Sunny Side Up
            
Director: David Butler
Year: 1929
Rating: 7.5
This is an absolutely charming musical with loads of corn flakes poured on. Musicals were still new and fresh and still trying to find their footing in 1929. This takes an interesting angle. The songs all make sense in the situation - a block party, a charity ball, sitting at a piano - and unprofessional. There is nothing slick here - whether that was the intention or they just were not ready for big extravagant musical numbers I don't know - but it totally adds to the natural charm of the film. There are some amusing bits that hold up swell and an overall good feeling. The plot though must have felt creaky even back then and some of the romantic dialogue has cob webs on it. But none of that really matters because it has a performance from Janet Gaynor that sweeps you off your feet with her adorable personality.

 

Both Gaynor and her co-star Charles Farrell were also making the transition to sound. They had teamed up in three classic silent pictures directed by Frank Borzage - 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928), Lucky Star (1929) and she was also in what is considered one of the great silent films Sunrise. She was an enormous star - had won an Academy Award - and Farrell was her regular co-star (they teamed up 12 times and had an off-screen romance as well). Now they had to talk. And sing. Gaynor has a funny little voice - very real but weak and girlish and Farrell's voice has no masculinity to it. A little high pitched and shaky. And their singing is about the same. They are far from trained singers - at least in this first talking film of theirs. But that is kind of the point - they are just average singers playing real people. When Gaynor sings I'm a Dreamer or Sunnyside Up you want to give her a hug because she is giving it all she has. She was to appear in future musicals and I am curious whether she improves. I hope not. Her voice isn't strong but it touches you.

 

The film begins in wonderful fashion as director David Butler places the camera on a studio street in a tenement neighborhood in New York City. In a four minute introduction the camera begins on the street where kids are playing baseball and a fire hydrant is spraying out water, people are bustling about and then the camera goes up into the apartment of various people - catching them fighting, or talking or holding their baby - capturing the sounds of a city - then it comes back down to center on the grocery store of Eric Swenson -  a kindly Swede. Swenson is played by El Brendel - American born but his act in vaudeville for years and then into film was as a Swede with the accent and the amusing sayings coming out. He invented "Yumpin Yiminy". He is very funny in this. Swenson is a father figure to Molly (Gaynor) who dreams of meeting a man to love and hopefully a rich one. She is a shop girl and along with Swenson and her two buddies (Frank Richardson and Marjorie White) they have an inside flush. Life is good. If only she could find love.

 

And what do you know - Jack, a wealthy man from the Hamptons gets angry with his girlfriend and takes off in his car and crashes in the street below. Dizzy, he finds his way into Molly's room and they hit it off. After she sings Sunny Side Up at the block party and gets everyone to join in - he asks her if she would be willing to help him. Come out to the Hamptons with her three friends - pretend to be from a wealthy family out of Detroit - her three friends pretend to be servants - and sing at the Charity Ball and make his not so nice girlfriend jealous. Well, we know how that will go. Gaynor is irresistible. Not really attractive but those big eyes on her small face can emote like a passing storm.