In every episode of Three's Company, someone tells a fib, it snowballs into bigger problems, and it's all finally resolved in the end. There's the plot of Happiness Ahead, from First National. Rich girl Joan (Jo Hutchinson) doesn't want to marry her assigned boyfriend, so she goes to great lengths to chase blue collar worker "Bob" (Dick Powell) who opens the film by singing "Happiness Ahead". The nasal Allen Jenkins is in here as the butler... we usually see him playing the wisecracking gangsters. Frank McHugh is in here as Tom, for comedy relief. And Jane Darwell (Ma Joad !) is the landlady that clues Bob in to what's going on. Cute little film. Fun little love story. Nothing that will tax the brain... I could have done with less singing numbers, but that's what everyone was doing in those days. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, who was six when the big quake hit san francisco. Quite an interesting tale.

Forget the usual musical Warner Brothers leading ladies of the 1930's who surrounded crooner Dick Powell with tap dances, huge eyes and wisecracks. There's no Ruby, Joan or Ginger around, just the non-singing Josephine Hutchinson playing the most frequently dramatized of screwball heroines: the slumming heroine. Running out on her family's lavish New Year's Eve party, she ends up in a night club where she befriends real people, unaware of who she really is, ultimately finding love with handsome Powell. It's a reverse of Powell's 1933 "Gold Diggers" plot to where he played a struggling songwriter who was really a rich kid from Boston. To connect Powell's part in that with Hutchinson's in this, they both share the same last name (Bradford), and an easy going attitude in spite of being heirs to huge fortunes. A super duper cast of supporting players surround them, including John Halliday and Marjorie Gateson as Hutchinson's socialite parents, Ruth Donnelly as her maid and Allen Jenkins as her chauffeur who run into her on one of her outings, and Mary Treen, Frank McHugh and Dorothy Dare as Powell's pals. "Pop Goes Your Heart" stands out among Powell's songs. This is a gem among forgotten jewels, and is worthy of higher recognition.

This singing romance assigns the main songs to Dick Powell who clocks in and assigns the men at a window washing franchise assisted by Dorothy Dare as a secretary and a less well known 1930's personality Frank McHugh As a window washer. Other familiar names from popular 1930's films currently available on DVD include Jane Darwell as the inquisitive landlady and Allan Jenkins as the chauffeur in love with the ladies maid. Roy Del Ruth splices plot twists from several familiar movie sources including the society girl trying to convince a working class gent she is poor and out of work, a well heeled wet rag using the traditions of society to wed the society girl in an arranged marriage, an understanding father trying to fend off a gorgon mother, hi jinks at a 1930's skating rink, a party in an apartment complex causing physical damage to the rented apartment, faithful house staff covering up the escapades of a family member and songs popping out of nowhere on a restaurant table and on a window ledge. Roy Del Ruth provides snappy dialogue, fascinating photography and editing including camera hi jinks along the exterior of a tall office building and well over an hour and a half of pure cinematic delight. Other than you've seen most of this before in different 1930's movies a perfect film.

Not only did Dick Powell get a hit film from Warner Brothers with Happiness Ahead, but he got a radio theme song as long as he was concentrating on musicals. Breaking tradition somewhat, the film opens with Powell singing the title song Happiness Ahead. For the next several years until Powell was doing the dramatic parts he wanted, the song Happiness Ahead served as his theme song in the same way that Where The Blue Of The Night was Bing Crosby's theme. But the film didn't end here.Happiness Ahead is a typical Depression Era film with either a poor shop girl falling for some young millionaire playboy or in this case the other way around. Josephine Hutchinson plays the young débutante who is bored to tears with her society peers and goes out with maid Ruth Donnelly and chauffeur Allen Jenkins one night. At a night club she meets Dick Powell who charms her with a couple of other songs Beauty Must Be Loved and Pop Goes Your Heart. He's a dispatcher for a window washing company and looking to form a company of his own with pal Frank McHugh. Powell doesn't know about Josephine's big bucks and she wants to keep it that way for the moment, but maybe help him on the sly.Of course this leads to all kinds of complications, business and romantic, but in true Hollywood style it all gets resolved in the end.One role I found especially interesting is that of Russell Hicks who plays a grafting politician who has the necessary contacts to get Powell the jobs he needs. We pay him off first before anything else happens. It was an extremely true and insightful role coming from a film that the workingman's studio of Warner Brothers made.John Halliday also has a good part as Hutchinson's father. He made it the hard way himself and secretly appreciates what Josephine wants in a man. So if you like Dick Powell the singer as well as Dick Powell the hardboiled noir star, Happiness Ahead will make you very happy indeed.