THE MATCH KING

 

Actor Warren William was the King of Pre-Code Cinema, and one of the best examples of this is the 1932 Warners melodrama THE MATCH KING. 

William plays Paul Kroll, who at the beginning of the film is a street sweeper in Chicago. To earn extra money Kroll comes up with a scheme involving phantom co-workers, while pocketing their salary. Kroll's family in Sweden believes he's a top businessman, and they ask him to come over and help out a struggling match company. Through guile, cunning, lies, and outright theft, Kroll builds the company into a major world-wide concern. Kroll's ambition knows no bounds, but the Depression starts to bring him quickly back down to earth. 

Warren William was perfect for the exaggerated excesses of the Pre-Code era. He was tall, handsome, self-assured, and in his best roles he exuded a strong determination along with an oily charm that could make any poor sap fall for his schemes. In THE MATCH KING his Paul Kroll exhibits a brazen audacity that is a wonder to behold. You don't root for Paul Kroll, and you certainly don't sympathize with him--but it's fascinating to watch how far he is willing to go to get what he wants. If THE MATCH KING had been made only a few years later, the character of Paul Kroll would have been a minor villain. Here he's the leading man, and the entire story revolves around his sordid activities. 

The movie slows down a bit in the middle, as Kroll takes the time to romance a glamorous actress played by Lili Damita. (This is after Kroll has used and discarded such ladies as Glenda Farrell and Claire Dodd.) It doesn't take long, though, for Kroll to get back to his dirty deeds--such as having a potential competitor in the match industry committed to an asylum and using phony bonds in a fraudulent deal (while also disposing of the crook he got the fake bonds from). 

Kroll's favorite saying is "Never worry about anything until it happens--and I'll take care of it then." At the climax, when things start to fall apart for him, Kroll does "take care" of it, in an expressionistic sequence that wouldn't be allowed by Hollywood later in the decade. The sequence shows that even in the Pre-Code era, a guy like Paul Kroll still had to pay for his actions. 

THE MATCH KING was based on the life of a real European unscrupulous businessman, although I highly doubt that fellow was as fun to watch as Warren William. Two directors are credited on the film: Howard Bretherton and William Keighley. (I wonder if this is why the scenes where William romances Damita feel out of place.) The movie still has the typical early-30s fast-paced Warners style, but it does lack many of the familiar supporting character actors one expects to see, probably due to the fact that it is mostly set in Europe. 

THE MATCH KING is one of the great films of the Pre-Code period, and in it Warren William gives one of the great Pre-Code leading man performances.