CRY FOR HAPPY
1961, US
Aka… 嬉し泣き / ‘Crying with Joy’ (Jpn)
Ex… Uma Certa Casa de Chá em Kyoto / ‘A Certain House in Kyoto’ (Brz), Sømænd på sjov / ‘Sailors on Fun Leave’ (Den), Opération Geishas (Fr), Ein Haus in Yokoshimi / ‘A House in Yokoshimi’ (Ger), Tanoshimi, è bello amare / ‘Tanoshimi, It's Good to Love’ (It), La Casa de las Tres Geishas / ‘The House of the Three Geishas’ (Mex), Tanoshimi, o amor é belo / ‘Tanoshimi, Love is Beautiful’ (Por), La Casa de las Tres Geishas / ‘The House of the Three Geishas’ (Sp), Inga vanliga brudar! / ‘No Ordinary Chicks!’ (Swd), Tokyo tatili / ‘Tokyo Holidays’ (Tur)
T: 110m
Production Company: William Goetz Productions (Hw)
Distributors: Columbia Pictures (03/03/61, US), Columbia (10/24/61, Jpn), Screen Gems TV (’67, US tv),
Director: George Marshall; Producer: William Goetz; Screenplay: Irving Brecher; Novel: George Campbell: 1958; Photography: Burnett Guffey [2.35: 1]; Editor: Chester W. Schaeffer; Music: George Duning
Cast: Glenn Ford (CPO Andy Cyphers), Donald O'Connor (Murray Prince), Miiko Taka (Chiyoko), James Shigeta (Suzuki), Miyoshi Umeki (Harue), Nancy Kovack (Camille Cameron), Michi Kobi (Harakichi), Joe Flynn (John McIntosh), Robert Kino (Mr. Endo, producer), Ted Knight (Lt. Glick), Harold Miller (Officer in Movie Theatre), Franklyn Farnum (Movie Theatre patron); [?] (Movie Good Guy ‘Slim’), [?] (Movie Sheriff), [?] (Movie Indian Chief), [?] (Movie Black-clad Gunman), [?] (Movie ‘Gin & Whiskey’ Saloon Bartender), [?] (Movie Cowboy with Fortune Cookie)
Story Synopsis: 1952. During the Korean War, Andy Cyphers, a Navy photographer and his three-man team on leave occupy a Tokyo geisha house, though it is off-limits because four girls are living there. He is then asked to help on a Japanese western that the owner of the geisha house is making and will then screen locally.
Comments: [Filmed in Japan starting June 30, 1960, for three weeks, and later in Hollywood]
CRY FOR HAPPY would show Hollywood a world of what would soon come: foreign westerns. At the time THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (10/60, US, which the American press made fun of it for being a remake of the 1954 “The Seven Samurai”, 七人の侍, Japan, when first announced in 1958) and YOJIMBO (04/61, Japan, and 09/62, US), with its gun toting Japanese villain. Both had barely been seen and would have had no impact on ‘Cry for Happy”.
Scripter Irving Brecher had co-written two of the Marx Bros. films, “At the Circus” (1940, US) and “Go West” (1940, US), with Buster Keaton.
Director George Marshall had first worked with Glenn Ford in the western “The Sheepman” (1958, M.G.M.), and would later work with him again in the episode of “Cade's County: 20: Ragged Edge”, US, CBS/20th Century Fox Television).
Novelist George Campbell only worked on two screenplays, both for Columbia, and they were done twenty years apart!
Canadian-born
American actor Glenn Ford made CRY FOR HAPPY between M.G.M.’s “Cimarron” (1960,
US) and UA’s “Pocketful of Miracles” (12/61, US). This was Ford’s second of
three comedies set in Japan/Pacific, the first being “The Teahouse of the
August Moon” (1956, US), with Marlon Brando playing a goofy Asian! And “Don't
Go Near the Water” (1957, US, both M.G.M), with Gia Scala, a Brit, of Sicilian
parentage. Mr. Ford and the other American actors shot all their scenes
Stateside. At the time Ford had just been in a string of westerns, “3:10 to
Yuma” and “The Cowboy” (both 1957, for Columbia), “The Sheepman” (1958, US) and
“Cimarron” (1960, both for M.G.M.), and knew the terrain. Following CRY FOR
HAPPY Marshall & Ford would make another comedy western “Advance to the
Rear” (1964, US, M.G.M.), before an episode of “Cade’s County: 20: Ragged Edge”
(03/05/72, US).
So, when CRY FOR HAPPY does send up the ‘Japanese’ appetite for westerns, the American characters watching “The Rice Rustlers of Yokohama Gulch” are shown to be first amused, and then pained and embarrassed, while the locals were laffing. Meanwhile the film’s harried Japanese producer is pulling his hair out at the response, exclaiming, “This very serious picture!”, in broken English. Ford then wishes he never had helped him make the film, by lending Navy camera equipment to him, in the first place.
The Japanese in fact had been making ‘westerns’ since the late fifties. Mostly they were modern-day “Wataridori" guitar and rifle slinging motorcycle adventures set in rural Japan that starred Jô Shishido. Perhaps because of CRY FOR HAPPY filming nearby the local producers took their work more seriously and made such films as MY HOME IS THE GREAT WEST, aka 俺の故郷は大西部 / Ore no kokyô wa western (12/27/1960), QUICK DRAW JOE, aka 早射ち野郎 / Hayauchi yarô (04/61, Japan), RED WILDERNESS, aka 赤い荒野 / ‘Crimson Plains’ (07/61, Japan), and JOE THE RAMBLER, aka ノサップの銃 / Nosappu no jô / ‘Seven Challengers’ (09/61, Japan), all starring Shishido, sans motorcycle. The more authentic NO ROOM IN MEXICO, aka メキシコ無宿 / Mekishiko mushuku, aka (62, Japan) set in Mexico, soon followed. THE BODYGUARD BUSINESS, aka 用心棒稼業 / Yôjinbo kagyô / ‘Yojimbo’s Earns’ (04/62, Japan) again starred Shishido, while DRIFTING AVENGER, 荒野の渡世人 / Koya no toseinin (06/68), also came along. Even Toshirô Mifune travelled to Mexico to star in an actual Mexican period film THE IMPORTANT MAN, aka Ánimas Trujano (08/61, Venice Film Festival, 11/61, Mexico and 12/61, Japan), while the others were being made. The only thing CRY FOR HAPPY got wrong was having the ‘craze’ happen ten years too soon!
Ms. Miyoshi Umeki only made five American films. CRY FOR HAPPY’s producer William Goetz had cast her first in “Sayonara” (1957), where she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She was the first Asian performer to be thus honoured. Ms. Umeki later appeared in a pair of US TV westerns: “Rawhide: Incident of the Geisha” (12/19/63, US, CBS/Paramount), as a brief love interest for ‘Hey Soo’ / Jesus, played by Hawaiian Robert Cabal [Harold Christopher Ching], and “The Virginian: Smile of a Dragon” (02/26/64, US, NBC/Universal). While her “Flower Drum Song” (11/61, US), and CRY FOR HAPPY Hawaiian born co-star James Shigeta later did both the Italo oddity DEATH WALKS IN LAREDO (1967) with its four-barrelled action, and a couple of “Kung-Fu” The Series” (1975, US) stanzas. There David Carradine played the lead, having beat out Bruce Lee, an actual Chinese American for the role. Carradine played it in yellow face makeup.
One of the funnier scenes in CRY FOR HAPPY’s western is when the different characters enter and leave the saloon and must constantly remember their footwear, or lack of it, and go back-’n’-forth. It all reminds one of the later Filipino comedy ARIZONA KID (1970).
Strange, but
understandably Columbia downplayed the ‘western’ angle by not issuing any
material showing it. A decade later they would change their tune and release
the Italian/HK made spaghetti/kung-fu mashup THE STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER
(1974), that starred Lee Van Cleef & Lo Lieh.
[by Michael Ferguson]
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