Four Daughters (1938)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Just what I expected

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

All we reviewers seem to agree that John Garfield shines as an antihero/nonconformist in his breakthrough role. And it is a good film.... however! Musically, Sinatra at piano and singing, throughout the film YOUNG AT HEART not just in the first scenes, works better than Garfield not shown AT ALL musically, after the first third of the film. There is also a better musical AND romantic connection in YOUNG AT HEART, between Sinatra and Doris Day, than there is between Garfield and Lane in FOUR DAUGHTERS. Watch them back to back and see what I mean. The scenes in Micky and Ann's (Garfield and Lane's) apartment and in the restaurant they visit right afterward, don't suggest much love or chemistry between them. There is no touching at all. Garfield even makes a crack about how he might split on her for a touring job, if he had the money to do it. She replies calmly that she wouldn't be surprised, or something like that. Not romantic! I think there is more love depicted in the same scenes with Sinatra and Day. And then there is the issue of Mickey Borden being apparently unemployable. What? He was good enough for Felix (Jeffrey Lynn character) to hire him to orchestrate a piece for which Felix won a prize. Yet he cannot get a job even playing piano in New York City? And he's referred to as not really talented, later in the film. That does not compute for me. He wouldn't have been hired! Now, I think one could make the case that FOUR DAUGHTERS has the stronger ending.....with Mickey dying and freeing up Ann to marry Felix, who is obviously still in love with her even though he was jilted at the altar. Sinatra had that much clout that he could force a sappy, happy ending to Young At Heart, happy for HIS character! But other than that, I think that YOUNG AT HEART is better in some ways. Doris Day turning to Barney (Sinatra) and LOVING him, while still not over the Felix character (now called Alex and played by the always attractive and endearing Gig Young), is more believable in this version. It is also better to set the Garfield/Sinatra character up as quite talented, which is only successfully done in YOUNG AT HEART. That makes his pessimism, malaise and frustration more interesting and poignant. Both May Robson and Ethel Barrymore are superb in their roles as the aunt.

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.

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.

I had heard a lot about this movie but the only good thing in it was John Garfield, even Claude Rains wasn't very good. This was Garfield's first big role and he was nominated for best supporting actor but he lost. After this movie, the next couple of years he made a lot of crappy movies. He was also turned down for Golden Boy, a movie he really wanted to do but was given to William Holden. This movie has four sisters living in the same house with their father, played by Claude Rains. The oldest one is the first to get engaged, and when Jeffrey Lynn comes to stay at their house, the other three girls fall for him. It isn't until John Garfield comes to stay that he falls for the youngest but then Jeffrey gets engaged to her. Their's more to the plot but it isn't very interesting and you should only watch if your a big John Garfield fan.