"Sunny Side Up" (Fox, 1929) has its heart in the right place. It teams silent screen romantic stars Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, and asks them to sing for their supper this time. Farrell is no Sinatra, and Miss Gaynor is no Doris Day... but they can both carry a tune, and their charm takes us the rest of the way.
Miss Gaynor plays Molly, a working girl who lives in a New York tenement, but always has her "sunny side up." She's a smiler. And she never smiles more prettily than when she sees a newspaper photo of her idol, handsome Long Island millionaire Jack Cromwell (Farrell). She tears his photo out of the paper and keeps it.
Fate brings these two polar opposites together, and they click, but for different reasons. Cromwell invites Molly to his estate to make his girlfriend jealous -- and she goes, properly chaperoned by her gal pal, Bea, and two male friends; but Molly goes because she has fallen for Jack and incorrectly believes he loves her too.
Of course the two get together at the end, after a lot of singing and dancing, and the usual romantic mixups are accounted for and straightened out.
There's a big-scale production number involved, in which dozens of girls, led by Sharon Lynn, dance and sing "Turn on the Heat." It opens with all the girls in an arctic setting, wearing heavy parkas and eskimo boots; but, as the weather heats up and their igloos melt, they shed their outer clothes and wind up in bathing suits, basking in a tropical paradise complete with palm trees and coconuts.
The music and story of "Sunny Side Up" were written by the formidable trio of Lew Brown, Buddy DeSylva, and Ray Henderson. Songs include the title tune, plus "I'm a Dreamer (Aren't we All?)", and the now standard "If I Had a Talking Picture of You."
Dan Navarro (daneldorado93@yahoo.com)
Miss Gaynor plays Molly, a working girl who lives in a New York tenement, but always has her "sunny side up." She's a smiler. And she never smiles more prettily than when she sees a newspaper photo of her idol, handsome Long Island millionaire Jack Cromwell (Farrell). She tears his photo out of the paper and keeps it.
Fate brings these two polar opposites together, and they click, but for different reasons. Cromwell invites Molly to his estate to make his girlfriend jealous -- and she goes, properly chaperoned by her gal pal, Bea, and two male friends; but Molly goes because she has fallen for Jack and incorrectly believes he loves her too.
Of course the two get together at the end, after a lot of singing and dancing, and the usual romantic mixups are accounted for and straightened out.
There's a big-scale production number involved, in which dozens of girls, led by Sharon Lynn, dance and sing "Turn on the Heat." It opens with all the girls in an arctic setting, wearing heavy parkas and eskimo boots; but, as the weather heats up and their igloos melt, they shed their outer clothes and wind up in bathing suits, basking in a tropical paradise complete with palm trees and coconuts.
The music and story of "Sunny Side Up" were written by the formidable trio of Lew Brown, Buddy DeSylva, and Ray Henderson. Songs include the title tune, plus "I'm a Dreamer (Aren't we All?)", and the now standard "If I Had a Talking Picture of You."
Dan Navarro (daneldorado93@yahoo.com)