Four Daughters (1938)

Four Daughters
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Written by Julius J. Epstein and Lenore J. Coffee from a story by Fannie Hurst
1938/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Warner Archives DVD

[box] Adam Lemp: I’m going down to the Hall of Records to strike my name off your birth certificates![/box]

John Garfield knocks one out of the park in his feature film debut.  If only the material had been as good as his performance …

Cantankerous but kindly old flautist Adam Lemp (Claude Rains) has raised a bevy of lovely musically talented daughters who are all now of marriageable age.  The eldest Kay (Rosemary Lane) has already snagged a beau.  One day Felix , a young composer, comes to introduce himself to Adam.  He ends up moving in and all the sisters become infatuated with him.  Felix is drawn to the fun-loving youngest daughter Ann (Priscilla Lane).  But soon his friend, fellow composer Mickey Borden arrives, and is immediately smitten with Ann who takes him under her wing.  The rest of the movie follows the unusual, to say the least, progression of this love triangle.  That’s all I think I should reveal about the plot.

To start off with the positive, the film is very well-made and the three Lane sisters and Gale Page are charming as the daughters.  The early parts reminded me of a modern-day Little Women full of good-natured family banter.  And Garfield’s performance is truly electrifying if a bit incongruous.  He seems to have stepped straight out of Actor’s Studio in New York into the warm embrace of Capra’s small town America.  Unfortunately, contrary to the film maker’s intent, I found the Mickey character to be an unsympathetic whiner and his “noble” gesture to be a cop-out.  In fact, I couldn’t believe that any part of the love triangle would have played out the way it did. Maybe in Hurst’s world but not in this one …

Claude Rains can do no wrong as far as I am concerned but it is clear from the film why he was not called on to play many avuncular father roles of this type.

Four Daughters was nominated for Academy Awards in the following categories:  Best Picture; Best Director; Best Supporting Actor (Garfield); Best Screenplay and Best Sound Recording.

Clip – John Garfield’s feature film debut