The Four Feathers

The Four Feathers is a 1929 American war film directed by Merian C. Cooper and starring William Powell, Richard Arlen, Clive Brook and Fay Wray. This was the third of numerous film versions of the 1902 novel The Four Feathers written by A. E. W. Mason. The 1929 version of The Four Feathers premiered at the Criterion Theatre in New York City on June 12, 1929. Plot As children, Harry promises to marry Ethne, both the offspring of English Army officers, but she consents only if he will dress as a soldier. When Harry is still a child, his father tells him stories about the Crimean War, including one where a runaway soldier is spurred into suicide by Harry's father, who sent him a white feather to show his disapproval of cowardice. As a young man, Harry joins the Royal West Kent Regiment and is engaged to Ethne. His best friends are Durrance, Trench, and Castleton. Harry receives a telegram that their regiment is being deployed to the Soudan Expedition, and he resigns from the army. His friends and Ethne find out why Harry resigned and give him four white feathers. Harry's father also disapproves, and before he dies, he gives his son a pistol and tells him to shoot himself. Harry decides to act courageously in front of his friends in order to get them to take back their feathers, and travels to Sudan. In the Sudan, Trench has been captured by the enemy. Harry saves him, and Trench takes back the white feather. Harry stops a mutiny and saves Castelton from an ambush. Ethne and Harry get back together.