This was John Garfield's introduction to the public and along with Doris Day in Romance on the High Seas and Katharine Hepburn in A Bill of Divorcement one of those instances where in just one role an unknown makes the leap to full fledged star by sheer force of personality and talent. The film itself is an enjoyable enough comedy/drama of four sisters and their various travails but is faulted by the miscasting of the male lead. All four of the women are supposedly swept away by love for Jeffrey Lynn's character Felix. The problem being that while he is very handsome he is beyond bland making the attraction of all four a puzzler. This is especially true as soon as Garfield's Mickey shows up loaded with bruised charisma to burn and pulling the focus of the story to him without even trying. Even though he and Priscilla Lane, in the first of several pairings, are supposed to be mismatched they make far more sense together than she and Felix. That bit of miscasting aside the film does offer two very fine actors, Claude Rains and May Robson, as the heads of the family, they inject a great deal of pleasure into their scenes. As far as the sisters go it's easy to see why Priscilla had the biggest career. She has a certain quality that the others are missing although they aren't bad just unexceptional. Lola is a bit out of place, she was always better when playing a hard luck dame. Her look was more suited to those parts. Of course Gale Page wasn't really one of their real life sisters but favors them enough to be believable but both she and Rosemary don't really stand out. Good of its type but without Garfield in the cast this would be forgotten.
Review of Four Daughters
