This is a movie that justifies whatever expensive restoration is required. It has a great score, and an interesting cast. Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell had developed a certain cachet during the silent era as "America's Favorite Lovebirds," and indeed they are charming, almost like the leads in a high school musical. Gaynor, of course, continued to be formidable for a number of years, but Farrell's career took a long hiatus--even though it ended up with his popular series about "Charlie Farrell's Racquet Club" in early TV.
The important thing about this film is that it is a precursor to many other interesting works that emerged over the next twenty years. It has a number of production numbers that must have been inspired by Billy Rose's extravaganzas, and which foreshadow the "aquacades" that Rose produced during the 1930's, culminating in the spectacular shows of the 1939 world's fair. The water curtain used in the Southampton charity show is surely something that we will see later. I think that Fox and Busby Berkeley derived a certain amount of inspiration from this film in creating the psychedelic "The Gang's All Here!" during WWII.
In spite of what others may say, the most important number in the score is the title: "Sunny Side Up" which was a popular sing-along number in community gatherings through the mid- 1960's. As a former Cub Scout, I don't remember singing "If I Had A Talking Picture of You" or "I'm a Dreamer", but I still know all the words to "Sunny Side Up." The burden of the song was also an important depression-era anthem, and David Butler's opening sequence, with the poor children dancing under a fire-hydrant fountain, moving to a cop-umpired baseball game, to a bird's eye view of apartment life in New York City's tenements, is certainly a precursor to Hitchcock's exploration of a Greenwich Village neighborhood in "Rear Window."
It must have been exhilarating to be inventing cinema in Hollywood in the early sound era. Gaynor and Farrell couldn't last as a romantic couple, not with those reedy voices, but at the same time they earned an honest day's pay. Marjorie White and Frank Richardson gave a convincing portrait of vaudeville as it was in the 1920's, and the show's big production number, "Turn on the Heat," was worthy of late Busby Berkeley, with Eskimo women melting their igloos, shedding their parkas for bikinis, and generating heat enough to spawn palm trees and finally flame out of the very earth. El Brendel's appearance as a dialect comedian is also an artifact of early 20th century American humor, one that resounds through the 1950's.
With early appearances by Jackie Cooper (NOT Coogan!) and (I think) Shirley Temple in an appearance so short as to be almost subliminal--I'll have to watch a couple more times-- this film incorporates early cinema magic, a certain preservation of some vaudeville precursors (these persisted through television of them 1960's) and a lot of the future of cinema. It's definitely worth watching!
The important thing about this film is that it is a precursor to many other interesting works that emerged over the next twenty years. It has a number of production numbers that must have been inspired by Billy Rose's extravaganzas, and which foreshadow the "aquacades" that Rose produced during the 1930's, culminating in the spectacular shows of the 1939 world's fair. The water curtain used in the Southampton charity show is surely something that we will see later. I think that Fox and Busby Berkeley derived a certain amount of inspiration from this film in creating the psychedelic "The Gang's All Here!" during WWII.
In spite of what others may say, the most important number in the score is the title: "Sunny Side Up" which was a popular sing-along number in community gatherings through the mid- 1960's. As a former Cub Scout, I don't remember singing "If I Had A Talking Picture of You" or "I'm a Dreamer", but I still know all the words to "Sunny Side Up." The burden of the song was also an important depression-era anthem, and David Butler's opening sequence, with the poor children dancing under a fire-hydrant fountain, moving to a cop-umpired baseball game, to a bird's eye view of apartment life in New York City's tenements, is certainly a precursor to Hitchcock's exploration of a Greenwich Village neighborhood in "Rear Window."
It must have been exhilarating to be inventing cinema in Hollywood in the early sound era. Gaynor and Farrell couldn't last as a romantic couple, not with those reedy voices, but at the same time they earned an honest day's pay. Marjorie White and Frank Richardson gave a convincing portrait of vaudeville as it was in the 1920's, and the show's big production number, "Turn on the Heat," was worthy of late Busby Berkeley, with Eskimo women melting their igloos, shedding their parkas for bikinis, and generating heat enough to spawn palm trees and finally flame out of the very earth. El Brendel's appearance as a dialect comedian is also an artifact of early 20th century American humor, one that resounds through the 1950's.
With early appearances by Jackie Cooper (NOT Coogan!) and (I think) Shirley Temple in an appearance so short as to be almost subliminal--I'll have to watch a couple more times-- this film incorporates early cinema magic, a certain preservation of some vaudeville precursors (these persisted through television of them 1960's) and a lot of the future of cinema. It's definitely worth watching!