"HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN"
This popular song was written by lyricist Jack Yellen and composer Milton Ager in 1929 for a joyous scene in the MGM motion picture Chasing Rainbows, in which American soldiers celebrate the armistice that concluded World War I. When the composer asked the lyricist to suggest a title for a song to fit the celebratory scene, Yellen uttered the first phrase that popped into his head, "Happy Days Are Here Again."
Although the motion picture was not released until 1930, "Happy Days Are Here Again" was published in sheet music. George Olsen's society orchestra performed it at New York's Hotel Pennsylvania on October 24, 1929, which was Black Thursday, the day of the stock market crash. Noting the discrepancy between his despondent audience and the ebullient sentiments of the song, Olsen passed out the music to his musicians and told his soloist to "sing it for the corpses." The audience roared with laughter, rose, and danced, shouting the title phrase sardonically with the singer.
The song became an ironic anthem for the Great Depression, a risible counterpart to the grim "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" "Perhaps the success of 'Happy Days Are Here Again,'" Michael Lasser observes in American Song Lyricists, 1920–1960 (2002), "derives from its directness and naiveté. The brief lyric has only two words of more than one syllable. Its sentiments are as simple as its words ... Its narrow melodic range, its insistent repetition of the title, and triple rhymes ('here again/clear again/cheer again') zip us through the chorus."
In 1932, then-Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt took "Happy Days Are Here Again" as the theme song for his presidential campaign because its optimistic sentiments and rousing melody resonated with his hopes that the New Deal would bring back prosperity. The party used it again for the campaigns of John F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and other nominees.
The song has become an enduring expression of optimism in the face of dire events, and it has transcended its era to become a familiar standard. In 1963, the American Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers, the licensing organization that controls performing rights for the songs of the twentieth-century's greatest songwriters, named "Happy Days Are Here Again" as one of sixteen songs on its All-Time Hit Parade, alongside classic songs by such songwriters as George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Craig, Warren. Sweet and Lowdown: America's Popular Songwriters. 1978.
Ewen, David. American Songwriters: An H. W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary. 1987.
Lasser, Michael. "Jack Yellen," in American Song Lyricists, 1920–1960, edited by Philip Furia. 2002.
