Release CalendarTop 250 MoviesMost Popular MoviesBrowse Movies by GenreTop Box OfficeShowtimes & TicketsMovie NewsIndia Movie Spotlight
    What's on TV & StreamingTop 250 TV ShowsMost Popular TV ShowsBrowse TV Shows by GenreTV NewsIndia TV Spotlight
    What to WatchLatest TrailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsBest Picture WinnersBest Picture WinnersEmmysSTARmeter AwardsSan Diego Comic-ConNew York Comic-ConSundance Film FestivalToronto Int'l Film FestivalAwards CentralFestival CentralAll Events
    Born TodayMost Popular CelebsMost Popular CelebsCelebrity News
    Help CenterContributor ZonePolls
For Industry Professionals
  • All
  • Titles
  • TV Episodes
  • Celebs
  • Companies
  • Keywords
  • Advanced Search
Watchlist
Sign In
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
IMDbPro

Happy Landing

  • 19381938
  • ApprovedApproved
  • 1h 42m
IMDb RATING
6.3/10
179
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
265,155
63,184
Don Ameche, Cesar Romero, and Sonja Henie in Happy Landing (1938)
ComedyMusicRomance
Bandleader (Romero and manager (Ameche) discover skater (Henie) in Norway. They become rivals as she returns with them to America.Bandleader (Romero and manager (Ameche) discover skater (Henie) in Norway. They become rivals as she returns with them to America.Bandleader (Romero and manager (Ameche) discover skater (Henie) in Norway. They become rivals as she returns with them to America.
IMDb RATING
6.3/10
179
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
265,155
63,184
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Director
      • Roy Del Ruth
    • Writers
      • Milton Sperling(story)
      • Boris Ingster(story)
    • Stars
      • Sonja Henie
      • Don Ameche
      • Jean Hersholt
    Top credits
    • Director
      • Roy Del Ruth
    • Writers
      • Milton Sperling(story)
      • Boris Ingster(story)
    • Stars
      • Sonja Henie
      • Don Ameche
      • Jean Hersholt
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 8User reviews
    • 7Critic reviews
  • See production, box office & company info
  • Photos8

    Ethel Merman, HAPPY LANDING, 20-th Century Fox, 1935, **I.V.
    Don Ameche, Cesar Romero, Sonja Henie, and Ethel Merman in Happy Landing (1938)
    Don Ameche and Sonja Henie in Happy Landing (1938)
    Don Ameche and Cesar Romero in Happy Landing (1938)
    Don Ameche, Cesar Romero, and Ethel Merman in Happy Landing (1938)
    Don Ameche, Cesar Romero, Sonja Henie, and Ethel Merman in Happy Landing (1938)
    Don Ameche and Sonja Henie in Happy Landing (1938)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Sonja Henie
    Sonja Henie
    • Trudy Ericksen
    Don Ameche
    Don Ameche
    • Jimmy Hall
    Jean Hersholt
    Jean Hersholt
    • Herr Lars Ericksen
    Ethel Merman
    Ethel Merman
    • Flo Kelly
    Cesar Romero
    Cesar Romero
    • Duke Sargent
    Billy Gilbert
    Billy Gilbert
    • Counter Man
    Raymond Scott
    • Leader of Quintet
    • (as Raymond Scott Quintet)
    Wally Vernon
    Wally Vernon
    • Al Mahoney
    Leah Ray
    Leah Ray
    • Specialty Singer
    Steve Condos
    • Specialty Number
    • (as Condos Brothers)
    Nick Condos
    • Specialty Number
    • (as Condos Brothers)
    El Brendel
    El Brendel
    • Yonnie
    Marcelle Corday
    Marcelle Corday
    • Gypsy
    Joseph Crehan
    Joseph Crehan
    • Agent
    Eddie Conrad
    Eddie Conrad
    • Waiter
    Ben Welden
    Ben Welden
    • Manager Skating Rink
    • (as Ben Weldon)
    Louis Adlon
    Louis Adlon
    • Olaf
    • (uncredited)
    Herbert Ashley
    • Guard
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Roy Del Ruth
    • Writers
      • Milton Sperling(story) (screenplay)
      • Boris Ingster(story) (screenplay)
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    More like this

    Carefree
    7.0
    Carefree
    A Gentleman at Heart
    6.6
    A Gentleman at Heart
    When Ladies Meet
    6.5
    When Ladies Meet
    Bride for Sale
    6.3
    Bride for Sale
    Sidewalks of London
    7.0
    Sidewalks of London
    H.M. Pulham, Esq.
    6.9
    H.M. Pulham, Esq.
    Midnight
    7.9
    Midnight
    Fashions of 1934
    6.6
    Fashions of 1934
    His Brother's Wife
    5.7
    His Brother's Wife
    Smilin' Through
    6.9
    Smilin' Through
    Sadie McKee
    6.8
    Sadie McKee
    You Can't Have Everything
    6.4
    You Can't Have Everything

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Connections
      Featured in Twentieth Century Fox: The First 50 Years (1997)
    • Soundtracks
      Hot and Happy
      Written by Samuel Pokrass and Jack Yellen

      Sung by Ethel Merman

      also played for the skating finale

    User reviews8

    Review
    Top review
    7/10
    Transatlantic Skating-Go-Round
    HAPPY LANDING (20th Century-Fox, 1938), directed by Roy Del Ruth, is an agreeable musical with an impressive cast headed by Olympic ice skating champion, Sonja Henie, in her third and longest (103 minutes) film in her career. It reunites her with ONE IN A MILLION (1936) co-stars, Don Ameche and Jean Hersholt, as well as pairing her for the first time opposite Cesar Romero. Romero, an icon of 20th-Fox, appears more on the level as Henie's co-star than Ameche, at least until later on where the actors team up equally as rivals of her affection.

    Plot summary: Benjamin Sargent (Cesar Romero), better known as "Duke," is scheduled to pilot his plane from New York to Paris, accompanied by Jimmy Hall (Don Ameche), his manager and best friend. A band-leader and songwriter by profession, Duke carries on a romance with Flo Kelly (Ethel Merman), a gold digging vocalist whose suspicious nature has her capturing his every word on a phonograph record for blackmail purposes. After Duke and Jimmy fly over the Atlantic, their plane makes a forced landing in Nordenscnolde, a Norwegian village where they meet up with an ice skater named Trudy Erickson (Sonja Henie). Being the only one of four daughters to not be married, Herr Erickson (Jean Hersholt) expects Trudy to marry Olaf (Louis Aldon, Jr.), a man she doesn't love. Trudy becomes immediately charmed with the arrival of a tall, dark handsome stranger in the manner of Duke, as told to her by a gypsy fortune teller (Marcelle Corday). When Jimmy learns of Trudy's interested in Duke as her future husband, especially after dancing with her twice, he takes Duke back to his airplane where they fly out to their destination in Paris. Trudy, on the other hand, comes to New York after Duke's return, only to learn through Jimmy that he's nothing but a cad. With no other place to go, Trudy, with Jimmy's help, turns her into an ice skating attraction at Madison Square Garden. By the time she's beginning to show interest in Jimmy, Duke comes back into her life only to complicate matters.

    HAPPY LANDING plays like a travelogue with surroundings from New York to Norway to Paris to Florida (Miami) and finally New York again. During this venture, the bright but forgettable score by Jack Yellen and Samuel Pokrass consist of: "You Are the Words to the Music in My Heart" (a slow song cut from final print, existing only with Ethel Merman's rendition through its brief conclusion); "Skating Number" (performed by Sonja Henie); "A Gypsy Told Me" (sung by Leah Ray); "Hot and Happy" (sung by Ethel Merman); "The War Dance of the Wooden Indian" (by Raymond Scott, tap dance performance by The Condos Brothers); "Yonny and the Oompah" (by Walter Bullock and Harold Spina/sung by El Brendel/skated by Henie); Skating Montage: "One in a Million," "We're Back in Circulation Again," "My Secret Love Affair" and Johann Strauss's "Tales of the Vienna Woods"; "A Gypsy Told Me" (sung by Don Ameche); "You Appeal to Me" (sung by Ethel Merman); Skating sequence: "You Appeal to Me," "A Gypsy Told Me" and "Hot and Happy" (all performed by Henie); and "Hot and Happy" (finale). Having two female vocalists in the cast, Leah Ray, who gives "A Gypsy Told Me" a nice rendition, Merman, best suited for belting out great Irving Berlin tunes, fails to make these new songs live up to such hits as "Blue Skies" or "Heat Wave." "You Appeal to Me" does have clever lyrics with dated references to Al Jolson, Greta Garbo, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Edgar Bergen, but in spite of her delivery, song overall works out better as an instrumental ice skating number than a Merman solo.

    Tunes aside, plot makes way for comedy bits by character types as Wally Vernon (who can easily be confused with Sid Silvers) as Al Mahoney, the third member of Duke's troupe who at one point performs a striptease to entertain reporters (one of them being Lon Chaney Jr.) while awaiting for an interview at the airport; Billy Gilbert playing the counterman in his amusing bit of confusion with "Pot roast vs. hamburger supreme" routine with Ameche; and finally El Brendel appearing briefly as a Central Park music conductor. 

    There's no question of HAPPY LANDING's overall success, through today seen as hampered by slow pacing in spots and overlong specialty acts. Highlights rank those being the well staged ice skating numbers along with Heinie's personality more than her acting ability. Technicolor would have been a big asset for this production. Distributed on home video in the 1990s about the same time American Movie Classics used to show it, HAPPY LANDING (not to be confused with the Don Ameche 1943 drama, HAPPY LAND), turns up occasionally on the "hot and happy" Fox Movie Channel. (*** cheap skates)
    helpful•2
    1
    • lugonian
    • Aug 29, 2009

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • January 23, 1938 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Bread, Butter and Rhythm
    • Filming locations
      • 20th Century Fox Studios - 10201 Pico Blvd., Century City, Los Angeles, California, USA
    • Production company
      • Twentieth Century Fox
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 42 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

    Related news

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    Don Ameche, Cesar Romero, and Sonja Henie in Happy Landing (1938)
    Top Gap
    What is the Spanish language plot outline for Happy Landing (1938)?
    Answer
    • See more gaps
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    View list
    List
    The Best Movies and Shows to Watch in August
    See the full list
    View list
    List
    Fall TV Guide: The Best Shows Coming This Year
    See the full list
    View image
    Photos
    Double Take: Celebrity Twins
    See the full list

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Back to top
    Get the IMDb App
    Sign in for more access
    Sign in for more access
    • Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • IMDb Developer
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Interest-Based Ads
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2022 by IMDb.com, Inc.