Happy Days (1929 film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Happy Days

Directed by	Benjamin Stoloff
Produced by	William Fox
Written by	Sidney Lanfield Edwin J. Burke
Starring	Charles E. Evans Marjorie White Richard Keene Stuart Erwin
Music by	Harry Stoddard
Cinematography	Lucien N. Andriot John Schmitz J.O. Taylor
Editing by	Clyde Carruth
Distributed by	Fox Film Corporation
Release date(s)	17 September 1929 (preview) 13 February 1930
Running time	80 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Happy Days (1929) is an 80 minute musical film, notable for being the first movie shown entirely in widescreen anywhere in the world. (French director Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927) had some widescreen segments.)

The film features an array of stars who were contracted to William Fox's Fox Film Corporation at that time, including White, Will Rogers, Charles Farrell, Janet Gaynor, George Jessel, El Brendel, Victor McLaglen, Dixie Lee, Edmund Lowe, and Frank Richardson. It also featured the first appearance of Betty Grable on film, aged 12 (legally underage for working) as a chorus girl in blackface, and Sir Harry Lauder's nephew, Harry Lauder II, a conductor for Fox, who was drafted into the chorus.

[edit] Plot

Originally titled New Orleans Frolic, the story centers around Margie (played by Marjorie White), a singer on a showboat who goes to and make her fortune in New York City, despite being in love with the boat owner's grandson. Although successful in the city, when she hears that the showboat is in financial trouble she calls all the boat's former stars to perform in a show to rescue it.

[edit] Premiere

After a preview on September 17, 1929, Happy Days premiered at the Roxy Theater in New York City on February 13, 1930 with a Niagara Falls widescreen short on a Grandeur screen of 42x20 ft, compared to the standard 24x18 ft screen. It was also shown in Grandeur at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, from February 28, 1930. Due to the Great Depression few movie theaters invested in widescreen equipment and the format was abandoned until 23 years later. Fox Film Corporation's heavy investment in Grandeur technology led to William Fox losing his business, which was eventually merged in 1935 with Twentieth Century Pictures to form 20th Century Fox. No widescreen print of Happy Days is known to survive.