No doubt that Herbert Wilcox had to pay a pretty penny to Jack Warner for the rights to film the musical Sunny again. Warner had already done so in 1930 with the original Broadway star Marilyn Miller and had done so faithfully following the plot of the Broadway show. A circus is retained here and Anna Neagle is a circus performer. The setting is changed from Southampton in the United Kingdom and New York to New Orleans during the Mardi Gras season.
There Neagle meets and falls in love with John Carroll who is the heir to a really big fortune with one of the first automobile dealerships in the Big Easy. But New Orleans society and the circus don't really mix and the path to happiness is littered with traps.
Ray Bolger plays the circus ringmaster and has a couple of really nice specialty dancing. Most of the Kern-Harbach-Hammerstein score is gutted and some public domain songs are used, but of course the big hit of the show Who is sung and danced by Carroll and Neagle. And Neagle in her dancing is most reflective of Marilyn Miller.
The film could use some restoration work, but it's still a most entertaining piece as is the version with Marilyn Miller herself.
There Neagle meets and falls in love with John Carroll who is the heir to a really big fortune with one of the first automobile dealerships in the Big Easy. But New Orleans society and the circus don't really mix and the path to happiness is littered with traps.
Ray Bolger plays the circus ringmaster and has a couple of really nice specialty dancing. Most of the Kern-Harbach-Hammerstein score is gutted and some public domain songs are used, but of course the big hit of the show Who is sung and danced by Carroll and Neagle. And Neagle in her dancing is most reflective of Marilyn Miller.
The film could use some restoration work, but it's still a most entertaining piece as is the version with Marilyn Miller herself.