That film was Marilyn Miller's first. Though all but forgotten today, during the 1920s she was a sensation, at one time Broadway's highest-paid star. She made only three films: Sally, Sunny (1930), and Her Majesty Love (1931), the latter not a success despite Broadway headliner W.C. Fields co-starring as her father. Mostly her timing was bad: Miller started making movie musicals during a very brief stretch when the public had tired of them. And she had personal problems, including alcoholism and depression; she died following surgery in 1937 when she was just 37 years old.

Like Sally, the Warner Archive release of Sunny has been compromised by the ravages of time and lack of proper care through the years. The main problem is the sound, which at times is barely audible. Nevertheless, for the tolerant classic film lover, Sunny has much to offer.

Sunny is an adaptation of a hit (517 performances) Broadway musical of the same name, which opened in September 1925 and featured music by Jerome Kern, a book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach. Miller's first movie, Sally, the 1929 film of another Broadway show, was a success, and like that film Sunny was announced as a (two-color) Technicolor production for which Miller reportedly was paid $500,000. That's an incredible amount of money, a salary larger than the entire production cost of 97% of movies being made at the time.

Largely because the early talkie period begat an extraordinarily large glut of bad musicals, by 1930 the public lost interest (though within a few years the Warner Bros. backstage musicals and RKO's Astaire-Rogers films revived the genre). Panicked, the studio cut down or out completely most of Sunny's songs, resulting in a relatively short film - 78 minutes, short for such an important picture - one with very little singing, a bit more dancing, and a lot of exposition.

Sunny is an English bareback rider betrothed to stereotypical British twit Harold Harcourt Wendell-Wendell (Mackenzie Ward). Reunited with Jim Deming (Joe Donahue) and Tom Warren (Lawrence Gray), former soldiers she entertained during the war, Sunny realizes she's still in love with Tom. Dressed as a boy, she sneaks aboard their ocean liner en route to America, where she finds Tom is already engaged to a socialite. Though Jim loves a girl named Weenie (Inez Courtney), he reluctantly agrees to marry Sunny aboard ship so that she'll be admitted into the country - she has no passport - and she plans to get a quickie divorce so that she can marry her beloved Tom. Somehow.

As you can see, Sunny's plot is unremarkable early musical escapist fare, though as a Pre-Code title it does get away with much double-entendre humor revolving around Sunny's casual attitude toward her marriage to Jim. The gutting of the majority of musical sequences damages the film's pace; reportedly the complete musical version was released in Europe and may still exist somewhere. Miller's dancing (both tap and a kind of ballet-influenced number), though somewhat dated stylistically, is lovely and unique.

The picture's main asset is the effervescent Marilyn Miller herself; she was a truly charming performer whose radiant - yes, even sunny - personality still finds new fans. Her indefatigable persona, pleasant voice, pretty smile, and spirited dancing is unique with no later Hollywood equivalent - except maybe the ingénues in Disney-animated features like Snow White and Cinderella. The contrast between the carefree Marilyn Miller of the stage and screen and the troubled, tragic figure she was in real life kept her name in the public eye for years after her death. Judy Garland played her in the Jerome Kern biopic Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), performing Miller's signature songs in an anachronistic style more appropriate to Garland than to Miller. A quite bad musical biography of Miller herself followed, Look for the Silver Lining (1949); that starred June Haver.

The rest of the cast is variable. Gray makes such a wishy-washy juvenile lead I found myself hoping Sunny would run off with Jim instead. As Jim, Donahue performs to the back of the theater, talking and gesturing like everyone he converses with is hard of hearing - yet it's a fun, engaging performance. I kept thinking he was like a cross between Ray Bolger and comedian Norm Crosby; I wasn't surprised to learn Bolger played Donahue's role in the 1941 remake of Sunny, which starred Anna Neagle.

O.P. Heggie, best remembered today as the blind hermit in Bride of Frankenstein is quite funny as Sunny's circus master father, as is Inez Courtney, as Jim's kooky girlfriend. Production-wise the film is unexceptional save for a ribbed corridor set aboard the ocean liner, a cavernous affair that resembles the inside of Monstro the Whale.

Video & Audio

Sunny was originally released in a sound-on-disc format called Vitaphone (it was one of the last in this process), which basically used large 33 1/3 RPM records interlocked with the projected image. The current transfer of Sunny utilizes particularly bad surviving discs, resulting in audio that's like watching a movie underwater. It takes some effort on the part of the viewer to adjust to its limitations. Picture-wise, Sunny looks okay. There are no Extra Features, no subtitle or alternate language options.

Parting Thoughts

I wish the longer international version, with the musical numbers intact, could be located and the film's soundtrack improved, but that's unlikely to happen. If this is the only way to see this rare starring vehicle for '20s Broadway star Marilyn Miller, then it still comes Recommended because in the end her winning personality overcomes the transfer's audio imperfections.

Stuart Galbraith IV's latest audio commentary, for AnimEigo's Tora-san DVD boxed set, is on sale now.