Happy Days (1929)

Happy Days (1929) is an musical film, notable for being the first feature film shown entirely in widescreen anywhere in the world, filmed in the Fox Grandeur 70 mm process. French director Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927) had a final widescreen segment in what Gance called Polyvision. In 1927, Paramount released Old Ironsides with two sequences in a widescreen process called "Magnascope". In 1928, MGM released Trail of '98 in a widescreen process called "Fanthom Screen".

The film features an array of stars who were contracted to William Fox's Fox Film Corporation at that time, including Marjorie White, Will Rogers, Charles Farrell, Janet Gaynor, George Jessel, El Brendel, Ann Pennington, Victor McLaglen, Dixie Lee, Edmund Lowe, and Frank Richardson. It also featured the first appearance of Betty Grable on film, aged 12, as a chorus girl, and Sir Harry Lauder's nephew, Harry Lauder II, a conductor for Fox, who was drafted into the chorus.

Synopsis

Originally titled New Orleans Frolic, the story centers around Margie (played by Marjorie White), a singer on a showboat who goes to make her fortune in New York City, despite being in love with the boat owner's grandson. Although successful in the city, when she hears that the showboat is in financial trouble she calls all the boat's former stars to perform in a show to rescue it.

Actors