Not Every Movie Needs A Monkey: ‘You Gotta Stay Happy’ Reviewed
by Rachel Bellwoar
Having served in the Air Force during WWII, James Stewart would go on to play many a pilot during his postwar film career. For H.C. Potter‘s You Gotta Stay Happy (1948) he’s joined by Joan Fontaine for a romantic comedy that feels like a cross between My Man Godfrey and Only Angels Have Wings. A film that directly addresses the plight faced by many veterans returning home and in need of a job, the answer Marvin (Stewart) has come up with is to start his own air-freight business by buying two of the planes he used to fly and joining forces with a small team that includes his Air Force buddy Eddie Albert (Green Acres).
Diana (Fontaine), on the other hand, has different problems. A rich orphan (something you see more in the movies than in real life, but which puts her in a similar sphere to Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey), Diana isn’t convinced her new fiancé is “the one.” After much pressure by her uncle (Roland Young) to say “I do, however, she finally agrees to walk down the aisle, only to instantly regret the decision. Naturally, when the groom is revealed to be Willard Parker and not Stewart, audiences know this marriage ain’t built to last.
Unlike the screwball comedies that begin with divorce and end with the couple committing to each other again (His Girl Friday), You Gotta Stay Happy demands Diana ditch her husband in order to find the man she should’ve married in the first place. Despite the fact that they’re not supposed to carry passengers, Melvin and Bullets (Albert) are convinced to bend the rules and end up not only transporting an odd assortment of folks but a chimpanzee.
Whatever was in the air in Hollywood at this time that they felt the answer was always to throw a monkey in the mix, Joe the Chimpanzee gets way too much airtime in this movie. I also don’t know whose idea it was to dub the monkey sounds in the movie but choose the most aggressive noises, because they could’ve made Joe seem really friendly, but instead it makes it seem there’s a reason he’s never let out of his cage.
On the plus side, the film begins with an animated title sequence by Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker shorts) that’s adorable and tips viewers off to the fact that Melvin and Diana are endgame, with Stewart shown flying with his head in his hands while Diana is his chipper passenger.
Overall, Stewart is a little more sombre in this film than some of his other romcoms like Made for Each Other, and You Can’t Take It With You. Fontaine gets to be more effervescent in a role that could’ve also been offered to Stewart’s frequent co-star, Jean Arthur. She also has some amazing costumes in this movie credited to Jean Louis (Gilda), including one outfit that keeps getting pushed as a pyjama that would be inappropriate for her to wear out of the house, but that I would personally wear to a fancy dinner.
There are definitely some old-fashioned views about marriage being purported by this movie. The script was adapted for the screen by Karl Tunberg and based on a Saturday Evening Post serial by Robert Carson. Some of the attempts at cuteness fall flat, like a running gag that asks Stewart and Fontaine to do their best foot/shoe acting, but even if You Gotta Stay Happy isn’t an overlooked classic, it’s still a comedy pairing starring two great stars that completists will want to get their hands on.
You Gotta Stay Happy is available on Blu-ray now from Universal and can be purchased from Movie Zyng.
