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Customer Reviews of Love Happy (B&W) / Movie

Harpo, Chico and barely Groucho
Though this was not the last time the Marx Brothers would appear together, it was their final collaboration on the big screen. LOVE HAPPY is essentially a Harpo film with Chico doing his best to keep pace. Groucho's brief segments could probably have been cut from the film without disturbing the story. <
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>LOVE HAPPY combines two plots. The first is about group of struggling young actors laboring to assemble a stage show -- somewhat similar to the ROOM SERVICE's storyline. The subplot involves a band of jewel smugglers whose contraband diamonds mistakenly end up in the theater. <
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>Harpo, whose character also goes by the name of Harpo in the story, is the troupe's scavenger. Chico also wanders into the theater in search of a job. Yes, Harpo plays the harp and Chico tickles the piano keys. In fact, the movie is based on a story created by Harpo Marx. <
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>What about Groucho, you ask? Groucho Marx originally did not want much more than a cameo role in this movie. The producer felt that a Marx Brothers movie with Groucho would have better box office draw than a Harpo and Chico film. By the late 1940's, Groucho put his Marx Brothers days behind him. It did not really matter anyway. Wise-cracking Groucho the character was inseparable from Groucho the actor. Groucho kept his distance from film because he believed that radio and television broadcast was the future of entertainment. Despite his reluctance, Groucho was convinced to contribute a handful of scenes, including 45 seconds with Marilyn Monroe, and supply occasional narration to the film. Indeed, the three Marx Brothers do not appear together until the chase scene at the conclusion of the film. <
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>Despite Groucho's demand for higher salary in order to appear in the film, he was paid approximately half of what he was used to receiving for a movie. Remember that at this period in Groucho's career, he was involved in the wildly successful radio -- and later television -- quiz show, "You Bet Your Life." Money was rolling into Groucho's bank account without having to endure lengthy film shoots. The success of his radio program only served to reinforce Groucho's postion that his motion picture days were over. <
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>We also see a slightly changed Groucho in LOVE HAPPY. Gone are the grease painted eyebrows and exaggerated mustache of earlier years. Groucho's conservatively trimmed mustache was for real. Groucho's hair had also thinned considerably since A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA. Abandonment of grease painted eyebrows only served to make Groucho look older. <
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>It is fitting that LOVE HAPPY was the finale for the Marx Brothers. In comparing LOVE HAPPY to earlier Marx Brothers films, Harpo and Chico are out of place. In the early films, particularly those completed at Paramount's Long Island studios, the zany Marx Brothers did not appear unusual in a setting where everyone was somewhat looney anyway. The Paramount Marx Brothers films were the Leslie Nielsen NAKED GUNs of their day. In their later films at RKO and then MGM, the Marx Brothers remained zany, but the world around them took on a more serious tone. By the time of A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA, the bad guys were actually villainous. The romantic subplot was believable. Life, liberty, and property hung in the balance. It became more difficult to accept that the three Marxes could be on the loose in society. <
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>Accelerating the end of the Marx Brothers era, well before LOVE HAPPY, was that Margaret Dumount, Groucho's foil for years, retired. Additionally, handsome Zeppo Marx left the team at the conclusion of their Paramount films. In the early films, Zeppo almost always played the romantic lead. In subsequent films another actor, normally a crooner, played the part of the handsome boyfriend lead in a romantic subplot that was very removed from the Marx comedy. In watching the later films, I am tempted to skip the non-Marx musical numbers and dance routines. It is like watching two separate films cobbled together with only a thread of story continuity. <
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>In LOVE HAPPY, Harpo and Chico are as out of place in this film as Buster Keaton is in the surfer movies of the 1960s. This was also very evident in one of Groucho's 1947 solo attempts. COPACABANA was essentially a Marx Brothers movie without the Marx Brothers. In COPACABANA, Groucho's antics were equally out of place in an otherwise normal world. Though it is great to see them together again in LOVE HAPPY, it is also sad if you compare this film their early motion pictures. <
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>The rooftop ending of the LOVE HAPPY is novel, though it is not what was originally scripted. The film company ran out of money and solicited commercial sponsorship from companies. Thus explains the rooftop chase past lighted billboards. <
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>The current DVD release is very high quality. Prior to buying a DVD copy of LOVE HAPPY, I had not seen the film in 30 years. It was good to see it again. Despite the criticisms I have leveled at the movie, I recommend you complete your Marx Brothers DVD collection with this picture. Unfortunately the DVD contains no special features. Also, for Marilyn Monroe fans, the cover of the DVD is slightly misleading. Groucho and Marilyn appear on the DVD cover. It is all about marketing as Monroe appears only briefly in the film and Groucho has much less camera time than Harpo or Chico.

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Harpo's Only Starring Film
Released in 1950 after a troubled production history, "Love Happy" should be viewed as a showcase for the talents of Harpo Marx. On that level, it's an enjoyable but uneven film. Harpo's attempt at Chaplinesque pathos is fascinating -- if not entirely successful. However, the rooftop chase is quite inventive and Groucho (in a brief role for box-office purposes) has a memorable encounter with Marilyn Monroe. "Love Happy" is not a classic, but it's more enjoyable (and less painful) to watch than "At the Circus" and "The Big Store." After years of second-generation prints, the DVD features an excellent 35mm pre-release print that is six minutes longer than the 85-minute theatrical version. Groucho's narration now makes more sense and includes some Robert Benchley-inspired commentary. Along the way, there are occasional gags with Harpo and Chico that the Hays Office deemed inappropriate for the official release. Despite a few continuity errors, the pre-release print of "Love Happy" is superior to the finished product. Marxists rejoice!

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The Marxes' Finale is Really Harpo's Show...
"Love Happy" is remembered, primarily, as the last "Official" Marx Brothers film (they would all appear in brief vignettes in "The Story of Mankind", seven years later, but not as a team), but if the film were a baseball statistic, it would have an asterik (*), because it truly isn't a showcase of the brothers, together, but a comedy starring Harpo, with Chico in a supporting role, and Groucho doing narration, and making brief appearances, occasionally. <
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>As a comedy, "Love Happy" is so-so, with Harpo providing some genuine laughs, particularly during an interrogation scene with villains Raymond Burr, Ilona Massey, Eric Blore, and Bruce Gordon, and in the rooftop finale, with Harpo offering the same kind of outrageous physical humor that he had demonstrated in the classic Paramount and MGM comedies. But the rest of the plot, while mildly entertaining, is simply a musical variation of "Room Service", as an impoverished group of performers (headed by Paul Valentine and future star Vera-Ellen) struggle to put on a Broadway musical, 'spiced' up with a stolen jewelry subplot that isn't that interesting. <
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>The back story of the film is possibly more entertaining than the movie, itself; Harpo had wanted to make a solo film throughout the forties, and had tinkered on the script for several years, while soliciting financial backing for the project. Chico, meanwhile, was running up huge gambling debts, as was often the case (while a brilliant card player, he was a notoriously bad gambler), and just as the Marxes had made "A Night in Casablanca", in 1946, to pay off his debts at that time, Harpo brought him into "Love Happy" to do the same. Unfortunately, the end of the decade was a depressed time for film making (with the studios forced to give up their lucrative theater chains, and television making inroads into the ticket-buying public), and backers would only fund the project if all three brothers would appear in the movie. <
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>Groucho, by now a genuine TV star, thanks to the "You Bet Your Life" quiz show, hated the script of "Love Happy", and had little desire to co-star in the film. He was, however, loyal to his brothers, and finally reached a compromise; he would only appear briefly, would not have to wear his trademark greasepaint eyebrows and mustache, and would have final approval of his dialog and the performers working with him. He could honestly say he helped 'discover' Marilyn Monroe, at an open audition (watching two other starlets walk across a stage, followed by Marilyn, when asked for his pick for a small role, he raised his eyebrows and quipped, "You're kidding, right?") <
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>As Universal and Warner Brothers have now released two wonderful boxed collections of all of the Marx Brothers' other feature films, this edition of "Love Happy" is essential, to complete the filmography of the classic team. But be warned: "Love Happy" is no "Night at the Opera", or "Duck Soup"!