The original version of this video, which was played in Visitor's Centers from about 1964. So to answer this question, you'd have to be kind of on the 60's++ age range.

There is an article about it in today's Provo "Daily Herald" and the guy who was the featured star in the first one, Bryce Chamberlain. I ran into the article as I was looking for an obituary in the DH for a very distant relative of my ex-wife. Can you tell I have no life?

Anyway, I remember going to the SL Temple visitors center many times, either with Mutual or Priesthood classes etc and my mother especially. I loved it at first, but as I got older, my interest in it had worn out. I looked it up on YouTube tonight and there's several versions which don't hold up.

I remem, it brought tears at first, I wanted to use it on my mish, but it wasn't in the lesson plan....

strictly mush now, (I forget what the current name is) Hype, tear-jerker, not much real substance. Plays to emotions, not to thinking or logic or reasoning, aren't they all that way?


eta: is this what we now call 'palp' or is it boilerplate?
Please.Send.Help.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2019 03:52PM by GNPE.

I actually have fond memories of the original Mans Search for happiness. When my parents were investigating the church the missionaries brought the film and projector to our house and I remember watching it pretty regularly. As a young kid I thought the old man walking up into heaven was pretty cool. I was too young to understand a lot about the church but I was able to wrap my head around the message of Mans Search - so it was always sort of a touchstone for me during my formative years.

I got to use it a few times on my mission and even though it was obviously dated I still thought it was probably the best missionary tool at my disposal.

I hated the remake.

When I was around 9-12 I would spend the summer months in SLC with my father. That is to say, I would sleep in his house at night and during the day, he just couldn't be bothered with me, so I would walk to temple square. He lived on 2nd South, so it wasn't a huge walk. I'd tour each and every display - kind of like circuit training - and in doing so, would watch "Man's Search for Happiness" in the North Visitor's Center. Must have watched it a hundred times.

I, too, got curious about it a few weeks ago and watched in on YouTube. I have no need to see the remake, it's a moronic story but I like the way they told it in the 1964 version. I found it calming.

World crumbling around you?
Want to live in a "safe" (i.e. all white) environment?
Then come join us in the wonderful world of Mormonism!

Yes. Saw it many times at the visitors center. My parents loved to take us there whenever we went down to SLC. If I remember right it was one of the films we used to show on the projector I had to lug around on the mission.

I found a copy on line about five years ago and watched it. OMG. what a difference a few decades make. Hard to believe that film once left me in awe and reverence.

I was one of the first sister companionships to be in a visitors center. This was the one in Mesa AZ. We ran the films when we weren't greeting people. The top 3 films people wanted to see were: Johnny Lingo(gag), Cipher in the Snow (tissue fest), and Man's Search for Happiness. It was so dated and I wondered why people loved it so much. We were also allowed to show it when we taught. I remember falling asleep during the film when were teaching and my companion had to nudge me to wake me. The family thought it was funny and later were baptized. Maybe falling asleep helped.

Yes, fondly remember this film. I, too , liked it a lot at the time. Now I mostly think that it was a rip off of Victor Frankel's "Man's Search for Meaning".
It's a good example of how you can use the media arts to sway the emotions of people.
Oh, by the way, saw the Mr. Rogers movie yesterday. Really liked it.

At least Fred had some substance about him, even if it was directed at 5 year-olds; Oh, I know some adults who might have benefited, but apparently it went over their heads...

about the little old woman who kept walking out to her mailbox to get mail, and there was never anything in it. (I think it might have been called "The Mailbox."

I thought that was one of the best shorts I'd ever seen, and I still might think so were I to see it again.

I haven't watched it for 30 years. It was different then I remembered, but still good. A little sacchrine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1srLpGaXsBU

I had never seen it but watch it~~~~~creepy

The movie featured what were supposedly life's three big questions (which only Mormonism could answer, of course):

Where did I come from?
Why am I here?
Where will I go when I die?

Meanwhile, there's a bakery/cafe in Mimbres, New Mexico, run by a Mennonite family. The place seems to have a couple of names: Living Harvest Bakery, and The Three Questions Coffee Shop. A border along the edge of the floor is made up of the same three questions as the one in Man's Search for Happiness. The mystery (to me) is whether the place used to be owned by Mormons (there's an LDS chapel just down the road) or whether Mennonites also have the questions as part of their culture. If the latter, who appropriated it from whom?

I really liked the remake in the 80s. Especially the part where Richard L Evans talk about "base desires"... Now I wonder what that's code for? Maybe Packer wrote the script so I think I know what he was thinking about, hmmmm....

I do. It was 1983, with had mid-night blue Monte Carlo, auto sun rood included. I was at community picnic. I was skipping rocks down by the railroad tracks nearby. Then Robin came down there where I was at. She had red lip stick and mini skirt, and me, a BBQ stain on my white T-shirt. Worked so hard for that first kiss. A guy don't forget happiness like that.

Oh you mean the movie, yeah I showed that movie to investigators on my mission (the old version). We had a small movie projected in our back pack, the movie was on a roll, with accompanying sound on an cassette player. The favorite part was at the end when the grandma dies, rises to the clouds in white to me meet her man, and I guess all of her other angel wives. Mo Tab singing in the back ground. I remember one investigator saying, as she was crying, "That's just the way I imagined it would happen." Mmmk. Sucker.

Is that the one where everyone walks around in a trance, like zombies?
They either had a blank stare or a stupid grin on their face.

By the way, I really liked the music and choreography in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. First saw it in 1973 at BYU in the old Joseph Smith Building. It was very popular judging by the size of the crowd. Came out in 1954.
Also saw Johnny Lingo in early morning seminary in about 1970 or 71. Couldn't understand why some of the young women were mad about that. The real spiritual girls seemed to like it just fine.

I loved Johnny Lingo “ Mahana, you ugly, come out of that tree at once “. She ended up being a 10 cow woman

Mahana turned out to be pretty hot. All it proved was that the men on Lingo's island were blind idiots.

*sorry. Wrong place*



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/29/2019 05:35PM by cludgie.

Yeah, a real tear jerker in its day. I remember that for the Tokyo world's fair, they produced the same movie in Japanese with well-known Japanese celebrities. That alone proved that the church was true.

Wasn't that like 1964?

They had videos back then?

They had electricity?

because Gordon B. Hinckley informed us about such things.

Things was much more technomologically serphistimicated in them 1960s than today's young green peas know. They was just more anallogic and less digitalisized.

We had filmstripper projectificators and filmstrips dammit! Even 20 some odd years after the debut of that moving picture show in 1964. And a cassette tape that gave you a beep when you was supposed to crank the film to the next frame. If you weren't payin' proper attention and missed the beeps the hot light bulb in the film stripper projectificator would burn a hole in the film strip. Nasty smell.

But it was all impervious to nuclear attack thanks to being anallogical and not digitalisized technomological equipment. ANd we got baptisms. Mostly because the fumes from the burning film strips somehow made investigators very suggestible and easy to manipulate.

Yes I do remember it! It was a farce then and it still is!!
I.M.H.O.

I remember seeing it when I was a kid and, TBH, it creeped me out.

The music was depressing. I hated the clocks. I hated the scary cackling clown head.

I hated seeing the inevitable death of the old guy. And the portrayal of the afterlife looked like a bad drug trip.

I didn't know the expression "existential crisis" at the time, but that's exactly the state of mind that the MSFH film put me into.

It all seemed so pointless, even though, ironically, the intent of the film makers was obviously to make it seem like the plan of salvation was a thing of beauty.

Even as a kid, I kept asking the "why" question too much. Why was the body necessary? Why was death necessary? Why was forgetting everything from the pre-existence really necessary? None of it made sense then...and, funnily enough, it still doesn't make sense.

And the imagery in the film was so ghastly. Everyone starts out floating around as dark figures in some psychedelic gas-filled space called the "Pre-existence".

Then they're born and terrorized by cackling clown heads and biologically programmed to enjoy staring at ladies' legs. Then they die and return to some ambiguous space that also seems to be full of gas, but is more brightly illuminated than the darker gas of the psychedelic pre-existence, and everyone is smiling like they just got a prescription for the good drugs.

Long story, short. The film didn't satisfactorily answer ANY of the questions it promised to answer. It depressed the hell out of me and I blame it for a lot of childhood issues.

If I remember correctly, this film says at the end, something about the temple, and learning the key signs and tokens, so that you can walk past the Angels who stand as sentinels at the gates of heaven, giving the key signs and tokens, and earn your exaltation. I don't remember the exact wording but after I went through the temple years later and then after that saw the film again, I remember being surprised that the church had revealed that. Most people missed it anyway, especially anyone who had not already gone through the temple before seeing it.

Mine now revolves around searching for a compatible female companion.

I hear you. This man isn't happy without female companionship either. Good luck in your search.