Sunny Skies

At Stantech College, Rex Lease tries out for football and Marceline Day. Marjorie Kane tries out for Benny Rubin. When his grades drop -- there's nary a professor to be seen -- he's scrubbed from the starting lineup and accidentally puts the team's other good player out of commission right before the big game. He leaves the school in disgrace.

It's another of the innumerable college musicals of the era, one of the plethora that made musicals a drug on the market until Warner Brothers revived the genre in 1933. Director Norman Taurog shoots the movie in natural-looking settings, but dialogue director George Cleveland paces the line readings awkwardly, Rex Lease looks like he's wearing lipstick -- and only about half the songs are worth listening to. Babe Kane has a dynamite song-and-dance routine and Rex Lease croons a romantic ballad pretty well.

This was OK, but not a great movie. There were a few laughs. Before I actually watched it, I'd read that it was a "precode gay classic", but that is not at all accurate. It is really the trajectories of two freshman at college. One losing his innocence and finding his burgeoning manhood, and another man full of confidence discovering his vulnerability and finding redemption. A minor 1930 comedy / drama.

SUNNY SKIES was the first of two films pairing western/serial/action-film leading man Rex Lease (who also sings and dances here) and dialect comedian and comic writer Benny Rubin, made for Tiffany Films in 1930. While the second film, Hot Curves, has its charms, this one is the film to watch. SUNNY SKIES brings together this incongruous duo (who in many ways foreshadow Martin and Lewis!)for a film that features wonderful comedy, warm characterizations, fun 1920's-style songs (played on a ukulele!), great dancing, sports sequences, even some tragedy! Director Norman Taurog continued milking this formula for decades afterwards...even into his Elvis Presley films of the 1960's. While this was a low-budget quickie meant as disposable entertainment for the lower-end of the film marketplace, it turns out to be a charming window into a long-gone age--in fact, there's even a racoon coat in one scene! (all that's missing is someone crooning into a megaphone).

Rex Lease had a long and successful career as a stalwart leading man in low-budget early 30s action films and serials and westerns, and then he graduated into fine supporting roles at Republic and elsewhere. Benny Rubin had his own series of comedy shorts and was also a successful write of comedy both for himself and others. Rubin may be best known to those under 60 for his many appearances on the Jack Benny TV show. Also, Rubin seems to have been an influence on Jerry Lewis. In fact, Lewis himself used him in a number of small roles and cameos in Lewis' solo films. I don't know who ever thought of pairing the two, but the chemistry is superb, each plays a real three-dimensional character, and one minute you'll be laughing, the next minute you'll be teary-eyed. A wonderful slice of early-sound-era entertainment that still works today.

I've noticed that in just about every college film made during the 1930s that the students never are show in class! And, although it's also about college football, very, very little of the film shows any football!

When Jim (Rex Lease) arrives at college, he's a decent guy and you can see that when a group of students are picking on poor Benny (Benny Rubin). Jim saves the day and instantly becomes Benny's friend. However, as the school year progresses, the star player, Jim, starts drinking, his grades slip and he even injures a member of the team in a fight. Not surprisingly, he's tossed out of school. But, being a good guy down deep, Jim works hard to get back in school and on the team. But that isn't enough for him...and he more than proves his worth by the end of the film.

In many ways, Jim is playing the sort of part William Haines made popular at MGM--a guy who is talented lets it all go to his head and his disappoints everyone...only to prove by the end he's a stand-up fellow after all. Soon after this, Lease and Rubin returned with a very similar film, but this time about baseball..."Hot Curves".

Overall, this is an enjoyable time-passer from tiny little Tiffany Studios. Not brilliant by any stretch but for 1930, it's a nice little film.

This pre-Code low budgeted Tiffany Productions feature showcases Benny Rubin, a vaudeville performer whose hallmark is dialect, in this instance Yiddish (although he also is adept throughout his lengthy career with many other characterizations, including blackface) and whose forte, contention with the English language, is in evidence within his every scene here. The continuity is thin, primarily to do with light romantic episodes of two couples who have met in a college and an assortment of improbable difficulties that they face, but this early sound film is highlighted by some sprightly songs composed by Will Jason and Val Burton, performed by three of the leads and one of the more loopy assemblages of extras to be found. Direction by Norman Taurog, who later bestowed his lack of skill upon an assortment of deserving Elvis Presley movies, is slack, and some of the acting rivals its lumpishness, but there are notable exceptions, particularly from uncommonly animated Patsy "Babe" Kane and elegant Marceline Day, with little anywhere to compare with the hilarious specialty dancing of Rubin, a talent which he never lost. Those with interest in American social history and mores will find a great deal to favour, after quickly parrying the storyline, with particular value present for cinema specialists in the disciplines of production design, costume, and dance, and for all who enjoy the study of linguistics and vernacular speech, particularly as these apply to the 1920s.