Sunny Skies, 1930
Benny (Benny Rubin) is a young man who has just arrived to college where he is immediately bullied. Fortunately for Benny, football star Jim (Rex Lease) is willing to stand up for him and the two men form a genial friendship. But when Jim's drinking and aggression get out of hand, both men find themselves in a crisis.
There's not a lot on the internet about this film, but the two things that do stand out are (1) a theory that the film is subtextually about a gay relationship and (2) a hilarious pan review of the film from the New York Times from the film's initial release.
It can certainly be said that the film puts Benny into a "girlfriend" role relative to Jim. There are sequences where he gets directions from Jim on how to mix him a drink (which he brings to him in the shower), fetches him underwear, and when Jim holds him and flirts with him as a demonstration of how to woo a lady, Benny leans into Jim in a momentary swoon. What kind of complicates this is the way that Benny's ethnicity---a strong accent and suggestive clothing choices---is pushed to the fore. Is this actually about them being gay, or is it more a joke about immigrants/Europeans being feminine compared to the American men who make up the rest of the college population?
In any event, possible gay subtext makes the film a lot more interesting to watch, because without it, it's just a story about an angry football player whose friendship with the new kid is kind of pushy. As the scathing NYT review points out, "the sum of its efforts is little more than a blank." The acting is unremarkable, and there is very little character development. If you believe that there's an unspoken desire between the two lead characters, then at least you get some depth out of their imagined anguish. But if these are just friends? Eh. The women they woo are also poorly developed, and pretty forgettable aside from the fact that one of them performs a song-and-dance number that's so close to the stereotype of an old timey number that it feels like borderline parody.
Please enjoy the following excerpt from the NYT review in all its glorious snark. "There are several players in this film who enact supposedly collegiate rôles. They include Marceline Day, Marjorie Kane and Wesley Ruggles, who try hard."
Who try hard, LOL.
The run time is blessedly short, and there's nothing actually terrible here. Just a lot of minutes that fail to make an impression. Thinking about what it's trying to say either about sexuality or ethnicity at least makes it engaging from an analysis point of view.