Sunny Side Up

SUNNY SIDE UP 1929 STARRING JANET GAYNOR AND CHARLES FARRELL THE JOHN AND OLIVIA OF THEIR DAY IN THEIR FIRST TALKIE AFTER THEIR BOFFO HIT SEVENTH HEAVEN IN WHICH HE RETURNED TO THEIR SHABBY SEVENTH FLOOR WALKUP BLIND FROM THE WAR BUT THEN MIRACULOUSLY

The sleeping beauty awoke and spoke. Her thoughts and then some. Her delirious dreaming still came up in waves onto the sync-sound shore.

New at this she revealed more than she would. Her diction kept slipping exposing her regional and class feet of clay. We her devotees were touched and chilled by such mortal particularity. But she caught herself quick.

Strange our focus of desire should herself speak only of desire. “If I only had a talking picture of you,” she burbled on a continuous performance basis. Sticky hands, seats, floor. Drowning balconies. Dripping walls.

The rich are foolish and bored but devoted to the success of their charity balls where they eat and drink and watch naked women Turn On The Heat! and generously display themselves, all for the poor. The defeated, on the other hand, are regular, reliable, proud. Above all else spunky. Prostrate. Yet grinning. Kicked in the head they reply, “I’m a dreamer. But don’t blame me. Aren’t we all?” They will not, will not, accept pity.

We queued up in the rain. We never missed a lesson. She taught us the twentieth century.

by Ken Jacobs