Happiness Ahead

I would not go so far as to call this a musical, although some might because Dick Powell does do some singing in it. To my way of thinking a musical is simply where the music dominates the telling of a story. That is not so in this case. It is a romantic comedy with a song or two in it. It has the old fashioned boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy marries girl theme in it. The concept of s-e-x is 1934 style, with the two parties barely able to kiss one another until deep in the relationship. If you don't need special effects to tell a story, then you will like this one. The actors all speak like stage trained personnel with emphatic speech typical of the period. Many fine character actors in the cast including Frank McHugh and Allan Jenkins. It is just a classical and entertaining film comedy the way America used to do it. I loved it.

This is one of those films so popular in the 1930's in which a rich person, either intentionally or through coincidence, is mistaken for a person of modest means. As a result of this, the rich person ends up falling in love with a person of actual modest means.

In this case Joan Bradford (Josephine Hutchinson) is a wealthy heiress who is expected to marry a wealthy heir in a manner that resembles a corporate merger more than a romance. On the night that the engagement is to be announced she escapes her parents' mansion and begins walking along the streets of New York City. She goes into a night spot where she meets a group of young people, one of whom is window washing dispatcher Bob Lane (Dick Powell). Bob offers Joan a ride home at the evening's end, and she accepts. She doesn't want Bob to know she is wealthy, so she picks a random boarding house and tells him to drop her off.

Now the problems of the deception begin. Joan has given Bob a fake name - Joan Smith - and Bob is expecting to pick her up for a date in a few days at an address where she does not live. So Joan rents a place there and furnishes it, only showing up on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays right before her dates with Bob, and going back to her real home after he drops her off. She manages to fend off her mother's questions with the help of her sympathetic father (Jack Halliday). However, Joan soon finds she is in love with Bob, and with him talking about the two of them having a future together, she must face how to let him know who she really is without him feel betrayed.

This film is a bit of a departure for Dick Powell's musical films. He is not playing someone with musical abilities who is itching to be discovered. There are no big musical numbers in the film, just Powell singing a few catchy songs. This is a very fun film if you like the Warner Brothers musical comedies from the 1930's.

During the 1930s, Dick Powell played a lot of similar roles--the fresh-faced young man who sings some very high-pitched but pleasant songs. The public adored it...and Powell hated it and wanted meatier, tougher roles. In my opinion, he was right and his tough- guy roles are my favorites. As for the guy he plays in "Happiness Ahead", it's pretty much the typical 30s Powell film.

Joan (Josephine Hutchinson) is a rich, pampered society girl. However, she's vaguely dissatisfied about this and longs for fun in her life...something sorely lacking at her boring high-brow parties. So, she decides to slum it and goes on on New Years Eve to see how the normal folks live and celebrate. There she meets nice-guy, Bob (Powell) and they soon start dating. She's very happy but he has no idea she's loaded.

This plot is awfully familiar in the 1930s. You would have thought that films would have avoided the whole bored rich girl angle--after all, it WAS the Depression and many folks were just happy to get enough to eat! But despite this, films like "Five and Ten" and "Poor Little Rich Girl" and this one were pretty common. This isn't necessarily a complaint but does mean that the film isn't exactly original.

So is it any good? Well, most of the songs were pretty forgettable but I liked the one Powell and Frank McHugh sang as they washed windows as well as the weird number in the bizarre Chinese restaurant/night club near the beginning of the picture. I personally just hoped they'd end soon so they could get back to the romance--which was rather cute and enjoyable. Deep? No way...but cute.

"Happiness Ahead" is a romance with some comedy and music that is set, as most such films were during the Great Depression, in New York City. This is another working stiff meets wealthy person, the latter who is anonymous. This one has a different twist that makes it a little more fun.

Dick Powell stars as the working man and Josephine Hutchinson is the millionairess in Cognito. This was her first film since one appearance as a child in a 1917 silent film. Hutchinson would go on to have a long career in films and then television to the mid-1970s. But it would be in supporting roles, not as a leading lady for which the First National and Warner Brothers tried to present her in the buildup for this film.

Some other familiar faces of supporting actors people this film - all of which gives it some familiarity and enjoyment. The musical aspect consists of one dance performance in a Chinese nightclub and Dick Powell singing a couple of numbers.

In every episode of Three's Company, someone tells a fib, it snowballs into bigger problems, and it's all finally resolved in the end. There's the plot of Happiness Ahead, from First National. Rich girl Joan (Jo Hutchinson) doesn't want to marry her assigned boyfriend, so she goes to great lengths to chase blue collar worker "Bob" (Dick Powell) who opens the film by singing "Happiness Ahead". The nasal Allen Jenkins is in here as the butler... we usually see him playing the wisecracking gangsters. Frank McHugh is in here as Tom, for comedy relief. And Jane Darwell (Ma Joad !) is the landlady that clues Bob in to what's going on. Cute little film. Fun little love story. Nothing that will tax the brain... I could have done with less singing numbers, but that's what everyone was doing in those days. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, who was six when the big quake hit san francisco. Quite an interesting tale.