Four Daughters

Four Daughters
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Michael Curtiz
Produced by	Hal B. Wallis
Written by	Lawrence Kimble Thyra Samter Winslow
Screenplay by	Lenore J. Coffee Julius J. Epstein
Based on	Sister Act 1937 Hearst's International-Cosmopolitan story by Fannie Hurst
Starring	Priscilla Lane Rosemary Lane Lola Lane Gale Page
Music by	Max Steiner
Cinematography	Ernest Haller
Edited by	Ralph Dawson
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	August 9, 1938 (1938-08-09) (USA)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Four Daughters is a 1938 American musical drama film that tells the story of a happy musical family whose lives and loves are disrupted by the arrival of a cynical young composer who interjects himself into the daughters' romantic lives. The movie stars the Lane Sisters (Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, and Lola Lane) and Gale Page, and features Claude Rains, Jeffrey Lynn, John Garfield, and Dick Foran. The three Lanes were sisters and members of a family singing trio.

The film was written by Lenore J. Coffee and Julius J. Epstein, adapted from the 1937 Fannie Hurst story "Sister Act", and was directed by Michael Curtiz. The movie's success led to two sequels with more or less the same cast: Four Wives and Four Mothers.

Plot

The Lemp sisters, Emma (Gale Page), Thea (Lola Lane), Kay (Rosemary Lane), and Ann (Priscilla Lane) are prodigies in a musical family headed by their father, Adam (Claude Rains). The Lemps also run a boarding house, and among the tenants is Felix Deitz (Jeffrey Lynn), a young composer whom the four daughters want to attract.

Emma, the oldest daughter, is the object of affection of a neighbor, Ernest (Dick Foran), but she rebuffs his attentions. Thea, a pianist and the second eldest, is courted by wealthy Ben Crowley (Frank McHugh), another neighbor, but she is not sure she loves him. Kay, the third daughter, is a talented singer and has a chance at a music school scholarship but doesn't want to leave home. The youngest daughter is Ann, a violinist. Mickey (John Garfield), an orchestral arranger and friend of Felix, falls for Ann, but Felix also has had his eyes on her and proposes marriage.

An hour before Ann and Felix are to marry, Mickey tells Ann that Emma is in love with Felix. Ann then observes Emma's distress after parting from Felix for the ceremony, and decides to step out of their way. She leaves and sends a telegram the wedding participants get, telling them she has eloped with Mickey. Ernest is prominent in calming people.

Four months later, Ann and Mickey are living a hard life in New York, professing love for each other but penniless and unhappy. Mickey is invited to form a band and go to South America with some fellow-musicians, but cannot afford passage, and Ann does not want to go.

The family meets at the Lemps' house for Christmas, except Kay, who is singing on the radio that night. Emma has not gotten together with Felix, but is now engaged to Ernest; she tells Ann that she had thought she was in love with Felix and would have kept on thinking so and spoiled her life if Ann had married him, but she was awakened to Ernest's qualities when he took charge at the abortive wedding. Felix is alone and unhappy, though he has a good conducting job awaiting him in Seattle. Mickey observes all this, and feels like an outsider and a failure. When he and Ben go to see Felix off at the train station in a snowstorm, he drives Ben's car and drops Ben off for an errand; as the train pulls out, Felix presses some money on him and tells him to use it for Ann, and Mickey, realizing that Felix and Ann really belong together, speeds through the snow until he crashes the car. The family comes to the hospital, and he dies with Ann at his bedside.

A while later, all four daughters are home making music with their loved ones when Felix returns, and he and Ann renew their love.

Cast

	Priscilla Lane as Ann Lemp		John Garfield as Mickey Borden
	Rosemary Lane as Kay Lemp		Jeffrey Lynn as Felix Deitz
	Lola Lane as Thea Lemp		May Robson as Aunt Etta
	Gale Page as Emma Lemp		Frank McHugh as Ben Crowley
	Claude Rains as Adam Lemp		Dick Foran as Ernest Talbot

Reception

The New York Times movie review said: "A charming, at times heartbreakingly human, little comedy about life in a musical family of attractive daughters which occasionally is ruffled by the drama of a masculine world outside, Four Daughters, at the Music Hall, tempts one to agree with Jack Warner's recent assertion in the advertisements that it is the climax of his career. Putting aside Mr. Warner's career for the nonce, we may assert with equal confidence that Four Daughters is one of the best pictures of anybody's career, if only for the sake of the marvelously meaningful character of Mickey Borden as portrayed by John (formerly Jules) Garfield, who bites off his lines with a delivery so eloquent that we still aren't sure whether it is the dialogue or Mr. Garfield who is so bitterly brilliant."

Accolades

Academy Awards

Nominations

• Outstanding Production: Warner Bros.-First National
• Best Directing: Michael Curtiz
• Best Sound Recording: Warner Bros. Studio Sound Department, Nathan Levinson, Sound Director
• Best Actor in a Supporting Role: John Garfield
• Best Writing (Screenplay): Julius J. Epstein, Lenore Coffee

Others

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

• 2002: AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – Nominated

Film series and remake

Four Daughters is the first in a series of four films by Warner Bros. featuring the Lane Sisters and the other cast members. It was followed by 1939's Daughters Courageous, also directed by Michael Curtiz and co-starring Claude Rains and John Garfield, though it is a story about a different family. However, the storyline of Four Daughters and the Lemp family is continued in the 1940 film, Four Wives, and 1941's Four Mothers.

Four Daughters was remade in 1954 as Young at Heart, starring Frank Sinatra in the role played by Garfield and Doris Day in Priscilla Lane's part. All the characters' names were changed, the number of daughters was reduced to three, and the young men who vie for the heroine's heart compose songs rather than orchestral music. Young at Heart also has a very different ending: Frank Sinatra's suicide attempt fails.

Home media

Warner Archive released Four Daughters on DVD on August 4, 2009. The film was also released by Warner Archive in the "Four Daughters Movie Series Collection" on August 1, 2011.

External links

• Four Daughters at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Four Daughters on IMDb
• Four Daughters at AllMovie
• Four Daughters at the TCM Movie Database
• Four Daughters at Rotten Tomatoes