Happiness

Over the weekend, I posted the video of a wildly happy puppy, and made reference to Charles Schultz's famous line from Peanuts, "Happiness is a warm puppy."  I thought things shouldn't be left there, and that it was only appropriate to follow-up on that and play the finale to the musical, You're a Good Man, Charlie Man, which is the song...of course, "Happiness."

It's possible, if not likely that many people know this lovely song by Clark Gesner.  But what's equally likely is that many don't know the context of the number within the show.  It's not really much of a integrated plot song, so  in fairness context isn't all that critical, however the set-up that leads into the song and which culminates the evening adds a richness to a song that's so endearing even on its own.

The show onstage, which opened in 1967, was originally done with adults playing all the children roles (as well as Snoopy), and ran for almost four years, 1,597 performances.  It was also performed this way on a Hallmark Hall of Fame production in 1973.  Then, someone had the brilliant idea to do the musical (albeit in an edited down form) as an animated TV production with the original cartoon characters themselves.  This comes from that 1985 show.

Somehow I always have the image that this is the ring-tone on Valerie Alexeander's phone, or that you need to be able to sing the song to get passed into the secret rooms of her Speak Happiness website.  But then, this isn't about speaking Happiness, it's about singing it...