be a howling success
To be extremely or triumphantly successful. For having such a limited budget, their play turned out to be a howling success. My business was a howling success in the 1980s and '90s, but the advent of the Internet rendered my services obsolete.
howling success
A tremendous triumph, as in Their first play was a howling success. This colloquial expression employs howling in the sense of "very pronounced" or "glaring," a usage dating from the mid-1800s.