Happy Land (1943) with Don Ameche & Frances Dee

Happy Land (1943) was a movie that I recorded awhile ago, but thanks to the mention of this movie by CineMaven and friends on the TCM board, I finally watched it yesterday. I was terribly moved by this story of a father, who is a pharmacist in a small town trying to cope with his grief over the loss of his son. Yes, it is sentimental, but not in a cheap way. Filmed on location in real settings in the then small town of Santa Rosa, California (where Hitchcock made the very different, much better known Shadow of a Doubt that same year), it is centered around the life of one family who are pharmacists (holy Mr. Gower coincidence!) in a community with an older man's spirit returning to guide his son through an examination of his grief, his life and his son's life. Sure, there are touches of It's a Wonderful Life, but because Happy Land is new to me, perhaps it was more effective in its atmosphere and storytelling due to its relative freshness and the likability of the leading actors, Don Ameche, Frances Dee and Harry Carey, Sr.

I thought Don Ameche gave one of his better dramatic performances in this one, and thought that his bitterness and grief were very moving, (though I usually prefer him as the hiliarious Mr. Bickerson and in the films he made when he was much older, such as Things Change, which I loved). The best parts for me were the beginning with the narrator describing the community life, and Ameche and Dee bantering tenderly and the arrival of the telegram. I saw some echoes of the author MacKinlay Kantor's later poetic touch in The Best Years of Our Lives in this movie too, (though of course, Robert E. Sherwood refined that story beautifully in the Wyler film). I loved seeing Harry Carey as Gramps' spirit in Happy Land, with his wry comments about the not always likable townfolk.

Did anyone spot Natalie Wood's first time in front of a camera? She was the little girl whose ice cream cone fell in a very brief scene. The director of H.L., former actor and sometime director Irving Pichel spotted her in a crowd with her mother (who seems to have been the stage mother of all time), was enchanted by the child, and later asked that she be cast in Tomorrow Is Forever as Orson's war orphan. Btw, any movie with the great Mary Wickes in the cast is better for it, don't you think? Btw, the narrator was Reed Hadley, though at first I thought it might be Pichel himself, who had a beautiful speaking voice, and was the narrator of How Green Was My Valley (1941).

Btw, Happy Land (1943) can be seen in its entirety on Hulu, starting below. I hope that you'll let me know what you think of the movie.