Four Wives is the first sequel in the saga of the musical Lemp family that Warner Brothers brought to us in Four Daughters. This family film about widower Claude Rains and his four musical and unmarried daughters struck a nice note with the movie going public in 1938 and John Garfield in his screen debut earned himself a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Garfield is back here, but only in flashback to the original film.The main plot line involves Priscilla Lane who ran off with Garfield leaving Jeffrey Lynn at the altar and in a lurch. Garfield still comes between them and he's left a permanent reminder of his brief marraige to Lane.The others also having their early marital adjustments, Lola Lane to banker Frank McHugh, Gale Page to Dick Foran and Rosemary Lane still unattached to Priscilla's pediatrician Eddie Albert. Albert seems to fit right in with the general harmony of the group.One thing with the Lemps they seem to do everything together from playing classical music with their music teacher dad to having babies. The only question left unanswered is will Claude Rains ever have a grandson in this girl's town he's started.Four Wives is a worthy film, a fine sequel to Four Daughters and Warner Brothers wasn't through with the Lemp family yet as soon enough out came Four Mothers.

Follow-up to Four Daughters is okay but pushes the mawkish sentimentality pretty hard. Most of the cast perform well. Frank McHugh is most appealing as Lola's flummoxed husband and Priscilla Lane is good in her bruised sadness unable to move on or get over her guilt after her sudden loss in the original. Claude Rains and May Robson add their special brand of enjoyment but really are wasted in small supporting parts. The one actor who is terrible and throws the whole enterprise off is Jeffrey Lynn, supposedly an ideal man he is attractive but a dull, bland presence and the constant comparison to the magnetic John Garfield who is superimposed throughout only makes him worse. Plus he must be the most unconvincing orchestra conductor ever! Curtiz gets the job done direction wise but he must have recognized the mediocre quality of the script and just moves the story from point A to point Z with none of the flourish he could infuse into a superior project like The Adventures of Robin Hood.

I like this family overall. It's a rich blend of some vital elements. In this particular series, as with others, the savor seems to diminish a little as it goes along. But, with that, the core group is always there and I find it a winner. The first is the best, this one weakens with script, and the last one has a real problem script-wise. While some are impressed with the portrayal of Ann as the disturbed widow and reluctant fiancé, I find that a rewrite of history from the initial film. I wanted Ann to throw that junk off and get with it. Jeffrey Lynn's character should have gotten a purple heart for long suffering in this one. It's a reversal of what they had going. In the first film, Ann was realistic as the overly sympathetic young woman who went so far as to marry a guy who needed her, when the one she really loved was seemingly not available to her. Okay, all that got fixed and fixed well. This film seems to moot the turnaround, and we find her more focused on her unsatisfactory dead husband and pushing away the true love who is readily available to her now. Yes, she does find she is carrying the first husband's child, and becomes emotionally vulnerable in her memory of him. That can happen, but it just wore on me. However, I still valued the film because of the winning ensemble and overall premise.

Four Wives (1939) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Sequel to Four Daughters has father Claude Rains hands full when his daughters (Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page) are out of the house and married. All except for Ann (P. Lane), who lost her husband at the end of the last film and now tries to start up her relationship with the man (Jeffrey Lynn) she left in the first film. Only problem is she's pregnant by her dead husband. Okay, this sequel actually isn't too bad on a technical level and the performances are all very good but the story really bothered me and kept me from caring too much about the main character Ann. This film goes against her feelings for her husband from the first film so that they can set up the romance here. The father and sisters make long speeches about how she never really loved her husband and this certainly wasn't the case so that's part of the reason this film bothered me. Another point that bothered me is that she was started up a relationship perhaps weeks after her husband died. There's a lot of situations here, which I'm shocked got past the ratings code, although something might have been cut since the version I saw ran 99-minutes, which the IMDb lists another version running 110-minutes.