'Four Sons' Movie Magazine Advert (1940)
 
Advertisement for the American feature film “Four Sons,” released by 20th Century-Fox in June 1940. The film was a remake of a 1928 film by the same name, set in Bavaria before and during World War I. The 1940 remake was set during the late 1930s in the Czechoslovakian region along the German border known as the Sudetenland. It focuses on a mother and her four sons, who have divided political loyalties. One son enlists in the Czech army and clashes with his brother who joins the Nazis. A third brother is drafted by the German army after the Sudetenland was annexed in 1938, while the fourth brother, an artist, escapes the same fate by immigrating to the United States. Three of the four brothers are killed as a result of the war, and the mother, her daughter-in-law, and grandson set out to immigrate to the United States.
 
Advertising for “Four Sons” was the first to use imagery of the “specter of death,” a common theme of interventionist political cartoons and editorials. This led to threats on the studio from the German consul-general.
 
In Poor Condition