Plot Summary for
These Three (1936) More at IMDbPro »

This first film version of "The Children's Hour" uses a heterosexual triangle rather than the play's lesbian theme. The plot concerns schoolteachers Karen Wright and Martha Dobie, both of whom are in love with Dr. Joe Cardin. The malicious lie of one of their students involves all three in a scandal which disrupts all their lives. Written by Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com>

Karen and Martha, college roommates, graduate and face the future with no place and no money. Karen, however, has inherited a farmhouse from her grandmother, and gets the idea that she and Martha can turn it into a school for girls. They travel to the farmhouse, which turns out to be quite rundown, and all hope seems lost, until they meet Dr. Joe Cardin, who tells them not to give up, to take out a loan, fix up the farmhouse, and it will work out. All seems to go according to plan, until one student devises a scheme for revenge for being punished by the teachers. Unlike Lillian Hellman's "The Children's Hour", this film has a mostly happy ending and leaves out all references to lesbianism, making it a love triangle instead of a love chain. Written by Anonymous

Despite its dilapidated condition, best friends and recent college graduates Martha Dobie and Karen Wright decide to open a girl's boarding school at an abandoned farmhouse in Lancet, Massachussetts, the farmhouse bequeathed to Karen. They are assisted in fixing the house up by a local doctor, Joe Cardin, who quickly falls for Karen, and she for him. Karen and Joe soon become engaged. The women are assisted in getting the school off the ground by local dowager, Amelia Tilford, who is looking for a new school to which to send her granddaughter, Mary. Mrs. Tilford's endorsement carries much weight in the community. They are also given the unwanted assistance - for a fee - of Martha's pretentious, self-serving and bossy Aunt Lily Mortar, a stage actress, her services as an elocution teacher. Beyond Mrs. Mortar, problems arise at the school when trouble-making student Mary, who feels persecuted by her teachers, decides to exact revenge. She tells her grandmother of impropriety between Joe and Martha late one evening in Martha's bedroom. Mary's story includes some half truths and exaggerated truths, the truths which makes the crux of her story more plausible. One of those half truths, which Mary does not fully realize, is that Martha secretly does love Joe. The reputation and livelihood of Martha, Karen and Joe hang in the balance of Mary's lies. Written by Huggo

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