that. It's a good film though.

Warren William Sparks Taut Crime Drama

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 3 March 2001]

A totally unscrupulous cad plots & schemes to finally become THE MATCH KING of the world, oblivious to the many lives he's destroyed. But with blackmail & murder part of his personal arsenal, how long can it be until avenging fate topples him from his throne?

Warren William dominates this splendid, albeit neglected, crime drama. As in some of his other roles of the same period, William displays his talent for portraying characters simultaneously repulsive & appealing. With his sophisticated good looks & deep, interesting voice, Warren William was the perfect embodiment of the corporate climber, the crook, the conniver. It is a shame this fine actor is generally forgotten today.

Although the plot is firmly centered around William, his co-stars all do a fine job. Brassy Glenda Farrell appears all too briefly as William's first betrayed lover; this was an actress who could really light up the screen, but she's only given two scenes here. Lili Damita is fetching as the movie actress who attracts William. Hardie Albright is a younger relative of William's who gets pulled into his orbit. Blink your eyes and you'll miss Alan Hale as a timber baron. Movie mavens will recognize Charles Sellon as an elderly Match Company executive.

The film makes good use of an intriguing series of short opening scenes, showing various classes of people around the world using that indispensable enabler of civilization, the match.

There was a real life Match King upon whom this drama was based. Ivar Kreuger (1880-1932) was a financial genius whose Swedish Match Company controlled more than half the world's output of matches by 1928. This was accomplished through amazingly speculative deals involving long-term loans to poor nations desiring US dollars, in exchange for match monopolies. As a result, Kreuger's empire grew immensely rich and diversified in many ways. The bubble was soon to burst. World wide depression hit in 1929 and economic pressures mounted steadily. Rather than wait for his holdings to collapse in bankruptcy, Kreuger shot himself in a Paris hotel room on March 12, 1932, aged 52. Subsequent investigations showed his companies to be riddled with fraud & forgery.

Great Movie Making From Warner Brothers

[gerrythree · 10/10 · 31 October 2009]

TCM aired The Match King yesterday morning at 3:00 AM, shown as one of the last movies in its Thursday night series of October movies from the Great Depression. Its previous showing on TCM, as I recall, was in 2005 as one of the favorite movies of guest programmer Stephen Sondheim. The Match King demonstrates a mastery of editing that puts this movie in a class of its own, with the final montage of mini-scenes decades ahead of its time.

In The Racing Form, the capsule description for a horse winning a race by pulling away from the others at race's end is "driving." That describes this movie, which moves at a headlong pace throughout, as it describes the career of crooked businessman Paul Kroll, a fictional version of Ivar Krueger, the real-life match king, who just died in 1932. The same year The Match King was rushed into production at Warner Bros., Hal Wallis the uncredited supervisor, Darryl Zanuck the studio production chief doing his usual job of making movies ripped from the newspaper headline pages of the time.

At the movie's end, Kroll's partners are at a meeting where they now realize they all face economic ruin as Kroll's business empire is about to collapse. Their first though is, sell all their shares before the public finds out. The cynicism in this scene is a capper for what went on before, as Kroll sells down the river almost everyone he has dealings with, including going as far as murder and getting one problem person locked up for life in an insane asylum to shut him up for good. This movie shows the influence of 1932, the bottom year of the Depression, when many people though all businessmen were thieves and crooks who wrecked the world's economy. The more things change, the more. . .

Even with all the technical mastery available now to Hollywood filmmakers now, no studio can come close to the greatness of The Match King, made only two years after Warner Bros. scrapped its Vitaphone sound discs to switch to sound on film cameras. The Match King shows there is something to be said for a movie studio run like Warner Bros., a real slave labor operation where quitting time was not 5 or 6 PM, but when the day's scheduled work was done, which could be 2:00 AM the following morning. A studio where the words "income security" did not exist, as Jack Warner strove to cut everyone's salary, actors' employment contracts be damned (with no worry for craft union contracts, there were none then in non-union Hollywood).

There was a downside to Jack Warners' cheapness. One of the hardest working actors on the Warners lot was Warren William, but apparently when his contract was up in 1936, he went off the Warner Bros. studio payroll. William joined a parade of other acting talent in the repertory company that Zanuck created when he was in charge of hiring actors before he quit in 1933. Looking back now, it seems incredible that the Warner Bros. dream factory could make one high quality movie after another in 1932, usually with a 3 week production schedule (6 day work weeks with no overtime pay) on a budget of around $150,000.

In this year of 2009, as the financial world is again enmeshed in worldwide economic downturn caused by thieves in business suits, thieves now who sold near worthless derivatives to investors on a massive scale, Hollywood turns out hit movies dealing with robots and teenage vampires. A far cry from 1932, cinema wise. There are no movies in fast production now involving the Madoff Ponzi scheme, the strange death of Madoff investor Jeffrey Picower or the subprime mortgage meltdown. The big corporations that run the Hollywood studios are not about to produce movies that remind moviegoers about the real life wreckage of the U.S. economy. Ripping movies from current headlines is not done anymore, especially making grim movies like The Match King. That is just too bad for moviegoers. Good thing there is TCM to finally show The Match King again, a movie about a real world in 1932 that does not seem that far away today.

The Border Collie of Wall Street

[1930s_Time_Machine · 3/10 · 1 January 2023]

It's not a good film. It's a superficial telling of a series of events presented with as much emotion as a PowerPoint presentation padded out with a completely unexplored and unbelievable romantic sub-plot.

This one resulted from Daryl Zanuck's policy of ripping stories out of the headlines to make in to movies. This story was massive news in 1932. It's based very loosely on the true story of a phenomenally successful businessman whose meteoric rise to fame and fortune had just been exposed as being one of the biggest financial frauds in history. Zanuck's Warner Brothers hit on a golden seam of public outrage in the early 30s of making films about those awful rich bankers and crooked businessmen who "caused" The Depression - the masses liked to have someone to blame. At Warner Brothers, that person was usually Warren William.

Although Warren William was the obvious choice it's lazy casting. William does a competent job but nothing different to what he usually does. He was great at what he did (fantastic in Skyscraper Souls and when he took the mickey out of himself in Gold Diggers of 1933, was actually quite funny) but in this he was exactly the same as in virtually everything else he did...and not very Swedish! Also, seeing him being a down and out street sweeper at the beginning of this film was so un-Warren William that it looked ridiculous.

The rest of the cast didn't help this either. They were either faceless cardboard cut-out banker types or characterless pretty women who come and go so fast you hardly get to know their names, never mind find out what they're thinking.

Why else is this a poor film? It tries to cover too much ground in too little time. There's no exploration of his character, nothing is offered to explain why he's so callous other than that he's played by Warren William. It offers no emotional engagement whatsoever and, maybe because it's set in Sweden and countless other places (which are all absolutely identical!), it doesn't even have that familiar gritty feel of a 30s Warner Brothers movie.

A modern comparison would be The Wolf of Wall Street. Whereas in that, Leo DiCaprio was a loveable rogue whom you really felt you knew, in this Warren William is just coldly enacting snippets from a newspaper story. Had James Cagney been given the role this could have been something special.

Warren William at his best

[sws-3 · 9/10 · 9 October 1999]

Though the script could have used a rewrite, mainly to upgrade the dialogue, Warren William's presence makes the film worth watching. He plays a lying, evil, conniving, and utterly ruthless human dynamo who works his way up from janitor to international power broker.In other words, a typical Depression-era anti-hero. Especially enjoyable is the penultimate flashback sequence, in which William remembers every rotten thing he's ever done. In a word, fun.

Stunning Portrayal of One of the Great Rogues of the Twentieth Century.

[coop-16 · 9/10 · 1 September 2012]

When Orson Welles made Mr.Arkadin, he was inspired by two remarkable figures: "Merchant of Death" Basil Zaharoff and "Match King" Ivar Krueger. The whole Zaharoff story has never been brought to the screen, though he was a key figure in that delightful British series, Reilly: Ace Of Spies. The even more incredible tale of Ivar Krueger was brought to the screen shortly after his suicide in Paris, in this obscure, but brilliant "roman a' clef" film from the poor man's major studio, Warner Brothers. This film is incredible, Somehow, two minor directors, unknown writers, and an obscure cinematographer combined to bring a film of considerable power and narrative originality to the screen. Did I mention the acting? That is what really drives the film. The still under-rated and obscure Warren William puts in an remarkably subtle performance as the brilliant, ruthless Kroll, who used borrowed (and stolen) money to build a world -wide empire from the manufacture and sale of that most commonplace and useful of objects, the match. Kroll lies, steals ans seduces. He has a brilliant inventor stuck in a booby hatch. He does not even shrink from murder. In the end, he is destroyed by his obsessive love for a Hungarian actress and his own belief in his invulnerability. In short, this is both an interesting example of how the old studio system could put together an stunning story with ordinary talent and of the far too little appreciated artistry of Warren William.

Worth Watching for William

[Michael_Elliott · 21 January 2011]

Match King, The (1932)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Based on the life of tycoon Ivan Kreuger, who would become known as Match King, this Warner film was rushed into production after Kreuger killed himself on March 12, 1932 and would be released before the end of the year. In the film Warren William plays Paul Kroll, a poor man working as a janitor who cheats countless people before eventually getting a hold of a match company, which he plans to use to take over the world. As Kroll sees it, gold is only valuable because man makes it so but matches are needed by everyone from the rich to the poorest in the world. I wish THE MATCH KING were a better movie but you can tell it was rushed because the screenplay isn't nearly as good as it needed to be and it also gets bogged down in a love story with Lila Damita playing a Swedish beauty who goes to Hollywood and pretty much breaks the heart of Kroll. Apparently this part was based on Greta Garbo but this doesn't add any value to the movie. The main thing this film has going for it is the performance by William who is downright terrific in the part. There wasn't anyone in the pre-code era that could play sleazy characters better than William and he once again delivers the goods here. The coldness to this guy is perfectly brought to life with William who just has a certainly smile that you can see in his eyes when he gets one over on people. It could be getting a friend fired to that he can make more money or pretending to love his best friend's wife so that she will take her husband's life savings and give to him. William delivers the goods and makes this one of his most memorable performances. Damita is also good in her part but the screenplay does very little for her outside of a few quick lines. The supporting cast includes Claire Dodd, Glenda Farrell and Juliette Compton as well as Harold Huber, John Wray and Alan Hale. The film starts off pretty good as it seems to have fun showing off how greedy and crooked this guy is but it loses itself during the middle with the silly love story and things don't pick up much during the final half. The film is certainly still worth viewing for fans of William due to his performance but you can't help but think the thing could have been much better had the studio taken their time with a better story. It is worth noting that the movie has a pre-credit sequence, which was very rare for its time. Also fascinating is that there's a sequence in the film where the legend of "three on a match" gets started by Kroll to help sales and William actually appeared in the Warner film THREE ON A MATCH also released in 1932.

The Match King - Matchless Performance

[krocheav · 8/10 · 10 July 2020]

Warren William again demonstrates why he was crowned King of the thirties with another dazzling performance. Here he plays unscrupulous Chicago Street cleaner Paul Kroll, who schemes his way to becoming an international Match company owner/manager, and so-called 'respectable' gangster--- via outlandish fraudulent methods--producing many and varied disastrous results. This First National production uses dramatic irony to follow the factually based career of an international rogue. Well made and worth seeing.

surprize sleeper

[runtexas · 8/10 · 30 June 2022]

We stumbled on to this film on TCM. By chance, we also watched at the same time "Three On a Match", also starring Warren William, made the same year. The two movies have a slight connection as in "The Match King" we get the origin of the superstition tied to "Three On A Match". We recommend watching both movies.