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The Photo pl a y
Magazine Gold
Medal Goes
to It as
the Best Picture
of 1928
Winfield Sheehan, production chief of the Fox Film Corporation
taut example of perfect silent picture making with a synchronized score — its tale of mother love was told without mawkishness and bathos.
In its issue for January, 1928, Photoplay reviewed the new picture, under its working title, as follows: —
" "K yfORE poignant in its grief than 'Over the Hill,' more J-Vi-tear compelling than 'Stella Dallas' is 'Grandma Bernle Learns Her Letters.' Even as the two preceding pictures created a new screen mother, so does this picture present us with a type that will rise to stardom because of her characterization of the war-torn, grief-stricken old German woman who loses three of her sons in the toll of war and who has to start life all over again in a strange country at the home of her sole remaining offspring. Margaret Mann is the new mother, who finally achieves screen success after eleven years of waiting in the ranks of the ' atmosphere people. ' No matter what they eventually name this picture, it is going to go down in film history as one of the screen's best. John Ford, who directed, has achieved a real picture. "
pause and soften their phrasing in the face of such a choice as "Four Sons," or indeed of any other Gold Medal winner.
The victory of "Four Sons" in the 1928 race for public affection and popularity is another victory for screen wholesomeness and sentiment coupled with brilliant technique.
Coming at the threshold of the sound era, this fine picture forms a perfect connecting link between the silent pictures of the old era and the audible drama of the new.
JOHN FORD, the able director of "Four Sons," came to Fox in 1920, after six years on the Universal lot.
He is a brother of Francis Ford, the famous leading man of the pictures' early days.
"Four Sons" came about two years after "The Iron Horse," the great railroad story, the direction of which made Ford famous.
His latest work on the Fox lot has been the direction of " The Black Watch" and "Salute."
William Fox and his production genius, Winfield Sheehan, are thus, for the second [please turn to page 118]
OUR SONS" introduced to the screen a new "mother" in the person of Margaret Mann, a sixty-yearold Scotswoman who had been playing bits in Hollywood for some time.
Press and public alike' took her to their hearts.
Others in the cast were James Hall, Francis X. Bushman, Jr., Charles Morton, George Meeker, June Collyer, Earle Foxe, Albert Gran, August Tollaire, Frank Reicher, Wendell Collier, Jack Pennick, Hughie Mack, Ruth Mix, Archduke Leopold of Austria and Ferdinand Schumann-Heink.
The camera work of George Schneidermann was hailed as especially brilliant.
There were many fine pictures in the list published by Photoplay as the best fifty pictures released in 1928. This list will be found on another page of this issue.
But, of course, the voters were not limited to this fifty.
They had the entire field for their choice.
It may well be that historians in future generations, while expatiating upon the alleged evils of our times, will
Grandma Bernle and her boys in "Four Sons." Left to right,
they are James Hall, Francis X. Bushman, Jr., Margaret Mann,
Charles Morton and George Meeker