Happy Days (1929 film)
| Happy Days | |
|---|---|
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| 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. |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| IMDb | |
Happy Days (1929) is an 80 minute musical film, notable for being the first feature film shown entirely in widescreen anywhere in the world. (French director Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927) had some widescreen segments in what Gance called Polyvision.)
The film features an array of stars who were contracted to William Fox's Fox Film Corporation at that time, including Marjorie White, Will Rogers, Charles Farrell, Janet Gaynor, George Jessel, El Brendel, Ann Pennington, Victor McLaglen, Dixie Lee, Edmund Lowe, and Frank Richardson. It also featured the first appearance of Betty Grable on film, aged 12, 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.
Originally titled New Orleans Frolic, the story centers around Margie (played by Marjorie White), a singer on a showboat who goes to 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.
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.
- Happy Days at the Internet Movie Database
- [1] for Harry Lauder II.
- Magnified Grandeur - The Big Screen, 1926-31, David Coles, 2001
