Four Men and a Prayer

Richard Greene, David Niven, George Sanders and William Henry are the four men part of "Four Men and a Prayer," a 1938 John Ford film also starring Loretta Young.

Frankly I felt as if I came in at the middle of this film, though I saw the whole thing - but I never actually did figure out the plot. The boys' father (C. Aubrey Smith) has been dishonorably discharged from the army and telegraphs each son that he wants to meet them at the family manse.

The discharge was unfair - he was set up - now, I'm guessing here but it had something to do with illegal arms. His sons want to help him, but moments later, he is murdered in his study and his papers stolen.

Taking what info they have, they split up and travel to India, South America and Egypt to find the people their father mentioned who can help clear his name. Loretta Young, who plays Greene's madcap girlfriend, chases him shamelessly in a variety of outfits.

I still can't decide if there was too little or too much fooling around by the brothers. For me the comic stuff never does come off, Niven being the exception.

The acting, however, is good. Richard Greene might have been Tyrone Power's only rival at 20th Century Fox, except that he returned to England in 1940 to enter the service. This was his first film under contract to Fox. He was very handsome with a nice screen persona; baby boomers may remember him as television's "Robin Hood."

Loretta Young is dazzlingly beautiful - I actually didn't find her annoying as she seemed to fit right into the frenetic energy of the film. Sanders and Niven turned in their usual fine performances.

There's a nice turn by Lina Basquette, too, as a foreign woman with information. For those who don't know Lina, well, she was a silent screen star and half-sister of dancer Marge Champion.

Lina was married to Sam Warner; after his death, the Warners took her child from her and made sure she never worked again. She eventually went to the dogs - literally - by becoming a breeder and judge at the Westminster Dog Show.

In a New Yorker Profile done in the 1990s, she claimed to have been propositioned by Hitler and said she had done work as a spy during World War II. She also declared Eric Braeden of "The Young and the Restless" her favorite actor and ended up meeting him.

Lina appeared at Cinecom when she was in her late 80s, and the audience, used to seeing elderly actresses in wheelchairs, was shocked at the end of "The Younger Generation," one of her early films, when she didn't walk - but ran onto the stage, looking incredible, to answer questions.

For me, Lina's appearance as Ahnee is actually the high point of "Four Men and a Prayer," featuring some very attractive people in a half-comedy/half-drama and a confusing plot. Thankfully, Ford didn't stick with this genre.

Four brothers receive telegrams from their father, telling them he has been dishonourably discharged and bidding them meet him at their home. They arrive to learn that he has the evidence to prove he was framed in his court-martial, but before the end of the evening Father has been murdered in his locked study, and his papers stolen. The four brothers fan out across the globe in search of the four men their father mentioned who might be able to prove his innocence--sort of an inverted version of the Four Feathers.

The brothers, played by George Sanders, David Niven, William Henry, and Richard Greene (who, from a distance, looks oddly like Brendan Fraser), are staunch in support of their dishonored father (played by the only actor who could command unquestioning faith in his military honor: C. Aubrey Smith). In their travels, they are haunted by Greene's irritating American girlfriend, played by Loretta Young as not much more than a series of costume changes (she shows up in some of the oddest hats imaginable, and one fur-trimmed number that makes you wonder if she's a Plushy fetishist--she does make up for it, however, in a lovely gown-to-watch-revolutions-by). Perhaps her most far-fetched moment, however, is her light-hearted banter after an evening of watching a military massacre.

Along the way, the tone of the movie changes almost as often as Young's wardrobe. You think you're in a sort of amateur detective yarn, and suddenly you're watching innocent peasants mowed down by the military. The director, John Ford, is quoted in the AFI Catalog as having said, "I just didn't like the story, or anything about it, so it was a job of work." His lack of passion really shows.

But the chaotic story (filled with pointless red herrings, such as the role Young's father may or may not have played in the evil-doings) does have some wonderful light moments, most of them provided by Niven, who is just delightful throughout: conversing with a boat steward in Donald Duck voices, playing with rubber toys, mocking Henry's incipient whiskers, roughhousing with his brothers when they reunite on a boat dock. These touches make the film less painful than it would be otherwise. The wonderful George Sanders, however, is painfully underutilized.

A sort of independent spy thriller, John Ford's Four Men and a Prayer tells the story of four sons of a British colonel who investigate the circumstances around his dishonorable discharge and murder. It's got a great cast, globetrotting, and gun smugglers, but in the end I found the exercise a bit deflating overall. Some of the pieces were there, but so much was either missing or confused that the actual spy adventure parts of the film never really felt all that convincing or interesting.

The movie begins with the court martial of Colonel Loring Leigh (C. Aubrey Smith) in India. He's presented evidence against him for...something that led to some disaster, evidence brought by one of his junior officers. Dishonorably discharged and sent back to England, he sends telegrams to his four sons across the world to meet him at home. These are Geoffrey (Richard Greene), a British intelligence officer in Washington, Wyatt (George Sanders), an advocate in the British legal system, Christopher (David Nivens), a brash pilot with a few women vying for his attention, and Rodney (William Henry), a student at Oxford. The bulk of the beginning of the film is getting to know these four sons in their natural environments before they return home, feeling very much like brothers with long running inside jokes and little playful rivalries. This felt like a great start to a film that could go in really interesting directions.

However, things quickly just kind of begin sputtering. The Colonel, retiring to his room before dinner, is mysteriously shot. The captain from India they were bringing to help them begin to build a case dies in the car to the house, and the brothers have nothing but straws to reach for. Two go to South America and two go to India, both groups following trails that ultimately lead them back to Alexandria, Egypt. The weird thing about this is that both sides of the investigation end up finding pretty much the same clues leading up a chain of command in an arms dealing operation, most particularly the same model gun with the serial number chiseled off.

I think one of my big problems with this film is that the investigation never feels all that related to Colonel Leigh's original dishonorable discharge. His name gets brought up, but the brothers' investigation is about who's running this arms dealer organization, not really about clearing their father's name. There is one scene where the brothers in South America get the junior officer who testified against Colonel Leigh to admit he forged the document that got Colonel Leigh into hot water, but he's quickly assassinated by agents of the organization.

In reality, the whole film ends up feeling like a series of spy movie-like events, including the arms dealers giving unworking arms to a group of South American rebels right before the authorities show up and kill everyone, but nothing seems to connect to anything else. When they finally figure out who's on top of the whole shebang, it turns out the guy doesn't even know it. It's so weird.

What saves the movie from being a complete slog is the cast, in particular David Nevin and Loretta Young as Lynn Cherrington, Geoffrey's belle who follows him to South America and gets herself involved in the spy game. Niven is just a charming fellow even when getting wantonly embarrassed by the two women he's seeing at the same time at the beginning of the film, and he's always a joy to watch. Young is a bit of a spitfire, injecting herself where she has no business, and she's fun while she does it.

The movie ends on a heartwarming note, but the adventure up to that point has been so confused, repetitive, and weirdly built that it doesn't really register. The loose structure allows for some nice moments here and there, but it's far from enough to make the overall film worthwhile.

This movie was a well written adventure and suspense yarn with a very distinguished cast. However, I feel that the character played by Loretta Young was overemphasized. From the moment that she first enters the story she is in virtually every scene. After awhile it got a bit distracting. She played one of those "won't take no for an answer" types who always gets her way. Despite this annoying characterization, overall i enjoyed the film.

Four Men and a Prayer (1938)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

John Ford directed mystery/comedy has an Army general discharged over false information and later the man turns up murdered. His four sons (played by David Niven, George Sanders, William Henry, Richard Greene) then show up on the scene to try and track down the truth. The story is certainly the weakest part here as it never really becomes too interesting and even at 85-minutes the thing starts to drag after a while. The four actors are very good in their roles especially Niven and top billed Loretta Young is wonderful but her character really wasn't needed in the story. John Carradine also adds nice support in his small role. The cast makes this worth watching at least once. It's also worth noting of some very graphic violence, which includes a bridge full of women and children being cut down by machine guns. There's also a rather amusing Asian stereotype that has him being called Donald Mouse because he speaks like Disney characters.