Backdrop fallback

The Pursuit of Happiness

The Pursuit of Happiness

Share

The Pursuit of Happiness

1971

1h 33m

6.2(17 votes)

Drama

Overview

William Popper is the son of a stockbroker and is thoroughly disenchanted with "the system." So much so that even though he can prove that he ran over a woman in his car entirely by accident, he accepts a sentence for manslaughter.

Links & Resources

Social & External

Production Companies

Columbia Pictures

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Michael Sarrazin

Michael Sarrazin

William Popper

Barbara Hershey

Barbara Hershey

Jane Kauffman

Arthur Hill

Arthur Hill

John Popper

Ruth White

Ruth White

Mrs. Popper

E.G. Marshall

E.G. Marshall

Daniel Lawrence

Robert Klein

Robert Klein

Melvin Lasher

Sada Thompson

Sada Thompson

Ruth Lawrence

David Doyle

David Doyle

James Moran

Barnard Hughes

Barnard Hughes

Judge Vogel

Peter White

Peter White

Terence Lawrence

Creative team

Directed by: Robert Mulligan
Written by: Jon Boothe
George L. Sherman
Produced by: David Susskind

Similar Movies

Blade Runner

Blade Runner

In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who have escaped to Earth seeking their creator for a way to extend their short life spans.

Emergency

Emergency

Ready for a night of legendary partying, three college students must weigh the pros and cons of calling the police when faced with an unexpected situation.

Judgment Night

Judgment Night

Four young friends, while taking a shortcut en route to a local boxing match, witness a brutal murder which leaves them running for their lives.

Blind Chance

Blind Chance

Witek runs after a train. Three variations follow on how such a seemingly banal incident could influence the rest of Witek's life.

Goodbye Bafana

Goodbye Bafana

The true story of a white South African racist whose life was profoundly altered by the black prisoner he guarded for twenty years. The prisoner's name was Nelson Mandela.

Open Your Eyes

Open Your Eyes

Handsome 25-year-old Cesar had it all -- a successful career, expensive cars, a swank bachelor's pad, and an endless string of beautiful and willing women -- until he is thrown into a strange psychological mystery after a car accident scars his face and lands him in prison.

Love in Thoughts

Love in Thoughts

A posthumous look at the last days of Guenther's life as he, his best friend, and his sister let loose on a four-day binge of alcohol, drugs, and sex.

Berlin Tunnel 21

Berlin Tunnel 21

In Berlin in 1961, an American soldier and a German engineer join forces to build a tunnel under the Berlin Wall in order to smuggle out refugees, including the soldier's East German girlfriend.

Ankle Bone

Ankle Bone

While escaping from prison to be with her lesbian friend, a 19-year-old girl breaks her ankle and is picked up by an ex-con, with whom she begins a passionate affair. She finally turns to prostitution and robbery to support herself.

The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club

Five high school students from different walks of life endure a Saturday detention under a power-hungry principal. The disparate group includes rebel John, princess Claire, outcast Allison, brainy Brian and Andrew, the jock. Each has a chance to tell his or her story, making the others see them a little differently -- and when the day ends, they question whether school will ever be the same.

Cop Land

Cop Land

Freddy Heflin is the sheriff of a place everyone calls “Cop Land” — a small and seemingly peaceful town populated by the big city police officers he’s long admired. Yet something ugly is taking place behind the town’s peaceful facade. And when Freddy uncovers a massive, deadly conspiracy among these local residents, he is forced to take action and make a dangerous choice between protecting his idols and upholding the law.

2:37

2:37

A contemporary, ensemble drama that tells the complex tale of six high school students whose lives are interwoven with situations that so many of today's youth are faced with. The story takes place during a normal school day. At precisely 2:37, a tragedy will occur affecting the lives of a group of students and their teachers.

The Glass House

The Glass House

When Ruby and Rhett's parents are killed in a car accident, their carefree teenage lives are suddenly shattered. Moving to an incredible house in Malibu with the Glasses', old friends of the family, seems to be the beginning of a new life for them.

Permanent Shadows

Permanent Shadows

A teenager decides to shut himself off from the world around him after receiving bad news.

Sounds of Sand

Sounds of Sand

On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats, and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality.

Nightwatch

Nightwatch

A law student takes a job as a night watchman at a morgue and begins to discover clues that implicate him as the suspect in a series of murders.

Love's Confusion

Love's Confusion

The film tells the love story of two young couples. According to their social ranks, construction worker Edy is dating employee Siegi, while medical student Dieter is dating art school student Sonja. Rather unintentionally, they exchange partners. During a carnival ball, Dieter makes out with Siegi because he falls for her her fresh and happy girlish manner. Sonja coolly observes this game and sees this intermezzo as a test for their relationship. While Siegi and Dieter vacation at the sea, Sonja falls in love with Edy. Now the die seems to be cast for new constellations. But when both couples stand in front of the registrar’s office, they finally come to their senses.

Bookies

Bookies

Four college friends become small-time bookies, only to find their world spinning dangerously out of control when their greed attracts the attention of organized crime.

Try Seventeen

Try Seventeen

Teenager Jones has opted not to go to college and is instead renting a room in a boarding house to work on his writing skills. Soon, Jones finds himself dividing his time between two women: a young actress named Lisa and a photographer named Jane. After Jane's ex-boyfriend arrives to help her recover from a car accident, Jones begins to understand just how much he cares for her.

Ask Me Anything

Ask Me Anything

Beautiful, wild, funny, and lost, Katie Kampenfelt takes a year off before college to find herself, all the while chronicling her adventures in an anonymous blog into which she pours her innermost secrets. Eventually, Katie's fearless narrative begins to crack, and dark pieces of her past emerge.

Recommended Movies

Horns

Horns

In the aftermath of his girlfriend's mysterious death, a young man awakens to strange horns sprouting from his temples.

The Crossing Guard

The Crossing Guard

Unable to move on from the loss of his daughter, Freddy, now a shell of the person he was before, swears to kill the man responsible for her death.

Girl in the Bunker

Girl in the Bunker

When Elizabeth is abducted by a fugitive sexual predator, she realizes she must take matters into her own hands and plot her escape. Based on a true story.

Times Square

Times Square

When a 13-year-old girl befriends a defiant antisocial child of the streets, the mismatched runaways set off to the Big Apple to find their own adventure.

Palm Trees and Power Lines

Palm Trees and Power Lines

A disconnected teenage girl enters a relationship with a man twice her age. She sees him as the solution to all her problems, but his intentions are not what they seem.

90 Minutes in Heaven

90 Minutes in Heaven

A man involved in a horrific car crash is pronounced dead, only to come back to life an hour and a half later, claiming to have seen Heaven.

Out of the Blue

Out of the Blue

A young girl whose father is an ex-convict and whose mother is a junkie finds it difficult to conform and tries to find comfort in a quirky combination of Elvis and the punk scene.

Wanda

Wanda

After a string of abusive relationships, Wanda abandons her family and seeks solace in the company of a petty criminal.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

A disturbed and institutionalized 16-year-old girl struggles between fantasy and reality.

I'm Your Woman

I'm Your Woman

A woman is forced to go on the run after her husband betrays his partners, sending her and her baby on a dangerous journey.

Desperate Measures

Desperate Measures

San Francisco police officer Frank Connor is in a frantic search for a compatible bone marrow donor for his gravely ill son. There's only one catch the potential donor is convicted multiple murderer Peter McCabe who sees a trip to the hospital as the perfect opportunity to get what he wants most: freedom. With McCabe's escape, the entire hospital becomes a battleground and Connor must pursue and, ironically, protect the deadly fugitive who is his son's only hope for survival.

The Lookout

The Lookout

Chris is a once promising high school athlete whose life is turned upside down following a tragic accident. As he tries to maintain a normal life, he takes a job as a janitor at a bank, where he ultimately finds himself caught up in a planned heist.

Buster's Mal Heart

Buster's Mal Heart

An eccentric mountain man on the run from the local sheriff recalls the mysterious events that brought him to his present fugitive state.

Hesher

Hesher

A young boy has lost his mother and is losing touch with his father and the world around him. Then he meets Hesher who manages to make his life even more chaotic.

Road to Paloma

Road to Paloma

While Native American Wolf is being pursued by the FBI for having taken the law into his own hands, when his mother was raped and killed on their reservation he crosses paths with Cash, a down and out musician who is coping with the end of his marriage. An unlikely friendship develops, as they ride together towards the Teton mountain range, where Wolf will spread his mothers ashes.

The Trials of Cate McCall

The Trials of Cate McCall

In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.

Personal Effects

Personal Effects

Walter is a rising star in the NCAA wrestling world until his life is ripped apart by the brutal murder of his sister. Returning home to console his mother Gloria he seeks vengeance on the man who is accused of the crime. A chance meeting with a beautiful mature woman gives him solace to the situation. Will this unlikely pairing bloom into a romance and heal a wound the world cannot see or will the loss of his sister push him over the edge?

Fireflies in the Garden

Fireflies in the Garden

The semi-autobiographical story centers on the complexities of love and commitment in a family torn apart when faced with an unexpected tragedy.

Roadracers

Roadracers

In the 1950s, guitar-playing drifter Dude Delaney wanders into a quiet town looking to play music and generally cause trouble, much to the chagrin of the local sheriff, known as Sarge. While palling around with his B-movie-obsessed friend Nixer, Dude meets the beautiful Donna, and is offered a position in a rockabilly band, but the sheriff is intent on getting rid of him by any means necessary.

Thelma & Louise

Thelma & Louise

Taking a break from their dreary lives, close friends Thelma and Louise embark on a short weekend trip that ends in unforeseen incriminating circumstances. As fugitives, both women rediscover the strength of their bond and their newfound resilience.