The Happiest Millionaire and his Daughter

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Happiest Millionaire.¹ As a child, I found the music enchanting. The butler, John Lawless (Tommy Steele), was an engaging narrator who could be encouraged to break into dance at the drop of a hat. It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered that the movie was based on a real family and a book written by the heroine of the movie, Cordelia Drexel Biddle (Lesley Ann Warren), My Philadelphia Father.²

When looking to the book to see how well Disney Studios honored the source material, the first thing I noted was the different title. This title was also referenced in the play retelling of the story by the same title Disney had used, The Happiest Millionaire. One program I found, please see figure 2, lists Kyle Crichton as the creator suggested by the book, “MY PHILADELPHIA FATHER” By Cordelia Drexel Biddle and Mr. Crichton. Another thing I noted was that Kyle Crichton was listed as a collaborator on the book. On the cover of the 1955 hardback edition of the book is printed, “A rollicking biography of Colonel A.J. Drexel Biddle by Cordelia Drexel Biddle as told to Kyle Crichton.” Kyle Crichton is also listed as doing the play adaptation, and he as well as Cordelia Drexel Biddle are listed as writers for the film. This encouraged me that there would be honesty and continuity between editions. I should note that I have not read the play version of The Happiest Millionaire and it is only mentioned to show the continuity of Kyle Crichton’s influence in the many versions that exist. Of course, the book went into greater depth than the movie could hope to. I could tell that Cordelia Drexel Biddle selected aspects of her father’s life that she felt showed who he was at his core.

Which leads to the greatest difference between the book and the movie that exists (besides the music). The book is a love letter from a daughter to her father after he was deceased. It is a memorial and a beautiful thing to read. The movie focused on Cordelia Drexel Biddle the younger (she is named after her mother and often referred to as Cordy in both the book and the movie), and her falling in love with Angier Buchanan Duke (John Davidson).  Some of the scenes put into the movie have been moved to different times for the continuity of the movie. For instance, the incident where a new maid opened all the windows in the conservatory during a Philadelphia winter, accidentally freezing all of the alligators, actually happened when Cordelia was a child and could be sent to bed (Cordelia Drexel Biddle, My Philadelphia Father, 109-113). In the movie, it is shown after Cordy and Angier have been dating for a while, on the night that Cordy comes home to inform her family of her engagement (The Happiest Millionaire, 1:20:45 to 1:37:18). Some of the other standout points would be that while John Lawless is a lifelong retainer of the family; he actually started when the children were quite young.

“We always say in our family – more in truth than jest – that we were raised by John Lawless, our coachman, chauffeur, and general factotum. Forty years later, John is still working for our uncle Livingston, but we knew him first as a rosy-cheeked lad fresh from County Tyrone, with a brogue that could be cut and a fund of common sense that kept us in line and got him out of many a scrape with Father.” (Cordelia Drexel Biddle, My Philadelphia Father, 17)

In the movie, which starts with Tommy Steele’s beautiful singing of “Fortuosity”³ by the Sherman Brothers, John is just being hired and Cordy is approximately 16 years old. One of the hardest things for me to swallow is Disney’s choice to focus on the love story between Cordy and Angier. The book disillusioned me greatly by showing the truth. Angier was 31 years old when he married a seventeen-year-old Cordy. They started dating when she was fifteen, were engaged shortly after (with her returning home engaged one month before her sixteenth birthday), and married a little over a year later. In addition to these harsh truths, the book told me that after having two sons they divorced in 1921 a short two years before he was in a tragic boating accident and died (Cordelia Drexel Biddle, My Philadelphia Father, 124-126, 199-200). One thing I did find delightful is that Mr. Biddle evidently did many fad diets and one of them was indeed the chocolate cake diet described in the movie! (Cordelia Drexel Biddle, My Philadelphia Father, 246-248)

It would be a grave disservice to part of the reason I love this movie to not mention the musical score. From “Fortuosity”, to “Bye-Yum Pum Pum”⁴ (a hilarious song about flirting sung by Lesley Ann Warren and her roommate Rosemary played by Joyce Bulifant), to “Let’s Have a Drink on it”⁵ (sung by John Davidson and Tommy Steele), the Sherman Brothers did fantastic work on this soundtrack! As a young girl, I romanticized being able to go away to finishing school and have a brief respite away from my family. And as a tomboy who could more easily be found lifting weights and playing basketball with the guys then at a sleepover learning make-up techniques and flirting, “Valentine Candy”⁶ sung by Lesley Ann Warren had me soul searching if I was the reason I didn’t get asked out on dates. The songs stick in your head and have me humming along days after I have watched the movie. “Are We Dancing,”⁷ sung by John Davidson and Lesley Ann Warren, rivals Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Ten Minutes Ago”⁸ in my mind (my favorite version sung by Stuart Damon and Lesley Ann Warren)!

No matter which version of this amazing story you choose to partake in, you will see a unique family that supports each other in all their endeavors. You will see a young girl given the same opportunities as a boy (no small feat given the era), and the freedom to be herself. This movies music pulls me back for a rewatch regularly. If nothing else it will give you a fun measuring stick for “at least my family wasn’t that crazy.” 

1. Crichton, Kyle, Cordelia Drexel Biddle, and AJ Carothers. The Happiest Millionaire. DVD. USA: Walt Disney Studios, 1967. ↩︎
2. Biddle, Cordelia Drexel, and Kyle Crichton. My Philadelphia father. Garden City, NY: Country Life Press, 1955. ↩︎
3. Tommy Steele, “Fortuosity,” Track 2 on The Happiest Millionaire, Buena Vista Records, 1967, Vinyl. ↩︎
4. Lesley Ann Warren and Joyce Bulifant, “Bye-Yum Pum Pum,” Track 8 on The Happiest Millionaire, Buena Vista Records, 1967, Vinyl. ↩︎
5. John Davidson and Tommy Steele, “Let’s Have a Drink on it,” Track 14 on The Happiest Millionaire, Buena Vista Records, 1967, Vinyl. ↩︎
6. Lesley Ann Warren, “Valentine Candy,” Track 5 on The Happiest Millionaire, Buena Vista Records, 1967, Vinyl. ↩︎
7. John Davidson and Lesley Ann Warren, “Are We Dancing,” Track 9 on The Happiest Millionaire, Buena Vista Records, 1967, Vinyl. ↩︎
8. Stuart Damon and Lesley Ann Warren, “10 Minutes Ago,” Track 8 on Cinderella (1965 Television Cast Recording), Sony Music Entertainment, 1965, Vinyl ↩︎