The Happy Ending (1969)

A discontented wife (Jean Simmons) walks out on her husband (John Forsythe) on their 16th wedding anniversary and travels alone to the Bahamas. While the film contains a wonderful performance by Simmons, who received an Oscar nomination for her performance, the screenplay by its director Richard Brooks (married to Simmons at the time) is ill conceived. It's an examination of an unhappy marriage from the wife's point of view but the husband's character is so vague that that one wonders why she married him in the first place. It's hard to drum up much empathy when she runs away from the marriage rather than taking the bull by the horns and dealing with it! If anything with all the booze and pills she downs, the sympathy goes to husband if anyone. It's worth seeing for Simmons' performance but don't expect any insights or enlightenment in this pre-feminist melodrama. With Shirley Jones, Bobby Darin, Lloyd Bridges, Teresa Wright, Nanette Fabray, Tina Louise, Dick Shawn and Karen Steele.