Underrated Gem: Daughters Courageous

Director Michael Curtiz's filmography is so wide-ranging and accomplished, it is difficult not to perceive him as one of Hollywood's under-appreciated craftsman. Born Mihaly Kertesz in Budapest in 1888, Curtiz came to Hollywood in the summer of 1926 after signing a contract with Warner Brothers. He stayed at Warners for 28 years and made over 80 films for the company, including the classics Casablanca (for which he received a Best Director Oscar), Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels With Dirty Faces, Mildred Pierce, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Captain Blood, and The Sea Hawk. 1938, one of his best years, saw the release of Robin Hood and Angels With Dirty Faces as well as an adaptation of the Fannie Hurst book, Four Daughters. Starring the Lane sisters--Priscilla, Rosemary, and Lola--and Gale Page as the daughters, along Claude Rains and May Robson, the film was highly successful in its day and is chiefly remembered as the film that brought John Garfield to film audiences in the secondary-yet-pivotal role of Mickey Borden, the hard-luck, cynical city kid who finds himself in the midst of an all-American family. Garfield was nothing short of sensational and received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his work. The film was such a smash that Warners wanted a sequel. But there was a problem: In the original film Garfield died. How do you bring back a film's most popular character if he's dead?

Lobby card for thee film featuring Claude Rains with the Lane sisters and Gale Page

What the film's writers, Philip and Julius Epstein, came up with was a story that had all the same actors playing essentially the same parts in a different setting and plot. That film, Daughters Courageous (1939), worked beautifully. In fact, I think Daughters Courageous is a far better film than Four Daughters, and it surprises me that more people don't know of it. Claude Rains appears again as the father, though this time he plays a rascal who left his wife (Fay Bainter) and four daughters (the three Lane sisters plus Gale Page) twenty years ago, returning just as his wife has him declared legally dead so she can marry a well-off banker (Donald Crisp). Also returning are May Robson--now Fay Bainter's housekeeper instead of the girls' grandmother--and Jeffrey Lynn as a stage scenarist. And then there is John Garfield. Billed first in the credits this time (he was sixth in Four Daughters), Garfield plays Gabriel Lopez, a lazy, comically cynical, no-good-nik who falls so hard for Buff (Priscilla Lane) that he willingly goes to work for his father and proposes marriage to her.

Priscilla Lane's Buff has never met anyone quite like John Garfield's Gabriel Lopez

Daughters Courageous is as solidly performed, wittily scripted, and ably directed as nearly any film circa 1939, the year widely regarded as the best in Hollywood history. A viable argument could be made that if the film had been released in any other year it would be better known to today's audiences. Part of what makes Daughters Courageous so much fun and entertaining is watching the scenes that pair Garfield and Claude Rains as the girls' absent father, Jim. Their characters are two sides of the same coin, with young Gabriel wanting to whisk Buff off to a life of wanderlust and adventure, and aging Jim, tired after years of wanderlust, wanting nothing more than to come back to the hearth and home of the family he left behind long ago. The scene when Garfield comes calling for Buff (only to find she's gone out with the reliable Jeffrey Lynn) and stumbles upon Rains is one of the best in all 1930's Hollywood cinema, with Garfield seeing through Rains' stories and Rains seeing his younger self in Garfield's dreamer.

One of the thing's love will make a man do, like serenading a girl with a accordion

The film's most touching scenes are between Bainter's Nan and Rains' Jim Masters. There is genuine pathos when Jim, having ingratiating himself with his daughters, tells Nan how much the time since his return has meant to him and pleads, "Don't send me away. Don't send me back. I want to stay. I love you, Nan. I want my family back." But it's too little too late. Nan, though obviously still in love with Jim, tells him he must leave because, eventually, he will get the urge to go, and that will be devastating to the family. Nan is also thinking of Buff. She fears her daughter's attraction to Gabriel is due in large part to Jim's presence, and she doesn't want to see her daughter heartbroken. In the final scene Jim and Gabriel leave town as Nan marries Donald Crisp's steady, solid-yet-dull businessman.

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All this family angst may seem a bit too much like a soap opera to all but the sob sisters, but if that's the case, I'll sob along. I love this movie and have for nearly forty years. Daughters Courageous is a film that is not afraid to wear its sentimentality on its cinematic sleeve, front and center. I think that its emotion is one of the film's finest qualities. From its first-rate script to its fine photography by the esteemed James Wong Howe, and the sincerity and believability the entire cast brings to the performances, this film rates among the best of its genre, the best of its time. With it, Michael Curtiz, who had a reputation as a taskmaster behind the camera, proved that he understood the human condition and also had a versatility few film directors truly excelled at. Daughters Courageous is not just an underrated gem; it is a forgotten one. I believe that anyone who watches cannot help but be affected by its story, its performances, and most of all, its heart.

Sources: The Films of John Garfield by Howard Gelman
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