Sick Product of a Sick System

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

By no means vintage Marx, but worth savoring for two reasons: The second is that it was the Brothers' last film (even if Groucho's role is smaller and he meets up only fleetingly with Harpo and has but two short scenes with Chico). The first reason is Groucho's encounter with Marilyn Monroe. There is an unexpected knock on the door of his seedy office while he is in the middle of his sand-in-the-hourglass scene with "Ivan". Groucho opens the door and who should be standing there in a white, off-the-shoulder evening gown? She saunters in. "I want you to help me," she pleads. This is a cue for a typical leering question from Groucho. "Some men are following me," she explains - an amazing camera set-up in which she exits, smiling radiantly, knowingly, right into the left hand side of the screen. Groucho ushers her to the door. She undulates innocently, seductively, teasingly - a superbly contrived performance in which her charismatic attraction is undimmed no matter how many times you run the scene backwards and forwards. Groucho's performance, on the other hand, becomes more and more mechanical. All the same, this is one of the all-time great scenes in film history. Add it to your list of the great hundred, joining McDonald directing Bells of Rosarita and Cagney dancing his elative "Give My Regards to Broadway".Ilona Massey fans will also find Love Happy of uncommon interest. They may bridle at finding their idol stooging for Harpo, but Ilona plays the grand lady as if to the manner born, yet slinking and vamping most appealingly in some of the lowest-cut costumes ever seen in a Hollywood film. Nice to notice Raymond Burr as one of her henchmen, and Melville Cooper traipsing amusingly through his scenes as the harassed manager.Musically, Love Happy provides not one but two piano interludes for Chico. Firstly he partner's Leon Belasco's violin interspersing his usual deft playing with clever wise-cracks. Secondly he does the "Marche Militaire" with some delightful comic business in popping diamonds. Harpo has his usual solo, and Marion Hutton (Betty's one-year-older sister) gets to sing a typical Hutton number, "Mama Wants To Know", which she does most effectively if less stridently than her famous kid sister. (Chico played piano for a more elaborate Hutton production number, "Willow Weep For Me", which was deleted before release. You can still see the cut early on in the film where the clumsily substituted dissolve transition doesn't make visual sense. It was probably thought that a surplus of musical numbers would bore the audience. Unfortunately this leaves Vera-Ellen with very little to do. Newcomer Paul Valentine has more dancing than Vera, who is even robbed of a climactic number as we cut to the sporadically amusing but overlong roof-top scene.)Despite its faults (the script is often, despite the strenuous efforts of all the players, stubbornly unfunny. The comedy scenes and business are usually extended way beyond their capacity to amuse, and one of the "straight" plots - the struggling-to-Broadway-on-a-shoestring-players - has little interest), Love Happy was enormously popular, enjoying a second lease of life when Paramount re-issued their vintage Marx comedies in the mid-fifties.For a fuller account of Harpo's on-screen capers in this film - he wrote the story I would guess primarily to showcase Chico and even more particularly himself (Groucho's role reads like an afterthought) - I warmly recommend "The Marx Brothers: Their World of Comedy" by Allen Eyles, published by Tantivy Press, London, 1966. Oddly, Harpo himself doesn't even mention this film in his autobiography, "Harpo Speaks".

Recently I watched LOVE HAPPY, the last Marx Brothers film, on Amazon Prime. When I read up on the production history of it, I learned the film ran into some financial difficulties and almost was not completed. The only way to finish the movie, by raising the extra funds, was to invent a rooftop scene where Harpo is chased by some crooks.And as Harpo runs around during that sequence (which lasts for more than five minutes), he whizzes past billboards that flash product information in bright lights. About half those companies are still in existence today. So whoever worked for Wheaties' ad department made a smart decision, because every time that film is seen from 1950 into infinity, Wheaties continues to get on-going advertising from it.As for the finished product, this is not a terrible Marx Brothers effort. Nor is it one of their best. But I think most people will enjoy Harpo's antics.

Even Groucho himself did not like this picture, and I cannot understand why everyone says it is bad. It is a fine movie, and as everyone states here, it is to showcase Harpo, and he is excellent in Love Happy. Great pantomime and excellent special effects. To see Vera-Ellen, and Marlyn, and a cast of other known greats, is a real treat. The eventual conclusion of the missing diamonds, was a real surprise, yet quite nice. A great way to end their film career together. I liked this one more than several from their golden age.

Unfortunately, this movie was my first Marx Brothers movie. (I saw it in December 1977.) It really isn't a good introduction to the comic mayhem of the Marx Brothers because it was never intended to be a Marx Brothers movie in the first place! It was originally a Harpo Marx movie. But Chico had some debts to pay so he was worked into the script. Since you cannot have Harpo and Chico without Groucho, Groucho was also added to the script. Groucho didn't have that much of a part. But Groucho was so unique that he could generate laughs by saying anything! "Love Happy" was the movie that marked the end of the Marx Brothers as a single comedy act. (It would also be the movie that started Marilyn Monroe's career.) The movie was very entertaining and it provided more than enough comedy and laughs to qualify as a good comedy. Harpo was great, doing what he was best as doing. The chase was a riot.For those who were saddened over this movie being the end of the Marx Brothers as a comedy act, this movie also marked the beginning of the Marx Brothers as individuals who would each enjoy his own level of success with Groucho being the most successful with his TV show "You Bet Your Life" in the 1950s and a comeback in the 1970s, touring the country.After "Love Happy", Harpo would make 9 appearances plus 15 as himself. Chico would make 6 appearances plus 7 as himself. and Groucho would make 13 appearances plus 29 as himself and he would also enjoy success as a writer and one shot as director. That's not bad.The real tragedy was the 3 Stooges' "Kook's Tour" which really marked the end of the 3 Stooges as an act by featuring them in retirement. "Kooks' Tour" was cut short by Larry's stroke and it marked the end of the 3 Stooges (except for a few personal appearances by Moe as a member of the audience in the 1973 movie "Dr. Death Seeker of Souls" and as himself on "The Mike Douglas Show".)