AMUSEMENTS

Opotiki News, Volume III, Issue 320, 8 October 1940, Page 2

AMUSEMENTS

“DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS” All tho charm, all the humour, all the pathos, all the simple, human and folksy quality of last year’s memorable “Four Daughters” have been recaptured by Warner Bros, in “Daughters Courageous,/’ which opens to-morrow at the Regent Theatre.

To make the parallel still closer between the two pictures, every member of tho cast of the first has a role of equal importance in tho new one. , The feminine contingent again includes the “four daughters,” Priscilla, Rosemary and Lola Lane, and Gale Page. Fay Sainter, that supreme character actress, has been added to tho original cast as the girls’ mother, and a very welcome addition she is. May Robson is. again cast as the crochcty, lovable old family standby. The male roles arp in "the capable hands of John Garfield, Jeffrey Lynn, Claude Rains, Frank McHugh and Dick Foran, with the ever-reliablc Don'ald Crisp as a newcomer to the many-daughtered family. Furthermore, the director was Michael Curtiz, who proves conclusively that the success which attended his efforts in connection with “Four Daughters” was no mere happy accident that'llq has a distinct ila.r for this type of screen tale. Claude Rains is again the father of the four girls, but this time they have a mother, too, in the person of Miss Bainter. Miss Robson is not any sort of relation but a fa.thfui old servitor. She has, however, as much to say concerning the affairs of the family as if she were a member of it. Garfield, Lynn, McHugh and Foran are again suitors of the girls.

Crisp is a solid and respectable business man of considerable means, who is a suitor of the girls’ mother. Yes, she has been divorced from their father, for plenty of cause. On the eve of his former wife’s marriage to her wealthy suitor, the errant ex-husband returns and throws the household into considerable tourmoil. Her daughters feel they should hate him, but he is such a charming fellow that they can’t. He takes more interest in the lives of his four daughters than his former wife feels he has any right to do, his worst offence, in her eyes, being v ~ to encourago the youngest girl, played by Priscilla, in her infatuation for the fascinating, though brash and seemingly worthless, son of a Portugese, fisherman. The latter role is played by Garfield. The pictures leaves one with that same warm glow of sentimental happiness, tinged with a little sadness, that was- tho dominant quality in “Four Daughters.” AYhat makes it seem just a little bit better is the fact that it has a bit more comedy along the way, and the comedy is exceptionally bright and witty.