# Four Sons

Four Sons is a 1928 American synchronized sound drama film directed and produced by John Ford and written for the screen by Philip Klein from a story by I. A. R. Wylie first published in the Saturday Evening Post as "Grandmother Bernle Learns Her Letters" (1926). While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the sound-on-film movietone process.
It is one of only a handful of survivors out of the more than 50 films Ford directed between 1917 and 1928. It starred Margaret Mann, James Hall, and Charles Morton. The film is also notable for the presence of the young John Wayne in an uncredited role as an officer. The film's soundtrack was recorded using the Movietone sound-on-film system but was also released in the sound-on-disc format.
A family is torn apart by the advent of World War I. It was remade in 1940 with the same title, starring Don Ameche and Eugenie Leontovich, and directed by Archie Mayo, although the war was updated to World War II.

## Plot

Mother Bernle is a widow in Bavaria with four sons: Franz, Johann, Andreas and Joseph.
Joseph receives a job offer from the United States, and he is given money to travel there by his mother.
The First World War is heating up. Franz, who is already serving in the German army, is joined by first Johann and then Andreas who is forced into the army.
In New York, Joseph is married with a newborn son. He is running a delicatessen and when America enters the war, Joseph enlists to fight for the American side. When Joseph's enlistment is discovered, it causes problems for Mother Bernle because she is shunned in her village.
Franz and Johann are killed on the Eastern Front. Andreas is wounded on the Western Front and dies in the arms of his brother Joseph.
Joseph returns to New York to discover that the delicatessen has prospered in his absence. He sends for his mother to join him, and she departs her village only to end up hopelessly lost wandering New York. A policeman brings her to Joseph's apartment, where she joyfully joins her son, daughter-in-law and grandson.

## Cast

* Margaret Mann as Mother Bernle
* James Hall as Joseph "Dutch" Bernle
* Charles Morton as Johann Bernle
* Ralph Bushman as Franz Bernle
* George Meeker as Andreas Bernle
* June Collyer as Annabelle
* Earle Foxe as Maj. von Stomm
* Albert Gran as The postman
* Frank Reicher as The schoolmaster
* Archduke Leopold of Austria as a captain
* Hughie Mack as The Innkeeper (uncredited)
* August Tollaire as The Bürgermeister (uncredited)
* Robert Parrish as Joseph's son (uncredited)
* John Wayne as Officer (uncredited)

## Music

The film featured a theme song entitled "Little Mother" which was composed by Erno Rapee and Lew Pollack.

## Reception

Time magazine called the movie "nicely cast," though also "the latest candified cinemotherlove":
   Four Sons parades the emotions of Bavarian Mother Bernle who sees three sons goose step to war and death. The fourth and youngest had sailed before the War to the U. S., but he too eventually holds a bayonet. Evil appears in the person of a Prussian, monocled and stooped, mannered and sneering. But Director John Ford sees to it that the boy is safely returned to New York and mother.

## Preservation

The Academy Film Archive preserved Four Sons in 1999.