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 News
    What to WatchLatest TrailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsABFFPride MonthOutfest OutfrontsSTARmeter AwardsAwards 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
Sign In
New Customer? Create account
  • 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
  • Trivia
IMDbPro

The Happy Ending

  • 1969
  • R
  • 1h 57m
IMDb RATING
6.3/10
1.2K
YOUR RATING
The Happy Ending (1969)
A middle-aged woman walks out on her husband and family in an desperate attempt to find herself.
Play trailer2:58
1 Video
11 Photos
Drama

A middle-aged woman walks out on her husband and family in an desperate attempt to find herself.A middle-aged woman walks out on her husband and family in an desperate attempt to find herself.A middle-aged woman walks out on her husband and family in an desperate attempt to find herself.

  • Director
    • Richard Brooks
  • Writer
    • Richard Brooks
  • Stars
    • Jean Simmons
    • John Forsythe
    • Shirley Jones
  • See production, box office & company info
  • IMDb RATING
    6.3/10
    1.2K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Richard Brooks
    • Writer
      • Richard Brooks
    • Stars
      • Jean Simmons
      • John Forsythe
      • Shirley Jones
    • 25User reviews
    • 15Critic reviews
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 2 Oscars
      • 5 nominations total

    Videos1

    Trailer
    Trailer 2:58
    Watch Trailer

    Photos11

    The Happy Ending (1969)
    Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending (1969)
    Lloyd Bridges and Shirley Jones in The Happy Ending (1969)
    Lloyd Bridges and Shirley Jones in The Happy Ending (1969)
    Jean Simmons and Richard Brooks in The Happy Ending (1969)
    John Forsythe and Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending (1969)
    John Forsythe and Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending (1969)
    The Happy Ending (1969)
    John Forsythe and Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending (1969)
    The Happy Ending (1969)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Jean Simmons
    Jean Simmons
    • Mary Wilson
    John Forsythe
    John Forsythe
    • Fred Wilson
    Shirley Jones
    Shirley Jones
    • Flo Harrigan
    Lloyd Bridges
    Lloyd Bridges
    • Sam
    Teresa Wright
    Teresa Wright
    • Mrs. Spencer
    Dick Shawn
    Dick Shawn
    • Harry Bricker
    Nanette Fabray
    Nanette Fabray
    • Agnes
    Bobby Darin
    Bobby Darin
    • Franco
    • (as Robert Darin)
    Tina Louise
    Tina Louise
    • Helen Bricker
    Kathy Fields
    • Marge Wilson
    Karen Steele
    Karen Steele
    • Divorcee
    Gail Hensley
    • Betty
    Eve Brent
    Eve Brent
    • Ethel
    William O'Connell
    William O'Connell
    • Minister
    • (as Wm. O'Connell)
    Barry Cahill
    Barry Cahill
    • Handsome Man
    Miriam Blake
    • Cindy
    Ingrid Bergman
    Ingrid Bergman
    • Self - Actress in 'Casablanca'
    • (archive footage)
    • (uncredited)
    Humphrey Bogart
    Humphrey Bogart
    • Self - actor in 'Casablanca'
    • (archive footage)
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Richard Brooks
    • Writer
      • Richard Brooks
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    More like this

    $
    6.3
    $
    Fourteen Hours
    7.1
    Fourteen Hours
    A Rage to Live
    6.2
    A Rage to Live
    Fate Is the Hunter
    6.8
    Fate Is the Hunter
    Three Violent People
    6.3
    Three Violent People
    Advise & Consent
    7.7
    Advise & Consent
    The Battle of Neretva
    7.0
    The Battle of Neretva
    The Furies
    7.3
    The Furies
    King of the Khyber Rifles
    6.3
    King of the Khyber Rifles
    The Bitter Tea of General Yen
    6.9
    The Bitter Tea of General Yen
    Rain
    6.9
    Rain
    The Best of Enemies
    6.7
    The Best of Enemies

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Teresa Wright was just 11 years older than Jean Simmons, who was playing her daughter.
    • Goofs
      During the opening-credit sequence, many late-model 1960's cars are seen in flashback scenes supposedly set 15 years earlier.
    • Quotes

      [last lines]

      Mary Wilson: If... if right now we were not married, if you were free, would you marry me again ?

    • Alternate versions
      The film was originally submitted to the MPAA for an R rating. After United Artists found Richard Brooks' intended cut too depressing, the studio forced to cut the film into a "moviegoer friendly" cut that was rated M. Brooks' R-rated cut was released in other countries as intended but was not released in the United States until 2016.
    • Connections
      Features Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931)
    • Soundtracks
      What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?
      Music by Michel Legrand

      Lyrics by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman

      Sung by Michael Dees

    User reviews25

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    6/10
    The difficult sixties
    Well, The Happy Ending is a textbook example of a late sixties movie by an established director. In as much as it is well intended, partly even "hip" but still missed its audience by a mile. How is that? The late sixties were a bad time for Hollywood filmmakers and producers. The box office numbers dropped and the pressure to have a hit increased. The well-known directors of the thirties, forties and fifties more and more lost contact with the moviegoers. One can almost say that Hollywood made films for a past generation. Looking at the big winners and losers tells you that a new style was in demand. This of course happened world wide.

    It is interesting to notice that many of the best directors still had a hit in the early sixties but finished with a big flop in the end of the same decade! The bigger the director, the greater the downfall, I'm tempted to say.

    And the failure was not only that not enough people went to see the films. In most cases the public was right and the film was just not good. The producers put pressure on the filmmakers to employ more modern stories and story telling devices and fresh faces. The established directors were not used to this cold wind blowing into their faces, and had little ideas what the public wanted to have changed. Everyone tried something but no one really hit the nail on the head. Let's have a look at some of them. Hitchcock started the sixties with Psycho and ended with Topaz. Billy Wilder started with The Apartment and ended the decade with The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Otto Preminger had a big hit with Exodus in 1960 but his last film in the sixties, Skidoo, did so badly with critics and public that few people ever saw it. Frank Capra realized the changes and stopped film-making in 1961.

    Fred Zinnemann began the sixties with The Sundowners, had a big Success with A Man of all Seasons, but couldn't get the funding for another project until The Day of the Jackal (1973) since box office in general was going down and producers were scared. Most of the named directors managed to get a foot on the ground again in the seventies and end their career with a respectable picture.

    Some managed to have hits till to the middle of the sixties like Robert Wise with Sound of Music, but even that did not help to prevent him from having a bomb with Star!. Richard Brooks had a similar experience with In Cold Blood, that was followed by The Happy Ending. What was going on?

    I think the fact that the general interest of the audience changed dramatically throughout the sixties almost completely eluded the Hollywood producers and filmmakers. And when they finally notices and tried to join the new wave it turned out that they have been too old to understand what was going on or that they thought it is enough to get some new faces into their films to appeal to a young and critical audience. Howard Hawks for example tried to jump on the wagon by simply recycling one of his earliest successes The Crowd Roars with new and unknown (and in-experienced) actors but did basically the same thing in Red Line 7000. It was a terrible mistake.

    The dinosaur directors only managed to make money by concentrating again on what they did best and Hawks did El Dorado and had a decent swan song with Rio Lobo. Hitchcock tried to join in on the big business with spy movies that made so much money in the form of James Bond or his little brother Harry Palmer. Hitch tried it with Torn Curtain and with Topaz. To be on the safe side he even took a bestseller from Leon Uris (Topaz). The stories as they were told were mainly old fashioned. He had same new ideas in them but the general approach was like the espionage films he did in the thirties. He got out of this loop by going back to the kind of thrillers he was famous for and returned to the screen with Frenzy and had a good final movie with The Family Plot.

    The studio system that already started to die with the advent of TV collapsed for good. New directors like Bogdanovich, Scorsese, Coppola and so on began to work for the big studios only after they started for small budget producers, mainly Roger Corman. Others like Dennis Hopper or John Cassavetes had long worked as an actor before being able to direct.

    But what exactly is wrong with The Happy Ending? The story line is about a couple after they married. It tries to have a realistic look about problems arising from delusions almost everyone has about "happy ends". Jean Simmons still looks very young and attractive and John Forsythe does his very best. For one thing the constant music playing that lies like a veil over every scene that is really annoying. I'm a big fan of Michel Legrand but this film suffers from the soundtrack he wrote. (Two for the Road is another film that is, theme and music, very similar to The Happy Ending. This time Henry Mancini's music drowns every serious feeling.)

    The story drags on and on, we see many episodes that amount to very little. The dialog is dull and everyone moves in upper class levels. The worst thing about The Happy Ending is that everything and everyone seems so boring. At the end you do not care what Jean Simmons decides. You are only glad the movie is over.
    helpful•22
    9
    • slabihoud
    • Mar 11, 2009

    Top picks

    Sign in to rate and Watchlist for personalized recommendations
    Sign in

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • May 22, 1970 (Ireland)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Happy-End für eine Ehe
    • Filming locations
      • City Park, Downtown, Colfax Avenue, Denver, Colorado, USA
    • Production company
      • Pax Enterprises
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 57 minutes
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.35 : 1

    Related news

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    The Happy Ending (1969)
    Top Gap
    By what name was The Happy Ending (1969) officially released in India in English?
    Answer
    • See more gaps
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    Sign in for more accessSign 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
    • Your Ads Privacy Choices
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2023 by IMDb.com, Inc.