Coffee and Julius J. Epstein, adapted from the 1937 Fannie Hurst story "Sister Act", and was directed by Michael Curtiz.

The same cast—with the addition of Fay Bainter and Donald Crisp—appeared in the film Daughters Courageous, which had no connection with the Lemp family trilogy.

Harpist Emma, the oldest daughter, is the object of a neighbor's affection, but she rebuffs Ernest's (Dick Foran) attentions.

Thea, a pianist and the second eldest, is courted by wealthy Ben Crowley (Frank McHugh), another neighbor, but she is not sure she loves him.

Kay, the third daughter, is a talented singer and has a chance at a music school scholarship but doesn't want to leave home.

She instructs the young man making free with it in the finer points of the art, and introduces him to an apparently disapproving passerby, Mrs. Ridgefield, a local gossip.

This charmer is young composer Felix Deitz (Jeffrey Lynn), come to work at the foundation where Adam is Dean.

Enter Felix's friend Mickey (John Garfield), a cynical orchestral arranger whose hard life has given him a grim view of existence.

Four months later, Ann and Mickey are living a hard life in New York City, professing love for each other but poor and unhappy.

Felix is alone and unhappy, though the composition Mickey helped to orchestrate won a prize: a contract with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

While Kay sings Mendelssohn's “On Wings of Song,” the camera passes over the listening family, revealing much.

According to TCM.com, Harry Warren, Al Dubin, Allie Wrubel, Elliot Grennard, Hugo Friedhofer, Heinz Roemheld and Bernard Kaun contributed to the music.

Putting aside Mr. Warner's career for the nonce, we may assert with equal confidence that Four Daughters is one of the best pictures of anybody's career, if only for the sake of the marvelously meaningful character of Mickey Borden as portrayed by John (formerly Jules) Garfield, who bites off his lines with a delivery so eloquent that we still aren't sure whether it is the dialogue or Mr. Garfield who is so bitterly brilliant.

It was followed by 1939's Daughters Courageous, also directed by Michael Curtiz and co-starring Claude Rains and John Garfield, though it is a story about a different family.

Four Daughters was remade in 1954 as Young at Heart, starring Frank Sinatra in the role played by Garfield and Doris Day in Priscilla Lane's part.

All the characters' names were changed, the number of daughters was reduced to three, and the young men who vie for the heroine's heart compose songs rather than orchestral music.