By 1941 Columbia was a full-fledged major studio and could produce a movie with the same technical polish as MGM, Paramount or Warners. That's the best thing that could be said about "Adam Had Four Sons," a leaden soap opera with almost terminally bland performances by Ingrid Bergman (top-billed for the first time in an American film) and Warner Baxter. Bergman plays a Frenchwoman (this was the era in which Hollywood thought one foreign accent was as good as another) hired as governess to Baxter's four sons and staying on (with one interruption caused by the stock-market crash of 1907) until the boys are grown men serving in World War I. Just about everyone in the movie is so goody-good it's a relief when Susan Hayward as the villainess enters midway through  she's about the only watchable person in the movie even though she's clearly channeling Bette Davis and Vivien Leigh; it's also the first in her long succession of alcoholic roles  but the script remains saccharine and the ending is utterly preposterous. No wonder Bergman turned down the similarly plotted "The Valley of Decision" four years later.