The Match King

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.