At the end of this one, the debut of John Garfield, directed by the great, underrated Michael Curtiz, I felt real irritation and loathing. It's a frustrating, maddening movie. A music teacher (Claude Rains) is the father of four spoiled little princesses who all play musical instruments, but who read movie gossip magazines and would rather play jazz music during every Beethoven session. One of the girls is early on in the picture married to a bumbling middle-aged fellow who she treats with gentle condescension, but he was worth marrying because he's wealthy. The two other sisters are the best of friends and make a vow that neither of them will ever marry, so that they can be together always. Of these two the elder has a boyfriend, but doesn't think terribly much of him. The youngest sister (Priscilla Lane) is the only blonde of the bunch and is the female star of the film. There's a final sister who remains a curious nonentity throughout and never has any romantic interests, so for all practical purposes there are only three sisters. So: Into their lives steps a handsome young dandy who is a composer of "modern" music and professes his disdain of Beethoven to Father. Even though Father disagrees with the young fellow's views, he's a generous old chap and allows him to board in the big house so that he can finish his prize entry composition on the grand piano. The girls are all quite taken with the young man: Isn't he dreamy? The composer has a pal, a down-on-his-luck working-class guy, John Garfield, who's far more talented than the composer but has had a lifetime of bad breaks and is very much rough around the edges. He enjoys nothing more than recounting his bad breaks and bemoaning the unlucky star he was born beneath. The composer hires him to "help" with the composition, but one gets the impression that Garfield writes the better part of it. Garfield falls for the youngest sister, because, though she's a spoiled little modern girl she's the only one who shows him much kindness. But the composer asks her to marry him and she, all in a swoon, immediately says yes. However, on the eve of the wedding the girl realizes that her best-friend-sister has secretly "loved" the composer all the while and, in a gesture of self-sacrificing nobility, leaves him at the alter and marries Garfield, who she doesn't love. However - and this is the truly hilarious bit - it turns out that the best-friend-sister realizes all of a sudden that the old boyfriend who she never thought terribly much of is the guy she "really" loves, and, the composer forgotten, marries him. The composer, dejected, moves far away. Fortunately Garfield, married to a girl he knows doesn't love him, and financially exhausted, kills himself in a car on an icy road. The composer comes back to town, meets the youngest sister, now happily single, and they're all smiles, smiles.The girls are all no doubt supposed to be "charming," as is the composer. But they mostly strike one as a rather repugnant, narcissistic lot. The only real sympathetic character in the film is Garfield's character, who has endless bad luck and has to die so that the two vain little bunnies can rekindle their romance before the end credits. But after I turned the movie off, it occurred to me that this is what the attentive viewer is SUPPOSED to think. For the popcorn-chomping non-thinkers in the audience - the target audience - it is a nice little movie about four "charming" sisters and their romantic lives, all shot in the pleasant, anonymous style that would years later become the standard for TV sitcoms. But there are enough hints of what socially-conscious director Curtiz really felt about the scenario, enough seemingly throw-away lines of dialogue; there's enough wretchedness and anger in John Garfield's character (who feels like he's from a different movie) to hint at the film's deeper interests. The sisters and the composer are monsters, the kind of dim-witted, unfeeling people with money and "charm" that keep a guy from Garfield's class in his place, no matter how much talent he may have, by either ignoring him (the sisters) or exploiting him for their own ends (the composer, off to glorious career on Garfield's back). The movie's brilliance is in its quietly subversive intentions.

One of Warner Brothers best and highest grossing films during the Thirties was this charming family drama about a widower who lives with his maiden sister raising Four Daughters. But not four every day type daughters. All of them have been trained by their musician father on instruments and one as a singer. They do make some beautiful music together even if it is for the long haired set.You can watch the infinite variety of roles that Claude Rains played over the years and still marvel as he shows you yet another aspect of his creative personality. The opportunistic Vichy Captain in Casablanca is as different as the scientist gone mad in the Invisible Man, as the patient and wise Job in Mr. Skeffington. All the same man and all so incredibly different.Here he raises the four girls with love seasoned with a little grouchiness at their willingness to accept modern music. The Lane Sisters and Gale Page may know Beethoven, but they're hep cats as well and can beat daddy eight to the bar every time. And if Rains gets a bit too testy than Aunt May Robson can put him in his place.With Four Daughters unmarried at the time you know that's going to change. All the sisters develop romantic interests in Dick Foran, Frank McHugh, Jeffrey Lynn, and John Garfield. Of course the mating process does get a bit complicated and one of the sisters suffers a tragedy, but it does promise to work out as the film ends.Four Daughters is also known as the debut film of John Garfield. Other than a tiny bit part in Footlight Parade years earlier, Garfield had no other film roles. But he'd been acclaimed on the New York stage for his performance in Golden Boy and Warner Brothers signed him and found the perfect film debut role as the cynical musician who just can't quite get a decent break in life. It earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination in 1938, but he lost to Walter Brennan for Kentucky.This film was so popular that it practically spawned a small cottage industry for Jack Warner. Sequels with cast members like Daughters Courageous, Four Mothers, Four Wives all cleaned up at the box office before World War II. And Warner Brothers remade it with Frank Sinatra and Doris Day playing the parts that John Garfield and Priscilla Lane originated. Now those two made some beautiful music.Still a timeless mold was created in Four Daughters and the film holds up 70 years after it was first seen.

Four Daughters (1938) *** 1/2 (out of 4) A musician and father (Claude Rains) does his best to raise his four daughters (Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page) the right way, which he does but things start to go wrong when a rebel musician (John Garfield) enters their house. I was surprised to see how much I enjoyed this film because I was really just expecting a lot of melodrama and sappy scenes but the film became much more than that due to Curtiz's tight direction of the material and a terrific performance by Garfield. The story is certainly mainly for women but Rains and Garfield both make it more entertaining for the men and both of them also give a lot of backbone to the story. Rains is terrific as the old-fashioned father and the four women are also very strong with Priscilla being the real stand out. The supporting cast includes May Robson, Jeffrey Lynn and Dick Foran and all of them are very good. It's easy to see why Garfield received an Oscar nomination and jumped to stardom after this one role because it's one of the most memorable performances from this late 30s period. Garfield brought along a new style of acting and it's still quite refreshing seeing it where it started.

It isn't hard to see why frequent moviegoers in 1938, wise to the formulas of most movies, would have found FOUR DAUGHTERS a fresh and surprising picture. The story of four musical sisters and their romantic problems begins as conventionally as any Deanna Durbin musical but quickly evolves into an absorbing romantic melodrama.Director Michael Curtiz keeps all four actresses bubbling sweetly and predictably, but when Jeffrey Lynn enters the picture trouble begins. Though one sister is engaged and another nearly so, all four in some way become smitten by this young musician. Then the script tops itself (and electrified audiences) by introducing a further complication named John Garfield. Cynical, depressive, darkly attractive and clearly a New York 'ethnic' type, Garfield is in every way the opposite of tall, handsome, WASPy Jeffrey Lynn, who in any other picture would probably have made more of an impression. Though friends, the men vie for Priscilla Lane, whose unaffected acting style creates a nice tension with both actors. Believing it best for her sister, Priscilla marries the wrong man, at once confounding and satisfying audience expectations. Halfway through this film you are apt to wonder what will happen next and how events will play out, which is not what you expect from the sunny opening.Garfield's success overshadowed every other good thing about this film. Clearly Warners' thought they had a successor to Jimmy Cagney. In fact they had the forerunner of Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, Montgomery Clift, Brando and James Dean, though Garfield was warmer and more likable than any of those. This movie was remade in 1955 as a Technicolor musical called YOUNG AT HEART starring Doris Day and Frank Sinatra. Though not a bad idea in theory, the original is a better film.