Daughters Courageous *** (1939, Claude Rains, John Garfield, Jeffrey Lynn, Fay Bainter, Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane) – Classic Movie Review 11,901

Director Michael Curtiz’s 1939 follow-up Warner Bros black and white drama film Daughters Courageous stars Claude Rains, John Garfield, Jeffrey Lynn, Fay Bainter, Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page, Donald Crisp, May Robson, and Frank McHugh.

Warner Bros’ charming, well acted, brightly written tale is about a middle-class family whose wandering, feckless patriarch Jim Masters (Rains) comes back home after more than two decades away just as his youngest daughter Buff (Priscilla Lane) is about to wed a tough-guy drifter Gabriel Lopez (Garfield) and his ex-wife Nancy (Bainter) is about to remarry stuffy old Sam Sloane (Crisp).

Daughters Courageous is a follow-up to the successful 1938 Four Daughters with the same cast playing a differently named family; it couldn’t be a sequel because they had killed off the Garfield character in the original.

Curtiz (‘bring on the empty horses’) again directs with his accustomed flair. In an effective tone change from the dramatic original, the amusingly witty script by the Epstein twins, Julius J Epstein and Philip G Epstein, is from Irving White and Dorothy Bennett’s play Fly Away Home. There is a lot of smart studio work professionalism. James Wong Howe’s camerawork, Max Steiner’s score and Hal B Wallis’s careful Warner Bros production are assets.

Daughters Courageous is made as a stand-alone film, but the series continues with the 1939 Four Wives and 1941’s Four Mothers.

The cast are John Garfield as Gabriel Lopez, Claude Rains as Jim Masters, Jeffrey Lynn as Johnny Heming, Fay Bainter as Nancy Masters, Donald Crisp as Sam Sloane, May Robson as Penny, Frank McHugh as George, Dick Foran as Eddie Moore, Priscilla Lane as Buff Masters, Rosemary Lane as Tinka Masters, Lola Lane as Linda Masters, Gale Page as Cora Masters, George Humbert as Manuel Lopez, Berton Churchill as Judge Henry Hornsby.

Priscilla Lane (born Priscilla Mullican, June 12, 1915 – April 4, 1995), is remembered for The Roaring Twenties (1939), Saboteur (1942) and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Rosemary Lane (April 4, 1913 – November 25, 1974).

Lola Lane (born Dorothy Mullican, May 21, 1906 – June 22, 1981).

Gale Page co-stars with the Lane Sisters and is the only film daughter not played by one of the Lanes. She appears with them in all four films in the series.

There was a fourth Lane sister, Leota Lane (October 25, 1903 – July 25, 1963), but she left Hollywood for New York City before the sisters’ breakthrough.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 11,901

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