Four Daughters-1938-John Garfields first screen role, in whats still one of the most auspicious debuts in American film history

August 19, 1938


FOUR DAUGHTERS


By B. R. Crisler

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.

Our vote, though, is for Mr. Garfield, and for whatever stars watch over his career on the stage and screen, because, on rereading the dialogue, as we have just done carefully, it seems to have lost something of the acidity, the beautiful clarity it had when Mr. Garfield spoke it. As the most startling innovation in the way of a screen character in years—a fascinating fatalist, reckless and poor and unhappy, who smokes too much, who is insufferably rude to everybody, and who assumes as a matter of course that all the cards are stacked against him, Mr. Garfield is such a sweet relief from conventional screen types, in this one character, anyway, so eloquent of a certain dispossessed class of people, that we can't thank Warner Brothers, Michael Curtiz, the director; Mr. Epstein and Miss Coffee, the screen playwrights; and even Miss Fannie Hurst, the original author, enough for him.

In addition to Mr. Warner, Mr. Garfield, and the Music Hall, Four Daughters is also a triumph for Priscilla Lane, who is much more attractive, animated, and intelligent than the run of ingenues; for Jeffrey Lynn, a new romantic discovery who knows how to be handsome inoffensively; for Claude Rains, as the musical father; Frank McHugh, as a rich beau; May Robson as Aunt Etta; Rosemary, as the voice of the family; and Lola as the quiet homebody. In fact, all the Lanes—a prolific and talented tribe—meet at the Music Hall this week, and one would hardly know which Lane to take, so inviting are all three, not to mention Gale Page, who makes an attractive fourth.

The story begins gayly with a blossoming peach tree and a family quintet rendition of Schubert's "Serenade," with Papa wielding his flute like a baton, with Priscilla playing the violin, Lola at the harp (if we remember correctly), Rosemary singing, and Gale at the piano. It is a house full of music and youth and femininity; and the good-humored grumpiness of Papa, who hates jazz; and with only the remotest threat of masculine invasion. But see how the serpent enters this Eden: first Mr. Lynn, a composer, comes swinging on the gate, and then his orchestrator from the city, Mr. Garfield, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, no money, not even a clean shirt, a personal grudge against the Fates, an interesting vocabulary, and a heart of purest suet—Mr. Garfield, the eternal outsider.

In the long run it is this character—and a very fine cinematic invention he is—who steals the picture. His suicide is the pivotal theme, the tragic incident (and Mickey himself would call it an incident) which brings the cinematically predestined lovers, Priscilla and Jeffrey, back together again after Priscilla's impetuous sacrifice of herself on what she fancied was the altar of two other people's happiness. But it's just a simple family story, after all, and it ends—the old folks a little older, the young ones a little less gay—with the same flowering peach tree and Schubert's "Serenade," and with the discordant squeak of Jeffrey swinging on the gate again to interrupt Priscilla's fiddle part. It may be sentimental, but it's grand cinema.

FOUR DAUGHTERS

Directed by Michael Curtiz; written by Julius J. Epstein and Lenore Coffee, based on the novel Sister Act by Fannie Hurst; cinematographer, Ernest Haller; edited by Ralph Dawson; music by Max Steiner; art designer, John Hughes; produced by Henry Blanke; released by Warner Brothers. Black and white. Running time: 90 minutes.



A typical, sentimental small-town family melodrama of the 1930s, with one exception: John Garfield in a stunning screen debut as a brooding outsider.