Invitation to Happiness

"Invitation to Happiness" is a film that is incredibly frustrating. The film is bizarre because the first and second halves of the movie seem as if they were torn from separate movies and clumsily stuck together.

When the film begins, King Cole the boxer (Fred MacMurray) meets Eleanor (Irene Dunne). Although she is rich and the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other, they fall in love and get married. Things seem just grand between them and they have a baby. This portion of the film is enjoyable...no serious complaints from me.

The film then skips ahead about 9 years and Cole is still a boxer...but the marriage is inexplicably on the rocks. He and his wife fight but there really is no indication as to why. Then they decide to get divorced...and you keep wondering why. It seems more like a plot device than a logical progression of the story. The pair split up and Cole's son seems to dislike his father and has an odd, almost Freudian sort of relationship with his mom. All this precedes the 'big fight' for the championship.

As I mentioned, this is a frustrating film. MacMurray and Dunne are fine actors and their scenes together are very nice early in the movie. However, Fred does NOT seem much like a boxer and all the marital problems just seem contrived and come from out of no where. The end result is a movie that looks good and obviously cost a lot of money for the studio...but which left me feeling flat and a bit annoyed. They really should have worked out the script--gotten all the many kinks out of it and created a more logical plot. As it is, it's an okay time-passer but should have been much more. A big disappointment.

FYI--the final fight is the only one the movie shows in any detail. While it looks pretty realistic in some ways (like they're really hitting each other), the boxers do what often happens in movies-- they slug way too often (especially for a heavyweight fight). Real boxers doing this would be dead by the second round!

Charles Ruggles has a potential champion heavyweight boxer in Fred MacMurray, but he needs money, so he goes to old friend William Collier Sr. For $2000 versus a half-interest. Collier's daughter, Irene Dunne, thinks it's a ridiculous speculation, and MacMurray doesn't like spoled dames, so they quarrel. And then they get married. While MacMurray goes on the road, Miss Dunne raises their son in Collier's mansion. By the time ten years have passed and McMurray is due a late title bout, their son, Billy Cook, is alienated from him. Miss Dunne thinks that if MacMurray wanted to be a father, he had enough money five years earlier to retire and be one; instead, he has pursued his selfish goal.

Well, maybe. MacMurray does a nice bit of acting as an unself-aware mug, but Miss Dunne's strength in weepers is she's always fully aware of the risks she's taking, and goes into these misery-producing relations with her head held high. Here she knows precisely what's wrong with MacMurray, but not with her, and she seems a bit bitter and even shrewish here as she does the noble thing.

Director Wesley Ruggles has directed everyone just fine, and it's good to see Ruggles in a straight role. The brutal championship fight at the end is wince-inducing. But given that she starred in LOVE AFFAIR the same year, this one comes in a distant second.

Invitation To Happiness is the story of a pair of unlikely marriage between society girl Irene Dunne and prizefighter Fred MacMurray. It happens when Irene's father William Collier buys an interest in MacMurray's contract and Dunne takes an interest in her sportsman father's new acquisition.

They have a son who is played by Billy Lee, but they grow apart and divorce. But eventually MacMurray gets his long dreamed of title shot.

Billy Lee was 14 when he made this film and looks it. Which means that Fred would have been boxing for 14 years when he got his title fight. That is an awfully long time in the fight game to wait for a championship bout. MacMurray would have been fighting for eating money by that time as a trial horse if he was still in the fight game.

Irene is her usual soap opera heroine in this film. She and Fred don't quite gel in this film. One wonders what kind of future they would have after his fighting days are over.

Can't quite accept the movie's favorite milquetoast Charlie Ruggles as a boxing manager.

Invitation To Happiness is not in the top 10 for Dunne or MacMurray.

Solid performances by the entire cast earn this movie its eight stars. "Invitation to Happiness" has a good plot that Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray make into a very good love story. He is Albert "King" Cole, a heavyweight boxer, and she is Eleanor Wayne, a smitten socialite. The rest of the cast contribute as well. Charles Ruggles gives one of the supporting cast performances that made him a favorite supporting actor in more than 120 films and in many TV series over four decades. Ruggles plays Pop Hardy. Billy Cook does a good job as Albert Cole Jr.

Dunne and MacMurray only played in two films together – this one and the comedy-romance "Never a Dull Moment" in 1950. It would have been interesting to see them in more, especially comedies. Both were among the most versatile performers in their trade. Dunne made drama, comedy and war films with excellence. MacMurray played in many films from family fare, to westerns, mysteries and crime flicks, drama, war and comedy. She played opposite many of the best leading men of Hollywood, and he played opposite most of the leading women of the silver screen over four decades.

Invitation to Happiness is a good story about love and family, and reconciliation. As noted, the performances earn it the eight stars I give. Otherwise, the screenplay is choppy and disjointed in places. It's a story that most should enjoy.

Invitation to Happiness, my first evening flick. I was eight and already a sports fan and, during an earlier matinée preview, Invitation to Happiness flashed on - a prizefight movie.

Fifteen or twenty seconds of solid slam-bang action were shown. I had to see it. It was only playing for two nights in the middle of the week and I understood the importance of school the next day. But I knew I had to go. Problem: I couldn't go alone. I launched a campaign of such ferocity that my parents gave in. Grudgingly, we trooped off to Invitation to Happiness- -and it wasn't a prizefight movie, it was a kissing movie. All they did was kiss, the hero and the lady. Those precious fifteen seconds of slam-bang action were there, all right, but that was the sum total of prizefighting. I never dreamed a preview would snooker you that way.

The kisses went on and on. I began to groan. Then I started counting. Eleven kisses. Now a quick buss on the nose, but that counted. Twelve. On and on they went, and by now I was counting out loud.

There were twenty-three kisses in Invitation to Happiness and I hated every one.

-- from William Goldman's Adventures in Screen Trade