Four Daughters

Film: Four Daughters
Year: 1938
Cast: Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page, Claude Raines, John Garfield, Jeffrey Lynn, Dick Foran, Frank McHugh, May Robson
Director: Michael Curtiz
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Garfield), Best Writing; Screenplay, Best Sound Recording

Next up among the Best Supporting Actor nominees of 1938 is Four Daughters, which coincidentally was written and directed by the same two men who would later bring us Casablanca, which was considered a spiritual successor to Algiers.

Swinging the exact opposite way from Algiers, which was a heavy crime drama, this one is a delightful romantic comedy, or perhaps dramedy would be a better word.

What a delightful little movie this is. I say little because it feels quaint. Cute. Charming but ultimately inconsequential. A movie like this would never catch Oscar's attention these days, not unless it was done as a powerhouse emotional drama with some crazy great acting. This film feels more like an excuse for four singing sisters to do a movie together.

Make that three sisters. The Lane Sisters, a singing group that did some acting on the side, primarily in plays but also in movies, were lined up to play the titular four daughters, but for some reason the studio didn't like the eldest sister, Leotta, and replaced her with Gale Page. She looks enough like the real sisters to pass muster, but as the sisters' acting really isn't this movie's centerpiece, one wonders just how bad Leotta must have been. Then again, the role of the oldest daughter, Emma, was also the second biggest of the four, so it needed someone who could carry it.

The four daughters are the offspring of music professor Adam Lemp, played by a not-yet-Oscar-nominated Claude Raines. All four have musical talent, and their father is ruthless in his instruction of them. I liked the way his stern disapproval is played off as banter rather than true gruffness. He says something thoroughly insulting about their talent, and they laugh, and then he laughs.

Eventually, as is the case in the 30's, men come into their lives, and kinda become all the four can talk about. Emma (Gale Page) is pursued by a local delivery boy, Ernest (Dick Foran), whose attention she lightly spurns, while Thea (Lola Lane) is courted by the older, yet wealthy, Ben (Frank McHugh), an awkward fellow whom she wants to marry mainly due to the status it would bring her (what is this; two movies in a row where a woman is clearly marrying for money?). Kay (Rosemary Lane), the one who might very well be leaving to attend a choral school, doesn't have a suitor at all while Ann (Priscilla Lane), the youngest (and in my opinion, the best actress of the four; no wonder she seems to get the most screen time), has two men after her; composer Felix (Jeffrey Lynn) and orchestral arranger Mickey (John Garfield).

Thus ensues a romantic rectangle as Felix pursues Ann, who loves him back, while sad-sack Mickey does his best to hide his own feelings for her (and fails), and Emma bemoans losing Felix as she's yearned for by Ernest. Meanwhile Thea and Kay have their own dramas; Thea likes the idea of being married to Ben but keeps putting off the wedding date (eventually marrying him primarily to beat Ann to the altar) while Kay isn't sure she wants to leave home.

It all culminates in Felix and Ann's wedding, in which Ann fails to show up, and sends a telegram instead saying she's married Mickey. And that's about where I'll leave it, plot-wise. I said I wouldn't hide spoilers, but here I think I'll make an exception. You'll know why once you've watched it.

Unlike Algiers this was one of the Best Picture nominees for the year, and Michael Curtiz received a Best Director nod for his efforts as well (one of two, the other being for Angels with Dirty Faces, making Curtiz the first, and for many decades the only, man to compete against himself for the Director prize). The screenplay got a nod, too. It's hard to judge just whether or not it's all deserved. This is a delightful little movie, but it feels little. And very much a product of its time. While both Algiers and this film are set in the 30's, Algiers feels timeless while Four Daughters feels like it couldn't have been made any other decade. Even if you remade it and kept the 30's setting, I feel like some changes would have to be made, especially the idea that these women with promising musical careers all are dying to be married, even if it's not for love, whereas you could remake Algiers almost word-for-word even in the new 10's.

That being said I really had a pleasant experience watching this one. If I was a contemporary in the 30's, I probably would have thought it entirely worthy of the Best Picture and Director nods it received, and the screenplay, quaint though it might have been, was effervescent, charming and very clever, with a lot of witty banter that still holds up and made me laugh out loud a few times. In one scene, the family has just sat down to a big dinner they're holding to get to know Ben after he's proposed to Thea. Adam begins his prayer and then is interrupted by Aunt Edda (May Robson), and this is what (roughly) follows:

Adam: And we thank thee, o Lord, for the bountiful...
Edda: Ann forgot to light the flame under the duck!
Adam: ...for these sandwiches that we are about to receive.

What makes that even funnier is that Ann was supposed to pretend to Ben that Thea had cooked the whole dinner herself. She even recites to Thea just what she's supposed to say. When the time comes, she stands in front of Ben like a statue, clears her throat, and says with all the confidence and genuine emotion of a ninth-grade student acting in the school play for the first time in her life: "Oh, Mr. Crowley, I just can't get over it. Thea cooked this whole dinner, every inch of it, herself. And just look at her, she's as fresh as if she just stepped out of a band box." She caps it by grinning as if to say "I did it!" and heaving a sigh of relief. You want to give her a big hug.

While I liked all the acting, it was quite obvious that this was a different era and different types of acting were preferred. While Raines and Robson (who are over 30 years apart and yet play brother and sister!) gave performances that would probably feel similar today, all the young folk...I don't know how to put this. They acted like they were acting. That's probably the best way to say it. Very understated performances, but smirky, taking their cue from the rapid-fire dialogue.

I think the reason John Garfield was the only Oscar nominee from this film is that his character is really the only one to stand out. While I liked Ann and Felix just fine, I didn't necessarily believe either of them. Ann was too perfect (I don't know if I believed the twist that she'd run off with Mickey) and Felix was so effortlessly charming that I feel like if I knew a guy like that in real life I'd hate his guts. I didn't hate movie Felix, but it was obvious that the movie didn't want me to. Felix is the kind of guy who can walk into any room, behave as if he owns the place and have people start deferring to him. Funny, yes. No real depth, though. Daddy Adam and Aunt Edda are all banter and wit, and while that's fine, and both characters are acted by consummate professionals, there's just not much to either character.

The four daughters themselves, while I didn't dislike any of them, well, they're all so similar, both in look and performance that in several scenes I wasn't sure which daughter I was watching. Ann is the exception, and not only for being the most competently acted of the four (it's no wonder Priscilla was the only Lane sister to have her acting career really flourish), but because she's the only blonde. That's right; the non-sister of the four seemed so much like two of the others that the fourth, who was a real sister, seemed the most different.

Garfield, though, his character has an arc. I'm not sure how satisfying an arc it is, but he certainly goes through the most among the characters. Initially he annoyed me how whiny Mickey seemed, continually acting like the universe loves screwing with him, but I came to appreciate his blase bad-boy act that masked his inner pain. For such a charming little comedy, his tragic character seems almost to have wandered in from another movie, and in this case, I mean that in the best way. So, yes, if any performer in this film deserved a nomination, it was him. I still wonder how he and Gene Lockhart made it to the shortlist and Joseph Calleia didn't, but that's not Garfield's fault. I will say for sure that between him and Lockhart, Garfield is my winner so far.

Next up is If I Were King, and like these first two, I know literally nothing about it except that it earned Basil Rathbone his second Oscar nod. We'll see if Garfield can hold on to his temporary crown.