Sunny Side Up

Sunny Side Up Information

Sunny Side Up is a 1929 American Pre-Code Fox Movietone musical film starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, with original songs, story, and dialogue by B. G. DeSylva, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson. The romantic comedy/musical premiered on October 3, 1929 at the Gaiety Theatre in New York City. The film was directed by David Butler, had (now-lost) Multicolor sequences, and a running time of 121 minutes.

Plot

The film centres around a Will-they won't-they romance. Wealthy Jack Cromwell from Long Island runs off to New York City on account of his fiancee's relentless flirting. He attends an Independence Day block party where Molly Carr, from Yorkville, Manhattan, falls in love with him. Comic relief is provided by grocer Eric Swenson (El Brendel), above whose shop Molly and her flatmate, Bea Nichols (Marjorie White), live. Gaynor performs a charming singing and dancing version of the song "(Keep Your) Sunny Side Up" for a crowd of her neighbors, complete with top hat and cane. Later in the film, a lavish pre-Code dance sequence for the song "Turn on the Heat," including scantily clad and gyrating island women enticing bananas on trees to abruptly grow and stiffen, with the graphic metaphor lost on no one, occurs without Gaynor's participation.

Gaynor and Farrell made almost a dozen films together, including Frank Borzage's classics Seventh Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928), and Lucky Star (1929). Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress for the first two and F. W. Murnau's Sunrise.

Cast

Janet Gaynor as Molly Carr
Charles Farrell as Jack Cromwell
Marjorie White as Bea Nichols
El Brendel as Eric Swenson
Mary Forbes as Mrs. Cromwell
Peter Gawthorne as Lake
Sharon Lynn as Jane Worth

Reception

The Times and The New York Times both express the opinion that the film, and the singing voices of Gaynor and Farrell, are all tolerable if not exactly worthy of praise. Despite the sugary sentimentality, the film is engaging, while the cinematography and special effects are impressive.

Footage from Sunny Side Up was included in the comedy film It Came from Hollywood, which parodied B movies.

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

2006: AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals - Nominated

Music

I'm A Dreamer, Aren't We All?

Several times throughout the film Gaynor sings the tune "I'm a Dreamer, Aren't We All?" and, on one occasion, sings it impressively, according to the New York Times. The credits are: words, De Sylva & Brown; music, Ray Henderson.

The song was punned by the Marx Brothers in the film Animal Crackers (1930). Groucho asks his brother to play a song about Montreal, to which Chico starts up with "I'm a dreamer, Montreal." The pun has been much-recycled not least in Stewart Parker's award-winning play I"?m a Dreamer, Montreal.

The tune was recorded by John Coltrane in 1958 and included on his album Bahia (1964).

Turn on the Heat

Another song in the film. This one would be used in the Pooch the Pup cartoon Hot and Cold (1933).

(Keep Your) Sunny Side Up

Another song in the film that would later be used as the theme song to the 1988 British sitcom Clarence.