The Habit of Happiness

Sunny Wiggins (Douglas Fairbanks) is the optimistic son in the wealthy but dour Wiggins family. Sunny decides to spend his life making the lives of homeless men better. He starts by having a bunch of them spend the night in his room, but insists they all have a bath before going downstairs to breakfast. A table is set, and the homeless men and Sunny all sit down to breakfast. But it is in fact a set table for the luncheon of his sister and her crowd. She is humiliated by the spectacle of the homeless men lapping down the food meant for her guests.

Sunny tries to explain his "brotherhood of man" theory to his father, but he is unpersuaded. He tells Sunny to go down to the Bowery and try out his philosophy on the men without any of his family fortune, figuring he'll be met with failure and come home. Sunny is having moderate success with the men by just using humor on them to get them to cheer up when a doctor appears and asks Sunny to try his philosophy on Mr. Pepper, a very wealthy Wall Street financier who won't eat and can't laugh. Sunny takes the job only because the doctor promises to pay him well so that he can use the money helping the homeless men. And through this all there is one friend of his sister who is warm and charming that he'd like to know better, but he doesn't even have her name. Complications ensue.

If this plot seems rather muddled it is because it is. The title cards seem inadequate to explain the entire situation, and there is some kind of armed attack on the Pepper mansion towards the end that involves about half a dozen men that might be a kidnapping attempt, but it is never explained. It does seem to be a rare attempt in a Fairbanks film to involve a bit of social conscience and class wide condemnation of the idle and even not so idle rich.

This is the first Fairbanks film directed by Alan Dwan, a frequent collaborator. The men playing the homeless in this film were actual homeless men who Fairbanks had a really hard time getting to laugh. The only way he was truly successful with that was by telling increasingly bawdy stories.

Sunny Wiggins is (as his name suggests) a really SUNNY character: all his family are deadly earnest high society snobs - while he dedicates his life, and his money, to making poor people happy: he collects them from the streets and the breadlines and at his home, he gives them 'lessons in laughing'! But, while the tramps really appreciate his efforts, his father considers them a sheer waste of money and time, and, in order to 'wake up' his son to reality, he sends him to live with those 'bums' for a while... Which he does - until he's assigned the job to cheer up old businessman Pepper, who's even more gloomy and grumpy than his own dad; but who's got a lovely young daughter...!

Here we can witness Doug Fairbanks FULLY in his element: optimism, laughter, romance, hope, and humanity! And the movie isn't just a 'plain' movie with actors acting their part: Doug ACTUALLY took those poor, desperate, sad men from shelters for the homeless and from breadlines, and it took him QUITE some effort to REALLY cheer them up - but he finally managed, in reality as well as in the film! He'd show his concern for his fellow men's psychology many times, not only in the equally wonderful "Down to Earth" a year later, but also with a whole series of self-help books, beginning with "Laugh and Live" in 1917, where he always tried to convince the readers in the most wonderful and sincere way that OPTIMISM is the road to happiness - just like he did in this movie, which even (or maybe especially) today can teach us a GOOD lesson on how to learn to LAUGH AND LIVE!