The Happy Years

I attended the Lawrenceville School in the 1970's and 80's. The school had changed in many ways, but there were many things that were still true about the school. The film itself was well done. The Cinematography, acting, and screenplay were especially memorable. In fact, the child actors created one of the best ensembles I have ever seen in a movie about children. I wasn't impressed with the adults except Leo G. Carroll who as always did an exceptional job in the role of 'The Old Roman'. The 40's Technicolor made every frame look like a postcard. Unfortunately, the film was lost for many years, thought to be destroyed in the MGM fire, but it was rediscovered while I attended Lawrenceville. The film is rarely seen on television and has never appeared on video as far as I know. By the way, Gerunds and Gerundives in Latin are not as difficult to distinguish as the screenplay makes out, but it made for some great scenes.

Who would have thought or recognized that the lead actor Dean Stockwell, would be playing a 14 year old dissilusioned boy named John Humperdink 'Dink' Stover. Young John was not in the least happy about going away to a private boarding school since he believed the world was all against him. John or Dink as he was called was picked on and bullied at school so he developed a thick skin and a hard right cross punch.

Through time, which took John a few years to come to terms with, there were people in young John's corner, one key person being the school master named The Old Roman (Leo G. Carroll). It's a film in which you both dislike the bad attitude of young John as well as I felt bad for him and his unhappy childhood.

It's a story about more than one young man struggling to be accepted by his peers, and how the school master wins them over. I give the film a praiseworthy 8 out of 10 rating.

This film is vintage Dean Stockwell as a child actor and is certainly representative of the outstanding performance he invariably produced. The supporting cast is equally as strong. Leon Ames, Leo G. Carroll and Dwayne Hickman are pure delight, and Wellman's direction is spot on as always. The plot is rather rambling, but that really seems only to add to its charm. These are the adventures (and mis-adventures) of some turn-of-the-century prep school boys as remembered by Owen Johnson in his novel THE LAWRENCEVILLE STORIES. The movie is as warm-hearted, funny, and thoroughly engaging as the original book. About 1988 this film was remade as a TV mini-series, using the same title as the book. The complete mini-series was made available about 1992 as a double-cassette VHS recording. But, alas, it seems no one wants to resurrect THE HAPPY YEARS, more's the pity. I, for one, would snap up a copy on either VHS or DVD instantly. Any takers out there, video producers?

The Dink Stover stories like the Frank Merriwell ones were most popular back at the turn of the last century. This particular one concerns the young man even before he's at Yale as a rebellious youth going to Lawrenceville Prep back in 1896.

Dean Stockwell who was at the height of his juvenile popularity in 1950 plays young Stover and in the fashion of those days was given the nickname 'Dink' as it was thought his full moniker was a bit high falutin'. He's a rebellious one and makes an enemy in upper classman Darryl Hickman who he fights once and swears to fight and win. As they said back in those days, the kid has Moxie.

I'm surprised that these stories and the Dink Stover character was never given to Mickey Rooney a decade earlier when he was at MGM. It seemed a natural for the Mick in his salad days. Stockwell good actor that he was and the rest of the cast were not box office. The film lost money for MGM.

Leo G. Carroll was the Latin teacher and head of Stockwell's house at the prep school recognizes leadership potential. But it takes a lot to get it out of him, especially with his feud with Hickman dominating all his thoughts.

Sad this film didn't do better for MGM. It's a nice nostalgia filled film of those halcyon days before World War I.

Period pieces set in the 1890's or at the turn of the century were a popular genre in the 1940's. They were often sweet, nostalgic tales that both reminded elderly audience members of their youths and appealed to younger ones with a rose-tinted view of supposedly simpler and more gracious times. Vincente Minnelli's "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944) and Raoul Walsh's "The Strawberry Blonde" (1941) are the best known of these films, but there were many others including this one.

William Wellman's "The Happy Years" is an episodic film based on the works of early 20th century novelist Owen Johnson. Between 1909-1922, Johnson wrote a number of novellas about the humorist adventures of students at both New Jersey's preparatory Lawrenceville School and Yale University which were Johnson's own alma maters.

"The Happy Years" is about "John Humperdink 'Dink' Stover" (Dean Stockwell), a young New Jersey teenage terror, and his first experiences as a Lawrenceville student in 1896. We are first introduced to Dink through the eyes of his exasperated parents (Leon Ames and Margolo Gillmore). They are at wits end at how to deal with this incorrigible troublemaker. The solutions: let him be sent to a reformatory or pack him off to his Dad's and older brother's prep alma mater: Lawrenceville School. So, he goes to Lawrenceville.

Why Lawrenceville is treated as a "last resort" is not exactly explained. It has a beautiful, bucolic campus and an all-male student body of well-heeled toffs. It looks more like a reward than a punishment. Anyway, as a new boy, he is immediately nicknamed "Dink" and subjugated to the ritual hazing that all new kids receive from older classmates among whom are the dapper "Tennessee Shad" (Scotty Beckett) and big-man-on-campus, "Tough McCarty" (Darryl Hickman). Dink doesn't take the hazing in good nature which violates an unspoken code of student conduct. His refusal to be a "good sport" about it leads to him being a pariah. With his lousy attitude, it appears Dink won't be long for Lawrenceville.

Tough guy director William Wellman often specialized in male-bonding films which is probably why he got this film despite it being a frothy nostalgia piece. The film's emphasis is on a boy proving himself to other boys by taking and accepting his "lumps." There are several fights and a violent football game. The few female characters are mostly just marks for various boyish pranks. It's "boys will be boys."

"The Happy Years" starts strong, but then bogs down as it bounces from one lengthy episodic scene after the next. By the time it reached that football game I was about to check-out. It just doesn't feel coherent which is probably a result of its screenplay being cobbled together from chapters of Johnson's various books. Plus, the sight of little Dean Stockwell fighting much larger boys and winning was eye-roll inducing. (The scenes of 14 yr old Stockwell tangling with strapping 19 yr old Hickman are particularly silly.)

"The Happy Years" was a dud at the box-office. It appears post-war 1950 film audiences were no longer interested in nostalgia pieces about "the good ole days."

Dean Stockwell was near the end of his days as a child star. As were both Darryl Hickman and Scotty Beckett. "The Happy Years" being a box-office bomb appears to have convinced Hollywood that they were no longer viable stars and moved on. Stockwell smartly would step away from Hollywood for a few years before returning to have a very long career as a character actor in both film and TV. Hickman would work fairly steadily as a TV and voice actor. However, Scotty Beckett became one of the more notorious former child actors whose career and life spun completely out-of-control leading to an early demise.