reynoldsjan
This original movie is the best. The remake with Shirley McClaine was frustrating at the end. These Three has a happy ending, where the little liar is finally found out. Cast is amazing; story very well told. Kept my attention to the very end! I would watch this again!
SnoopyStyle
Best friends Karen Wright and Martha Dobie graduates from college. They decide to turn Karen's late grandmother's farm into a girls' boarding school. They are shocked to find the rundown farmhouse and they work to fix it up. Karen is dating amiable local doctor Joe Cardin although Martha does have a crush on him. Martha is confronted by her flighty aunt about her crush and one night with Joe in her room. After Karen punishes troublesome student Mary Tilford, she brings it all to a boil after running back to her grandma and spreading some ugly gossip.Lillian Hellman reworks her 1934 play The Children's Hour into something just as juicy. The lesbian rumor could never be brought to the big screen at the time. While it's not quite the same, it still packs a punch in this emotional drama. Mary's cruelty is as devastating as ever. The last act gets reworked and it struggles to find the happy ending. There are a few stumbles in that last act as it rushes to wrap up. It should have ended with the three leaving the home behind without getting their vindication. That would have been a solid eight.
preppy-3
Two friends (Miriam Hopkins and Merle Oberon) open up a school to teach young girls. Along the way Oberon falls for a handsome young doctor (a ridiculously pretty Joel McCrea). Unfortunately there's an evil young woman in school (Bonita Granville) who spreads a lie saying that Hopkins and McCrea are lovers behind Oberon's back...and their lives are destroyed.Cleaned up version of "The Children's Hour" by Lillian Hellman. In the original play the two women were accused being lesbians...but that couldn't be done on the screen in 1936 so they turn it into a love triangle. The play was filmed faithfully in 1962 by the same director. Still this movie is very good on its own. The dialogue is almost identical to the play with minor changes. The acting is great, it moves very quickly, McCrea is impossibly handsome and it just draws you in. Well-directed too. The 1962 version (under "The Children's Hour" title) is good too but this is well worth seeing. Recommended.
Jeffrey Roegner
"These Three" is taken from the play "The Children's Hour" and follows two friends, Martha (Miriam Hopkins) and Karen (Merle Oberon), who graduate from college and go to and old farm Karen's family owns and fix it up, with intentions of making it a school for young ladies. They meet, Joe Carden (Joel McCrea), a handsome doctor, and he falls in love with Karen, but Martha also falls for him, but it is unrequited. Joe and Karen eventually get engaged. The women open up their school, and with the help of Martha's gossipy Aunt Lily (Catherine Doucet), it become a success. There is however a ghastly little girl at the school named Mary Tilford, played eerily by Bonita Granville, who proves to be a problem when she formulates a lie about Martha and Joe, and it spirals out of control. The play the film was based on featured a rumor about lesbianism, but in 1936, with the Hays Code in full affect, that could not be done, so the play's author wrote this script instead. The changing of the rumor does not effect the message of the story, but the film would not have been what it was, had it not been for it's stellar cast. Alma Kruger is a strong presence as Mary Tilford's grandmother, and you really feel for her character by the end. Walter Brennan and Margaret Hamilton round out the cast in small roles, Brennan as a comic relief cab driver, and Hamilton as the maid at the Tilford home. Hopkins, Oberon, and McCrea all turn in wonderful performances, but it is Granville and young Marcia Mae Jones as the other main young girl, Rosalie, who truly hold their own with the pros. Granville, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, was only 13, and Jones only 12 when production transpired on "These Three" and their performances are very impressive.The film does a fairly good job of not being melodramatic. There are some schmaltzy lines here and there, but for the most part it it a gripping and well acted drama.
