Broadway Musketeers (1938) User Reviews

Vastly inferior to the pre-code original

[mbhur · 5/10 · 11 June 2020]

Had I never seen "Three On a Match" I would probably think this is a decent melodrama, but the original is one of the most vivid, powerful pre-code movies I've ever seen, and this is weak tea by comparison. Not sure why they even chose to do a remake so soon after the original, unless they saw it as a good story and thought the 1932 original, which openly showed marital infidelity and drug usage, would be offensive to 1938 sensibilities. Did audiences change that much in 6 years?

You can probably do a side-by-side comparison of these two movies to illustrate the differences between pre and post code. In the original, it's made clear that the bored society wife (Ann Dvorak in the original, Margaret Lindsay here) cheats on her husband with the gangster, and that the big attraction is that they have great sex. This is sanitized in the remake, and you're not even sure why Lindsay leaves her husband, except that someone says the gangster is handsome. (which to me, he wasn't). And in the original we see in vivid terms how Dvorak debases herself in the relationship, and hits rock bottom due to her cocaine addiction. (Bogart, in one of his early slimy hood parts, makes fun off her by repeatedly wiping his nose). The scene in which Dvorak asks her old friend for money really grabs at your heart because you see how low she's sunk. In this version, Lindsay just looks like she's had a couple of sleepless nights, and the scene has little impact. Also, I really like how in the original we first meet the three women as young girls, which for some reason this version does away with.

In terms of the two casts, I love Ann Sheridan, and she looks really sexy here, but the original had the great Joan Blondell, so I call that a wash. A mousy looking Marie Wilson replaces a mousy looking, restrained Bette Davis, also kind of a wash. John Litel is okay as the husband, but I thought Warren William in the original was stronger, and had a more significant role. But the big difference is that Margaret Lindsay, while a decent actress, doesn't come close to conveying the tortured emotions and intense pain Ann Dvorak makes us feel. That pain is what gives her final act of redemption, when she leaps to her death to save her child, so much impact. In this version, with Lindsay, that ending feels contrived and overly melodramatic. (There is also none of the pathos of the kidnapped child seeing the condition his mother is in. Probably something else considered too disturbing post-code. In the original, we see the child dirty and underfed, which the drugged out mother is barely aware of. In this version, the child, now a saccharinely sweet little blonde girl, never even gets her perfect hair mussed)

One other point. "Broadway Musketeers" is a truly terrible and misleading title. It makes it sound like one of those '30s musicals about plucky showgirls. If this comes on TCM I would say go ahead and watch it, but definitely keep an eye out for the original!!

Considering how terrific the original was, I see no reason to see this film instead.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 19 January 2017]

One of the better Pre-Code movies was "Three on a Match" (1932). Not only was it a terrific film but it's one of Bette Davis' earliest films. It also is extremely lurid--the sort of way only Pre-Code films could be. Now, six years later, Warner Brothers have remade the picture as "Broadway Musketeer"...but with many of the more salacious scenes missing (such as the ultra-violent ending in the original). Considering how wonderful "Three on a Match" was, I just couldn't understand remaking it...but on a lark I decided to give this other film a try.

The film has nothing to do with Broadway...and none of the characters have anything to do with the theater. Instead, it's about three women who grew up together in an orphanage, Isabelle (Margaret Lindsay), Fay (Ann Sheridan) and Connie (Marie Wilson). The film begins long after the three friends went their separate ways. Isabelle is married to a very successful man and has everything a woman could have wanted, Fay performs a racy* routine in nightclubs and Marie is a stenographer...an underdeveloped part. However, despite Isabelle having a child and loving husband, she's longing for excitement and ultimately destroys herself and loses her family. At the same time, Fay and Connie step in to pick up the pieces of Isabelle's family. What's next? Well, for starters, Isabelle manages to make things even worse---even after her husband divorces her.

This is a very competent film and the cast is fine. However, they certainly aren't better than the original cast and the script is amazingly tame and lacks the edge and excitement of the original. Worth seeing, perhaps...but I suggest you just see "Three on a Match".

*The racy dance is hilariously tame--so much so that you could perform it at a Baptist picnic!! This is one case where the Post- Code standards just didn't make any sense, as she was arrested for this lewd dance...a dance where all of her clothes remained on her body and the gyrations were minimal!

"I've seen enough!"...

[AlsExGal · 5/10 · 6 February 2021]

... 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.

A Remake of Three on a Match

[msladysoul · 12 June 2002]

This movie is a remake of "Three on a Match" starring Ann Dvorak, Bette Davis and Joan Blondell, but if you haven't seen "Three on a Match" then see that first then this, some things were changed but its pretty good and you see a resemblance, the title "Broadway Musketeers" was a wrong name for the movie, but its worth watching, if you can catch it on Turner Classic Movies, I've got it. Margaret Lindsay, Ann Sheridan, and Marie Wilson star in this remake, but I have to say the first one was better, Margaret Lindsay plays the part Ann Dvorak plays, a rich girl who's not happy and goes the wrong way, the beautiful Ann Sheridan plays the showgirl, burlesque dancer like Joan Blondell played in the first one, she cleans up her life and replaces Margaret's character lifestyle, Marie Wilson plays the part Bette Davis, plays the stenographer, her character isn't much. Like I said this isn't the best film, but these girls are more beautiful and glamorous then Bette Davis, Joan Blondell, and Ann Dvorak were, they added some glamour to the movie, and this film didn't make them stars like Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis became, but worth watching. Ann Sheridan was the only one to become big but she's much forgotten today, but in the late 30s and 40s she was the top pin-up girl, beautiful girl she was, glamour queen.

A movie with problems it does not solve well

[richard-1787 · 6/10 · 7 February 2021]

Most of the six previous reviews of this movie compare it to *Three on a Match* and find it inferior. Since I haven't seen that movie, I'll focus on this movie, which has its good and bad points.

The good point is Ann Sheridan. She hasn't got a great part here, but she does what she can with it, and in her typically brash way comes across as very engaging.

The problem here is Margaret Lindsey. Unlike Sheridan, she has no screen presence. I could as easily have seen her husband, Stanley, deciding to leave her because she was boring. Yes, attractive in a pretty sort of way. But boring and unremarkable. If Sheridan was the "Oomph Girl," Lindsay was the "No oomph whatsoever" girl.

Early on her character, Isabel, decides to leave her husband - and give up her child - to follow a gambler. And no, he's not particularly handsome or attractive. Do NOT imagine Nicky Arnstein as played by Omar Sharif. Any woman who gave up her child to follow another man would have lost pretty much all audience sympathy in 1938. That becomes a real problem, because Lindsay has top billing in this movie. Sheridan's Fay ends up marrying Stanley and is a good Aunt Fay to the little girl, but that doesn't excuse Isabel's abandonment of her child.

So, at the end, in order not to lose the audience altogether, Isabel has to sacrifice her life in order to save the life of her child. It's not very convincing, and I don't know how audiences in 1938 would have seen it. It really comes out of nowhere, because for most of her time away from her daughter Isabel doesn't particularly seem to miss her.

This movie makes Sheridan look good. Marie Wilson had better parts. Dewey Robinson, as the gangster with a good heart for children, stands out in a small part. Otherwise, the rest of this movie is pretty forgettable.

Take your hands off me, you big lug!

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 11 November 2023]

If I had $300 for every time I've heard lines like that in a movie, I could afford to bail out any woman who's ever been arrested on a morals charge. That line is uttered here by Ann Sheridan as a singing stripper in a glamorous burlesque joint, later bailed out by old school pals Margaret Lindsay and Marie Wilson, playing altered versions of the parts played by Joan Blondell (Sheridan), Ann Dvorak (Lindsay) and Bette Davis (Wilson!) in the much more detailed "Three on a Match" that included a prologue that this version lacks.

The idea of the future Irma in a Bette Davis part is amusing, and it's still the weakest of the three leads. Lindsay is discontent in her marriage to wealthy John Litel, not exactly attentive to daughter Janet Chapman (Dickie Moore in the original, gender changed to fool the audience into thinking that this is something original), and thus open to a liason with playboy gambler Richard Bond, leading to issues with kidnapping racketeer Dick Purcell.

The film is short, but as the original is so much more well known and considered a classic, this is just a Warner Brothers B film, one of many remakes. Sheridan is always a feisty delight, and Lindsay glamorous but realistically neurotic, so it's memorable for the cast if not for originality, and fortunately, Chapman isn't an overly cute annoyance. The "Broadway" part of the title is rather generic, and the direction by John Farrow merely competent.

Too frisky for domesticity

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 6 February 2021]

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.

Enjoyable Remake of Three on a Match

[Randy_D · 8/10 · 18 June 2002]

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.