Three Comrades (1938 film)
1938 film by Frank Borzage
Three Comrades is a 1938 American drama film directed by Frank Borzage and produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz for MGM. The screenplay was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edward E. Paramore Jr., adapted from the novel Three Comrades by Erich Maria Remarque. The film stars Robert Taylor, Margaret Sullavan, Franchot Tone and Robert Young. Sullavan was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Plot
On the last day of World War I, German fighter pilots Erich Lohkamp, Otto Koster and Gottfried Lenz express fatalistic attitudes about the future. They later open an auto-repair business but are barely able to earn a living.
In the spring of 1920, while driving to a country inn, the friends meet Herr Breuer and Pat Hollmann. Pat is an aristocrat who is now impoverished, while Breuer is an older, wealthy fascist sympathizer. Although Pat is worldly, she is drawn to the innocent Erich, and they later arrange a date.
Pat and Erich begin a relationship. At the opera, they encounter Breuer, who invites them to a fancy nightclub from which Erich departs in embarrassment, ashamed of his social status.
“Three Comrades (1938 film)” enters the record as 1938 film by Frank Borzage. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Three, Comrades and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1040470. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938 and 1920.
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