Happy Land

An old-timer comes down from heaven and walks a despondent middle aged family man from Anytown U.S.A. through his memories after the latter has suffered a major setback in life so that by the end his peace of mind is restored. Sound familiar? Well, "It's A Wonderful Life" it isn't but this is still a pleasant enough fantasy feature obviously made to bolster the war effort and act as a consolation to those families who lost their sons and daughters in the fighting.

This time there's no angel seeking its wings, popular drug-store owner Don Ameche's accompanist is his old, long-dead father who fought in the First World War. Gramp, (Harry Carey Sr.) as he's called obviously can't stand to see his son lose the will to live and so pays his ailing boy an extra-terrestrial visit in particular to reconcile him with his grief after Ameche's only son Rusty has fallen in battle trying to save another man while serving in the Far East with the Navy.

There are no real special effects to speak of and the story doesn't have the dramatic arc of Capra's classic, as we tag along with Ameche and Carey's gentle walk around their old town and their remembrances of the much loved boy, the point having been made earlier that the boy came into the world pretty much as his grandad was leaving it, so even though they hardly met, there is also an emotional connection between grandfather and grandson.

There's a nice coda to the piece when Rusty's Navy mate, played by a young Henry Morgan of TV's "M.A.S.H." fame, calls on his late buddy's parents and finally convinces them, especially the formerly morose father, that their son's sacrifice was worthwhile and that they can move on with their lives while still cherishing his memory.

Although not much happens between Gramp's arrival and departure, this is still an amiable feature with its pleasant reconstruction of small town life during the war with the drugstore and its attendant soda fountain a vibrant meeting point for the townsfolk young and old.

Personally I think a little more fantasy and perhaps a brief "return" by the son at the end might have proven slightly more satisfactory, in terms of content but this was a pleasant well-meaning morale-boosting piece which achieved its brief.

Finding this oddity on cable recently, I was quickly seduced by its opening sequence, a Welles-like plunge down main street into a small everytown's heart, Marsh's pharmacy. Here, as some clever camera work reveals, solid citizen Lew Marsh (Don Ameche) tends to the blisses of early 40's Hollywood America; everyone's prescription is filled, sundaes topped off with a cherry, local oddballs humored, etc.

What most recommends the film is its frame narrative. Quickly the idyll is broken when Marsh learns his son has been killed in the war. He sinks into a lengthy depression. Enter the ghost of Gramp to conduct psychotherapy: he spirits Marsh back into the past where we relive the childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood of the now-dead Rusty. While the mid-section unfolds linearly, Marsh and Gramp function offscreen as a Greek chorus (their melancholy dialogue often a grim counterpoint to the generally cheerful scenes). Then it's back to the present where an exorcized Marsh learns to stop questioning the wisdom of sacrificing young men in war. "Rusty died a good death," Gramp's ghost counsels, and we know it's only a matter of time before Marsh will agree.

Three years before "It's A Wonderful Life" (1946), "Happy Land" was already hijacking the "Christmas Carol" device of reliving the past on a therapeutic sightseeing tour. Unlike the Stewart film, though, the tone is more darkly somber, lingeringly mournful. The theme of sorrow outweighs the theme of recovery. Ameche looks and sounds wracked, bitter.

In fact, the film's heart is scarcely in its chief enterprise, which is to steel its audience for more wartime sacrifice. It seems at times almost to be working against its own message that war deaths are "good deaths." I imagine it may have helped salve some broken hearts, but the crime of this type of film is that, if it succeeds, it only helps to break more.

We saw this film sometime in the late 1980's on the old AMC. You remember AMC, the station that didn't like colorized or edited movies. That showed films how they were meant to. Well enough of that.

The HAPPY LAND was one (1) of those fine WWII films that gave you a peek of what the home front was like and the effects the war had upon it. This was effectively and economically done. Not as long as SINCE YOU WENT AWAY or the HUMAN COMEDY more in line with the FIGHTING SULLIVANS another seldom seen home front film. Or at least seldom seen since AMC went to seed.

The importance of these films is to give a glimpse into the lives of our parents or grandparents and not just the war, but the effects of rationing, personal loss and the fear that we could lose. Many young people have no concept what a close run thing WWII was. Not that we would have been conquered. But that Asia and Europe would have been dominated by two (2) powers both with a race superiority agendas. The NAZI Germans who wanted to create a master race and Imperial Japan who thought they WERE the master race.

The film as far as we know is unavailable on any video format. Seems like a shame when so much bad material is rushed to DVD. 20th Century Fox should do something about this. After all they have released A YANK IN THE R.A.F which main claim to fame is Betty Grable and Tyrone Power.

Happy Land is a film set firmly in time and place during the World War II era. Had this been attempted during subsequent military involvements the USA has been involved in Happy Land would have been hooted off the screen.

As it is Don Ameche, Frances Dee, Harry Carey and the rest are held firmly in check by director Irving Pichel, if they weren't this film would have more tears than the Mississippi.

Happy Land is set in small town Midwest USA in Iowa. Ameche and Dee receive that most dreaded of telegrams between 1941 and 1945 from the Navy Department informing them that their son and one and only child Richard Crane has been killed in action in the Pacific.

Ameche totally withdraws into himself, not even going to his pharmacy to tend to his business there. It's then that he receives a visit from his long deceased grandfather Harry Carey. It's then he has an It's A Wonderful Life experience only it's a lot more reassuring and it's not his life.

Short and sweet Richard Crane had a wonderful life and he died so that others might enjoy freedom. You could never make this message film about any subsequent war.

Happy Land's message is why we fight and die in 1943. It's a great fantasy film unlikely to be remade.

Saw this movie with my family in 1943 at age 10. We all liked it, even though it made us sad. Seems like it starts with Rusty already dead, killed in the war. Then there are flashbacks to his childhood. What it said to me back then was: war makes no sense. I'm not sure that's what was intended.